Innholdsfortegnelse for 8/8/2022 i The Big Issue

A poverty time-bomb is ticking across Britain as we head into autumn 2022. Homelessness is now rising fast. The Big Issue reported just this week that 227,000 people are experiencing the worst forms of homelessness – rough sleeping, sleeping in vans and sheds and stuck in B&Bs across England, Scotland and Wales. And those numbers will sadly be rising as food and fuel bills soar and rent arrears force hard-pressed tenants out of their homes now that the support keeping a roof over vulnerable heads during the Covid crisis has gone. Organisations and individuals from the Child Poverty Action Group to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Metro Mayors and the First Minister of Wales and 56 faith leaders, are now so alarmed at the scale and speed of rising energy costs,…

VENDORS Menopause nearly destroyed my life. Now I’m helping Big Issue vendors going through the same “Menopause nearly destroyed my life. I used to go down to the Thames at lunchtime and wonder why I didn’t throw myself in,” says Elizabeth Ellis. This was the start of a realisation that led Ellis to start Pausitivity, a campaign to make sure women are informed about the often-under-discussed symptoms of menopause, and the help they can get. And now, Big Issue sellers will receive information about the menopause, thanks to a partnership with Pausitivity. “I’m educated, and I had no idea that all of the symptoms that I had gone through for years were menopause,” says Ellis. And, seeing homeless people on the streets of Canterbury, Ellis began to understand that they…

Nicky Weller was a teenage pop fan. Then her brother Paul Weller became a teenage sensation, as singer and driving force of The Jam. It became the family business – with their father John managing the band while Nicky ran the fanclub. Now, Nicky is curating a new exhibition, This Is The Modern World, that features music, clothes and incredible ephemera offering a new view on The Jam and The Style Council. We can see Paul Weller’s school books and reports, the first ever photo-shoot of The Jam (with handwritten rude comments by the singer), handwritten lyrics, that iconic Whaam guitar, torn trousers given away as a fanclub prize in 1977, a talent contest trophy the band won in Woking, a recreation of the cover of The Style Council’s brilliant…

REVIEWS A delve inside the mind of a monster ‘Transgressive’ is a tricky word to define in terms of fiction. But however you do it, the word conjures up ideas of pushing boundaries, breaking certain societal and perhaps moral expectations, taking things that little bit further. This week we have two terrific books that certainly dabble in this area, and they are both superbly refreshing reads as a result. First up is A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G Summers. This is the American author’s debut novel, but Summers is an experienced journalist and non-fiction writer, and her delightful turns of phrase in this novel are obvious evidence of that fact. The antiheroine of Summers’ story is Dorothy Daniels – a middle-aged food critic based in New York who has always…

CONCERT TICKETS Unaffordable gigs deny youth their Glory Days Can you remember how much your first proper gig ticket cost? I can remember mine precisely: £28.50. It was for a show at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield stadium in 1997 by a certain overearnest Irish rock band who I was obsessed with at the time, although they do my head in now. I can vividly recall staring at the elaborately designed paper ticket incessantly for months leading up to the concert, studying and memorising every detail, both colourful and mundane, including the price tag. A lofty, but not unaffordable sum for a 15-year-old with a paper round. And a not unreasonable price in the grand scheme of things to see one of the biggest bands in the world. Around £50 today, adjusted for…

In 2016 I had what we called the Creditworthiness Assessment Bill go through Parliament. It was a very simple no-brainer. People living in rented accommodation were paying more for their credit than those living in a property they had a mortgage on. Credit reference agencies, who gave you your credit rating, were not recognising your rental payments as an expression of your willingness and ability to repay whatever you may wish to borrow. But if you had a mortgage, this was an expression of how reliable and established you were. And therefore how much of a better risk you were because you had a mortgage. This was a clear divide that needed to be addressed and our Bill passed through both Houses of Parliament but was not passed into law.…

My oldest brother had his leg cut off by a train when he was four years old. He was in and out of hospital all his life. So, even though I was a second child I ended up being the eldest one. I was very smart in school, so my father expected a lot out of me. That’s why he was so hard on me. I had younger sisters and brothers, so I had to be strong. I’ve always taken responsibility because I come from a family where I had to take responsibility. I’d tell my younger self: don’t let others influence you to do things that you know are wrong for the sake of being popular. When I was 15, my boyfriend kept putting me under pressure, so my…

Last week I came across three black cats. I was out for a walk and as I turned a corner that butted onto the yard of a farmhouse, there they were. Three in a row, all staring at me. I walked away, and they followed. I stopped and they stopped. And then we all realised we had places to be and went our separate ways. I’m not superstitious. Not really. But being Irish I hold what some believe to be irrational ideas. Or, what I like to think of as rational ideas. I won’t cut down a hawthorn bush. So frequently have I told my children that raised ground in the middle of a field with trees growing on it is a fairy hill, that they as young adults have…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Bad Neighbours Neighbours might well have “hit the big time” when then-Controller of BBC 1 Michael Grade opted to run episodes before the early evening news, but its success confirmed the end for a much-loved programme slot. For at least a decade beforehand, Children’s BBC had signed off for the day with the likes of The Wombles, Paddington or The Magic Roundabout – delightfully animated five-minute adventures which (more often than not) also attracted the so-called grownups waiting for the news which started at 5.40pm. Grade’s decision to shift the early evening bulletin to 6pm – although sensible in many respects – opened up an additional 20-minute gap that CBBC didn’t…

After more than 30 years of fevered fan discussion about a potential screen adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s DC Comics classic The Sandman – one of the greatest graphic novels of all time – it has finally happened, with a 10-part Netflix series out now. The series centres on Morpheus, aka Dream, a member of the Endless (a dysfunctional family of Godlike beings) who escapes after a century in captivity and bids to restore order to the dream world he rules, called The Dreaming. The dark, mythic adventure is set to be a major hit, with Tom Sturridge leading a cast that includes Gwendoline Christie (as Lucifer), Charles Dance and Jenna Coleman, plus Lenny Henry and Mark Hamill (as Mervyn Pumpkinhead) in the voice cast. When the adaptation was announced, the…

TONY BARNES, 46 I’ve been selling the magazine for three and a half years, and I came to The Big Issue because basically I was homeless. I was begging and then I saw someone in Nottingham city centre who was selling the magazine and they said to me: “Why don’t you just go to the office and ask to sign up?” So that’s what I did. When I was begging I used to get pulled up by the police all the time and get moved on. But with The Big Issue you can’t do that. It’s better to sell The Big Issue, you get a better reaction from people. I’ve managed to get quite a few regular customers now I’ve been doing it for a while. There are quite a…