Innholdsfortegnelse for 10/31/2022 i The Big Issue

THIS WEEK JOHN WILL BE Reading: My Early Life by Winston Churchill Listening:Collection of Portuguese fado music Watching: The 39 Steps, the 1935 film with Robert Donat Doing: Building a social safety net alliance in the UK A day in the life of an observer: I was walking to my station as I do most nights I’m in London. The shops were packed, and a general bonhomie was much in evidence. I used the toilet in a crowded pub and cut my way through the loud talking and carried on my walking. I could not see or hear of any evidence that a new prime minister had been elected. All I saw was bulging bags of clothing bought in expensive shops, people queueing up to get into restaurants. Something, though,…

The UK’s state of flux and confusion has been a constant for months. In that time there have been measures that have helped the population who find themselves in a fearful financial cost-of-living crisis. As winter approaches, more will need to be done for them. We hope Rishi Sunak takes the right steps in the autumn statement, rather than some of the mooted public spending cuts. At Big Issue we also believe in taking measures to prevent us falling back into the deep holes we’re in now. We have a responsibility to build from now for the next generations. As the newest resident takes over No 10, and the budget is readied, we’re launching our call to look to tomorrow. Our Big Futures call is a request for essential movement…

At 16 I was probably spending most of my time sitting listening to David Bowie with my friend Stuart. I was quite a late developer. I wasn’t a bit sophisticated, not interested in boys or anything like that whatsoever. I’ve never been that interested in boys actually, I’ve never gone through that stage. Me and my friend Janice went to discos on a Friday – I mean, your dad came to pick you up at 10 o’clock, it wasn’t exactly a rave. But I remember getting annoyed when boys asked us to dance, because we were having too much fun together. I was more interested in music, having fun with my friends, and reading. My mum and dad always had books in the house, we were surrounded by books. My…

EXHIBITION It’s a kind of magic How May’s interest in stereoscopic photography developed It was when I was eating my Weetabix. In the old days you used to get a toy in a cereal packet and for a long time in Weetabix you would get a little card with two pictures that looked the same. I thought, what’s all this about? You had to send away one and sixpence and a packet top to get a viewer. I’ll never forget… the first one I had was a couple of hippos in the water with their mouths open. It was OK as two flat pictures, but when I got the viewer in the post I was truly gobsmacked. Suddenly I was looking into the mouth of this creature, and you could…

CLASSICAL Timing is everything Train delays, work issues – life – had made a group of now-disgruntled people late for Ludovico Einaudi’s performance at the Royal Albert Hall. During the Proms – held at the same London venue – latecomers are only permitted entry in between pieces, which potentially means missing most of the first half. Good job that this wasn’t like that. Except, it was: a solo piano show at a 5,272-seater venue needs a silent audience (even when the piano is significantly amplified) and so, along with a dozen others outside Door Six, I tried not to be cross at those coming and going freely from their boxes and instead watched the grainy relay footage on screen. As the pianist’s simple and mesmeric melodies wafted over us, the…

POLITICS We’re trying to run the country here! Civil servants say government chaos means they can’t do their jobs properly The government merry-go-round is causing chaos for civil servants trying to deliver policies, the leader of the civil service union has told The Big Issue. The Treasury has had four chancellors in four months, while in that time three different Home Secretaries have steered Britain’s security and immigration and we’ve had the shortest-serving prime minister ever. “The lack of continuity and chaos is certainly disrupting the running of the government,” said general secretary Mark Serwotka, representing 150,000 civil servants who are members of the PCS union. “When incompetent politicians flail around changing policies on the hoof, failing to deliver, it’s our members who take the flak on the frontline.” A…

Seeing someone murdered changes you as a person. Nothing ever feels light again. I’d seen death before. I was at my father’s side as he took his last breath, comfortable in his bed surrounded by his family, surrounded by love. It was a gentle passing. I was beside 29-year-old Lyra McKee when she was shot dead by a dissident republican gunman in Northern Ireland. She was a bright, vibrant young journalist on the cusp of a brilliant life. She deserved to die an old woman, comfortable in her bed after a life well lived, not on a cold street in Creggan in the city of Derry, felled by a bullet fired by a hate-filled terrorist, far from the family who loved her. Three years have passed since the young journalist…

Prints by over 150 photographers including David Sims, David Bailey, Inez & Vinoodh, Anders Edström, Casper Sejersen, Venetia Scott and more are available to purchase now, with all profits going to War Child UK. Curated by Dust Off, who use photography to raise awareness and proceeds for humanitarian causes, it’s a rare opportunity to acquire collectable pieces from top photographers for just £125, in support of a non-profit organisation that stands up for children living through conflict across the world, from Afghanistan to Ukraine. The sale runs until November 30. The photograph pictured, titled Edinburgh (1986), is by New York-based Scottish photographer Graham MacIndoe. Best known for powerful self-portraits of his battle with heroin addiction, and a long association with US indie-rock band The National, MacIndoe’s documentary and portrait photography…

