Innholdsfortegnelse for 5/30/2022 i The Big Issue

Disabled tenants living in high-rise blocks at risk of fire will not be given evacuation plans after ministers rejected a key recommendation from the Grenfell Inquiry to “cut costs”. Ministers unveiled the Fire Reform White Paper claiming it brought forward the “most comprehensive plans for fire reform in decades” including the “majority” of recommendations made following the 2017 fire. But it omitted a recommendation that called for disabled tenants to be given a personal emergency evacuation plan – known as a PEEP – to allow them to evacuate the building in the event of a fire rather than staying put. Ministers opted not to implement the recommendation over costs, warning that it is not “proportionate, practical or safe”. “If you haven’t experienced being trapped or left to ‘stay put’ in…

The Elizabeth Line, aka Crossrail, launched to great fanfare, and at great cost, last week in London. It was four years late, still not fully functional and £4 billion over budget. The project will link commuter belts to the east and west of the English capital. Its cost? £18.8bn. That’s roughly the same amount the government slashed from the budget of the Great Northern Powerhouse Rail project that was set to connect Manchester and Leeds. It will instead upgrade existing lines. The eastern leg of HS2 connecting Birmingham to Leeds was also binned. Meanwhile, north of the border Scotrail announced it’s axing a third of its services, leaving many towns without evening trains, as a dispute with train drivers intensified.…

The Big Issue’s new podcast is about acting today to make a better tomorrow. It is the place for big conversations on the biggest subjects – from societal reform to climate change. BetterPod is created by The Big Issue’s Future Generations team. A recent study revealed that 80 per cent of journalists come from privileged backgrounds. Clearly, that locks out talent and builds in terrible bias. At Big Issue we are committed to bringing opportunity to those who may not have had it before. Through our Breakthrough programme we are offering a platform for young people from underrepresented and difficult backgrounds to train and get a foothold in journalism and publishing. Our current group of four who make our Future Generations team are guiding us and creating this podcast. Join…

The author weaves her stories together in a way that is subtle and nuanced, but glaringly obvious in retrospect, like all the best twists Time travel is such a well-worn trope in speculative and science fiction because it’s a versatile device for adding narrative resonance – drawing explicit links between the past, present and future, examining paths not taken, mistakes made. This week we have two books using this trope in interesting and different ways. First up is the wonderfully inventive Sea of Tranquility by Canadian author Emily St John Mandel. The writer is best known for her breakthrough pandemic novel Station Eleven, recently adapted for television by HBO. While that eerily prescient novel was written long before our current circumstances, this book was written during the pandemic, and there…

The Big Issue’s iconic red tabard might not be the Queen’s usual attire, but it’s on the cover of this magazine thanks to the social commentary of street artist Loretto. The artwork, which sees her trying her hand at selling The Big Issue with Street Cat Bob on her shoulder, first came to light in 2018 when Loretto painted it on the side of the Life Food Cafe in Fitzrovia, Central London. It’s one of a number of satirical pieces he daubed around the city. Others featured Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn and Jesus in a Big Issue tabard. Speaking to The Big Issue at the time, Loretto said he’d been drawn to the story of Street Cat Bob and “his humble origins”, and the magazine’s association with “what’s really happening…

The Big Issue launched the Stop Mass Homelessness campaign last year because we saw that post-Covid financial storms were gathering. The pandemic disrupted the private rental market and hit household incomes and while support was in place – through eviction bans and a £20 increase to Universal Credit – that support has now dwindled at a time when the cost of living has surged. We warned that this could lead to a rise in the number of people losing their home. Last week that rise was confirmed. Ministry of Justice figures showed landlords (in England) made more than 19,000 possession claims to evict tenants between January and March 2022. That included more than 6,000 claims for a no-fault eviction – where a landlord can evict a tenant without giving a…

1 Brazil Happy 15th birthday to Brazilian street paper, Aurora da Rua! Based in Santiago in the state of Bahia, the street paper has evolved over the past 15 years from a pilot project to a newspaper, and now a magazine. The staff and vendors celebrated with a community party last month. 2 India The International Rhino Foundation has announced that numbers of the greater one-horned rhino have reached 4,014 individuals. While this number seems pretty small, 50 years ago there were only around 100 left. Over two-thirds of the species live in the Indian state of Assam, where the number has increased by 274 animals thanks in part to lockdown, when the park was closed to visitors and the rhinos were left in peace to be horny. 3 Australia…

It was a Friday afternoon, November 22, 1963. The classroom had an intercom where they’d call the buses. They put the microphone up to the TV where we heard someone, maybe Walter Cronkite, saying President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. Almost every kid in the class cheered. I was shocked because they cried, “Hooray, now Nixon can take over!” Our teacher, Miss Nimmo, excoriated the class. And I think Miss Nimmo was a reasonably conservative woman, but she had great empathy as well. That gives you a sense of the air in my town, Williamsburg. The lightbulb joke is – how many Virginians does it take to screw it in? Three. One to screw it in and two to talk about how good the old one was. Virginia lives…

