Innholdsfortegnelse for 9/12/2022 i The Big Issue

For the new Prime Minister to say she is going to run a conservative government she is living a pipe dream. Thatcher tried to run a conservative government from ’79 to ’90 but kept finding herself being pushed into a kind of statism; always having to expand the basis of government intervention into the lives of the poorest. Not intentionally and willingly and constructively. But if you strip a country of its industrial base before replacing it with something new and shiny, and that industrial base has been kept alive by government support, then you’re going to have to up social security, put more money into hospitals, prisons and schools, and get knee-deep into social control. Which is exactly what Thatcher did, growing areas of the UK that looked as…

INTERVIEW Sophia Nomvete and Robert Aramayo JRR Tolkien’s tales were always about much more than precious jewellery or hoards of gold. His Lord of the Rings stories set in Middle-earth explored good and evil, friendship, fear, loyalty, courage and community. In the breathtakingly beautiful and ambitious new adaptation, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the story goes much deeper than it seems on the surface. Sophia Nomvete plays Princess Disa, the first female and first Black dwarf seen in the Lord of the Rings world. “What’s so great about the show is that every single audience member, no matter their background, or knowledge of Tolkien, or the movies, will be able to take something from this,” she tells The Big Issue. “The overarching story is about the…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Picture perfect I visited Birmingham on Saturday August 27, and while taking a cup of coffee in the Waterstones bookstore outside the Bullring one of your vendors [Matt Day, above] settled himself on the pavement and started to sell his Big Issue magazines. I thought he had a great way of communicating with potential customers. I’m a photographer and I thought he had a great face. I went to speak to him and he was an open, charming man and we agreed that I could take one or two shots of him. He was a perfect subject. Geoff Pearce In need of a lift In my younger days we used to…

REVIEWS A monk and a robot take a buddy road trip Genre fiction is often best at tackling the really big questions. There’s something about a distance from the everyday world that allows a better perspective on who we are, how we function as a community, what it means to be alive. This week we have two very different books that tackle such questions while also delivering beautifully imagined stories. First up is A Prayer For the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers. This is the second novella in the Monk and Robot science fiction series from the American author, and a shining example of the ‘hopepunk’ sub-genre, which postulates a positive future for humanity. The book is set on a moon called Panga, where a human civilisation lives in peace, having…

CLASSICAL Opera gives a powerful voice to the exiled Every Tuesday, the Ministry of Defence publishes a series of figures to gov.uk, the government’s online portal. For the most part, these numbers sit quietly on the webpage, sporadically quoted by columnists with copy to file. Their existence is an irrelevance to some – an inconvenience to others – and, by and large, they are viewed in abstraction. For those outside Kent, it is difficult to imagine what 19 “small boats” containing 915 migrants actually looks like, or what happens after “detection”; the official term used in the data collection. What is not captured in these numbers are the individual and collective stories of real, harrowing human experience. The treacherous journey undertaken by displaced people – 4,540 arrived in the UK…

SIMONE GILL, 43 It’s starting to get better on my pitch. A month or so ago it was a bit dire. Nobody was buying the magazine and I just had to stick at it. I think it’s partly due to people being away and partly because less people are on the street after Covid. People also just don’t have the money to buy extra things right now like The Big Issue. Earlier this week I ended up selling on my pitch for longer hours because I wanted to earn extra money to pay for electricity. I managed to do it and I was happy with that. But I think the next few months are going to be a struggle – everything has gone up already anyway. Most of the items…

Nearly two years ago Joe Lycett created a piece of art for The Big Issue. Given his then recently discovered facility for portraiture, we asked if he’d scare something up that encapsulated the year just gone. Joe sent us back a portrait of Jeff Bezos. On it were the words ‘2020, Best Year Ever!’. It came at the end of lockdown, a year that Jeff no doubt enjoyed, bulking out his bank account by a few billion. “I get it. It’s been tough for some of you,” wrote Lycett in accompanying text. “You’ve not stopped going on about it. You’ve whined on and on about how awful it’s been. Well, I’m sick of it. Have any of you ungrateful little urchins considered the good things that have happened. Have any…

BIG ISSUE COST-OF-LIVING ADVICE DIY tips to save money this winter We asked experts for energy-saving tips to keep homes warm for less this winter. By Alex King LOWER YOUR COMBI BOILER’S FLOW TEMPERATURE Most gas boilers are set to heat the water to 80°C. “One of the biggest DIY energy-saving tweaks is to reduce the flow temperature from 80°C to 60°C or lower if possible,” Jo Alsop of The Heating Hub told The Big Issue. However, you should only turn down the flow temperature if you have a combi boiler. TURN OFF YOUR BOILER’S PREHEAT SETTING Some boilers have a hot water preheat function that keeps a little hot water prepared in the boiler at all times. To do this the boiler will fire about every 90 minutes, which…

The alpacas have all given birth now, thank god, so I can relax. My father’s family, they’re all farmers. I used to spend a lot of time in Ireland when I was little – we’d go for the summer holidays – so I could milk a cow by the time I was seven. I was a bit of a wild child at that age. I don’t mean wild naughty, I mean wild gone off on the back of a donkey. I suppose it planted a seed somewhere in my mind. I remember saying if I ever get a bit of land, I’m going to get a cow. Which I did, until she went feral. I was the youngest. My mother was in her 40s when she had me. I was…

RACHEL PARRIS Trump and Johnson are gone, but the joke’s still on us The host of Late Night Mash considers whether the end of Johnson’s tenure is good or bad for satirists “What are you gonna make jokes about now Trump and Johnson have gone?” This is a question that I’ve been asked a lot in the last few weeks; and I have taken to giving the reply “your mum” while I think about the real answer. The answer is of course – everything and everyone else. We’re fine. There is still plenty to mock among the folks in Westminster, from Thatcher cosplayer Liz Truss, to plucky millionaire underdog Rishi Sunak, to ex-Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, a woman who would consider Magic Mike XXL a show for the metropolitan elite…