INTERVIEW Antoine de Caunes Ah, the 1990s. Life was simple. No internet or mobile phones. Three prime ministers for the whole decade rather than three in three months. And Friday nights peaked with Eurotrash, watched by folk returning sozzled from the pub or by schoolkids in secret, without their parents finding out. Life in all its freakish and fascinating forms was there. S&M restaurants, pubic hairdressers, ballooning bosoms, nude golf, nude cleaners, nude a lot of things. Guiding hapless viewers through this kaleidoscopic world of kink and chaos was Antoine de Caunes. In Britain he’s known as our cheeky French chum, in his home country de Caunes is like Stephen Fry – an intellectual wit who’s presented the César Awards (the French Oscars) a record 10 times and interviews…

EUZEFINA TATARU, 46 Lately things have been quite steady at the pitch where I sell. The local community know me very well and I like the fact that they want to get to know me more, they’re curious about me as a person, and they speak very kindly to me. If I am happy or sad they come up to me and chat to me. They’ve told me: “You’re an extraordinary person, you’ve been here for so many years, you’re a good seller, polite, respectful, without trying to force people to buy the magazine.” I like to believe that the people in the community appreciate me, and they help me. I have a very good relationship with my clients. There have been moments when I’ve struggled, and they’ve even offered…

Years ago I was a music journalist. I was on the news desk of the NME for quite some time. In those days we got a lot of unsolicited calls and tips. They were a mixed bag, but now and again proved useful. Eminem’s mum rang me one evening. That was an eventful few hours. Every week, for a year or two, mostly on a Friday, I’d get a call from Peter Tatchell. Around that time, over 20 years ago, he was still speaking for Outrage! and attempting citizen’s arrests on Robert Mugabe. He didn’t always have anything new, and I didn’t always give him my undivided attention. Neither did he always make sound arguments. But he was dogged. LGBTQ+ rights were still hard won a generation ago. He’d been…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue The underlying problem Those who identify as journalists within the mainstream media are jubilant at yet another prime ministerial resignation. All their Christmases have come at once. Satirists are having a field day. Yet there are many important issues not being addressed. The prime minister may well be the mantlepiece of our political system, but the fires of fame and fortune rage on. The former prime minister of the United Kingdom, Mary Elizabeth Truss, was accused of crashing the economy, but we do insist upon living with an economic system which depends a lot on investor nervousness. Ms Truss wasn’t responsible for high inflation, as she wasn’t responsible for vast increases…

Were you a reluctant screenwriter? I’m one of these awful people, the equivalent of the ones that come up to me to say, I’ve got a great idea for a novel. So I had a great idea for a film, an Ikiru remake set in post-war Britain with Bill Nighy in it. That’s what I said to [producer] Stephen Woolley. I was only reluctant in the sense that I really believed in this film and thought if it was made well, it could be superb. So I thought he should get a professional screenwriter. And I’m a novelist. This feels like a film that will stay with viewers? When I saw Ikiru, I was a child. And it stayed with me all the way through my growing up. It’s crude…

REVIEWS Sound and visionary thinking As a successful music producer (Prince, David Byrne) turned cognitive neurologist, Susan Rogers is unusually well qualified to investigate the mysterious, drug-like impact music has on the physical body and the emotional mind. But it is a bold soul who promises to “explain why you fall in love with music”, as she does in her new book, This is What it Sounds Like. There is a long history of songwriters/philosophers/scientists/mathematicians trying and failing to explain how a simple key change or set of harmonies can summon, like a wizard’s spell, an instant rush of euphoria or a gut-punch of grief. As the great 19th-century novelist Victor Hugo asserted, “music expresses that which cannot be said”. The American musician/actor Martin Mull put it nicely in his…

As if by magic, I am at the other end of the world. In London, I get into a capsule and watch Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, I briefly change capsules and watch Curb Your Enthusiasm and with little sense of movement, save for some fairground ride turbulence, I am in Sydney. To travel so far should seem more seismic. It is only when you see pigeons with mohicans or the beautiful trunks of trees that ripple like splendid bark candles that you know you are not home anymore. It is a frightful and necessary reminder that this is a small and unusual planet, rippling with life that has many haircuts, beaks and struggles. I am on the penultimate leg of the Horizons tour with Brian Cox (Professor, not Succession).…