1 The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka A deeply haunting novel, told in the collective ‘we’, that recounts the experience(s) of Japanese women who journeyed to America between the two world wars to become catalogue brides. 2 Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie A circular story of a young Nigerian couple and their contrasting experiences of being outsiders in America and London, and the pull of coming home. A very personal account and a sharp social reflection on what it means to be a migrant today. 3 Inhale/Exile by Abeer Ameer A poignant poetry collection inspired by Ameer’s Iraqi heritage that reads like a meditation. It celebrates the resilience of her forebearers and extended family in the face of forced migration. 4 The Country of…

Before Jens Lekman, had another artist ever before committed such an act of commercial and artistic self-sacrifice? Turns out that, actually, several had Over the last number of months, I’ve been lucky to get the chance to write, produce and present a podcast for American independent record label Secretly Canadian, all about the life and music of one of my favourite artists, Swedish indie-pop singer-songwriter Jens Lekman. Specifically, a two-part miniseries – a highly unusual project that Lekman undertook over the last few years, to basically remake two of his best-known and best-loved albums – the 2005 compilation Oh You’re So Silent Jens, which contains some of his early breakout singles, and his most critically and commercially successful release 2007’s Night Falls Over Kortedala, which was hailed by Pitchfork and…

1 Homeless man who built wooden house on pavement: “People understand I’m just in a bad situation” 2 Revealed: the UK’s rarest and most threatened wildlife sites are not being protected properly 3 Lea Thompson on directing Star Trek: Picard and her plan to make a Howard the Duck sequel 4 Expanded stop-and-search powers will lead to “more criminalisation of Black people”, groups warn 5 Martin Lewis: “I can’t shut up because there really are lives at stake”…

A garden planted by people with experience of homelessness has blossomed into a winner at the Chelsea Flower Show. St Mungo’s horticultural training programme has seen people take up gardening to develop new skills. Their Putting Down Roots Garden scooped the Silver Medal in the Show Garden category and welcomed celebrity visitors including Anneka Rice, Grayson Perry and Stephen Merchant. The garden will move to two new homes: Guy’s Hospital London and Southwark Crown Court. Matt Woodruff, St Mungo’s horticultural manager, said: “Our clients are over the moon. They have learned so much and developed such confidence from being involved.”…

Last week we detailed the renters in social housing who are organising to take a stand against service charges. But sometimes, if you’re facing issues over rent and repairs, it is difficult to know where to get support. New reforms are coming in the form of the Renters’ Reform Bill and the Social Housing Regulation Bill to tip the power balance back towards renters and to improve the standards of homes. But while the legislation is making its way through Parliament, here are five things you can do to make a complaint against your landlord. 1 CHECK IF YOUR LANDLORD IS LEGIT If you’re having problems with your landlord, it’s worth checking if they have everything in order. In Scotland – and possibly in England in the future – there…

Get in touch  The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue RE: DUMPING SEWAGE IN RIVERS [Issue 1514] We shouldn’t need to monitor the amount of sewage dumps into rivers at all. It should simply be zero, with absolutely ludicrous fines for any occurrences. Panda_hat Ministers and water company executives should get tossed headlong into rivers. To be honest I’d be on board with nationalising water at this point, privatisation clearly isn’t working and it’s a bit grubby to introduce a profit motive for something as basic as water in my opinion. colei_canis Essential reading I started buying my copy from the local Co-op when I was passing on the way to work. Then I missed not having it when the Co-op…

Climate change, health, inequality, poverty – they’re the seemingly intractable concerns that overshadow our society and our planet. But it often seems like politicians are too concerned about short-term issues to really get to grips with any of it. A growing movement is calling for change – and Sophie Howe is at the forefront of that political transformation to act today for a better tomorrow. The world’s first Future Generations Commissioner, her role came into being in 2016 following Wales’s Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. She now has the legal responsibility to act as the guardian of those yet unborn. Scotland looks set to follow suit with its own commissioner, while The Big Issue’s founder Lord John Bird has been working to get similar legislation passed at Westminster. The UN…

Lui submits his work via the 240 Project, an activity centre in London supporting vulnerable adults. He takes inspiration, he says, “from the world around me, the images, ideas, and people that fill this city. “I am self-taught and drawn to many genres of art,” Lui continues. “I tend to follow my own intuition, creating fluid pieces that do not necessarily pay homage to any specific artist, but there may be the occasional trace of influence. “Whatever you want in life start chasing it now, before it’s too late.” The work on this page is created by people who are marginalised. Contact street.lights@bigissue.com to see your art here. To see more and buy prints: bigissueshop.com. At least half of the profit goes to the artist.…