Innholdsfortegnelse for 11/7/2022 i The Big Issue

For 31 years I have been going on about how coping with emergencies was not enough and that we have to try and prevent poverty and need. Of late I have been going on about getting the government to test its safety nets, and to spend its way out of the inflationary crisis. Borrow more money to get us out of the abysmal reality that millions cannot afford to eat, pay rent and heat themselves. The new administration that Rishi Sunak has brought in is looking carefully at balancing the books. In other words, we are going to be ‘Osborned’ again; taken back to the early days of the coalition of 2010, when the poorest and least able to absorb austerity were given the rough job of paying for the…

The glitter Just Be Nice images come in four versions. There are 80 of each and they cost £60. Size 300mm x 210mm. The world map version seen on this week’s cover is a limited run of 250 prints, costing £125. Size 625mm x 550mm. To buy, visit realhackneydave.com The works seen in this supplement will be on show in a new gallery space in Hackney Wick, London and then on sale to raise money for The Big Issue. For details, visit bigissue.com or follow @realhackneydave on Instagram…

REVIEWS McCarthy duo offer insight but fall short on plot Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, published in 2006, might’ve been a fitting final novel – universally praised, winning the Pulitzer, a lauded movie adaptation. But McCarthy has never been one to confirm people’s expectations so now, 16 years later at the age of 89, he’s published two interconnected novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris. The Passenger is the more conventional of the pair, with Stella Maris acting as an oblique coda. The Passenger has the superficial trappings of a thriller in the vein of McCarthy’s extraordinary No Country for Old Men. The strapline on the cover reads: “A sunken jet. Nine passengers. A missing body.” But this is a piece of not-so-subtle misdirection, and anyone looking for the propulsive narrative of…

INTERVIEW Michael Morpurgo War Horse by Michael Morpurgo is a modern classic, highlighting the horror and futility of war and is a staple of classrooms across the country. But the book had inauspicious beginnings, selling only a few hundred copies when it was published in 1982. A stage adaptation by the National Theatre and a blockbuster film adaptation by Steven Spielberg changed that and as the timeless tale turns 40, Morpurgo, 79, talks about celebrating its anniversary in a world where conflict in Europe has returned. THE BIG ISSUE: Does it feel like 40 years? MICHAEL MORPURGO: Just at the moment, if I’m being honest with you. The sadness all around us is very wearing on older people. We all lived through a time of great sadness after the…

POLITICS Why Michael Gove was the one cabinet member some were pleased to see return Michael Gove is back as Housing Secretary just 111 days after Boris Johnson sacked him. Rishi Sunak’s decision to bring Gove back to the role he left in July means he is the fourth appointment in the 13 months since Robert Jenrick was sacked in September 2021. Sunak’s Cabinet reshuffle has proven controversial, particularly his decision to being back Home Secretary Suella Braverman, but Gove’s re-appointment received a more positive response from housing campaigners. Gove won plaudits among renters and people caught in the building safety crisis for getting things done while in office. The Tory minister worked to improve social housing, introduced the Renters’ Reform Bill in June and managed to squeeze billions out…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue RE: LANDLORD’S LETTER [Issue 1536, October 24] In the last issue you published a letter from a landlord who borrows money to buy houses to let. He asks “If it’s too difficult and unrewarding we (landlords) won’t bother doing it (buying to let). Then where would people live?” The answer is, obviously, in the same houses that buy-to-let landlords hoover up, taking them off the market for people hoping to buy for themselves. It’s not as if buy-to-let landlords are creating new homes that did not previously exist. He said, “I need to get some profit, otherwise there’s not much point in doing it.” The tenant pays the mortgage for the…

Since George Monbiot’s new book, Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet, was published earlier this year, food has become a dominant theme. An unprecedented drought destroyed crops across the UK this summer, the war in Ukraine has disrupted supply chains, and rampant inflation has left food unaffordable for millions. Regenesis outlines how to transform the current food system to provide nutrition for all at an affordable price without destroying the planet or exploiting human beings. It’s a radical proposal: do away with most conventional farming and hand vast tracts of land back to nature. It’s no surprise that Monbiot’s book has been deeply unpopular with the livestock industry as it details the damage farming does to the planet. Over three quarters of the world’s soy is fed to…

At 16 I was probably at my wildest, totally unruly. I was homeless at the time. Then I was in Borstal, then in and out of prison [he was jailed for three years when he was 17]. Totally out of control. All I cared about was partying and having a good time. Life at home just didn’t work for me anymore. I was off on a particular course of life. I preferred living that way to being under the restriction of a home life. And my parents couldn’t cope with someone who wasn’t conforming to any kind of normality as it was deemed at the time. I actually enjoyed school, the social aspect and girls and all that, but academically it never worked out well for me. I was never…

In Britain, we rely on supermarkets for everything: moral guidance, entertainment, free food, heating. We treat them like churches rather than somewhere to buy a bottle of Lenor. Ask anyone about Aldi or Lidl and they’ll get misty-eyed about their favourite products, wax lyrical about Kevin the Carrot, or go on for hours about how they once got an air fryer and a speedboat from the middle aisle for £19.99. Why do we hold them in such high regard? Could it be because Britain offers such a meagre selection of evening entertainment – mostly limited to drinking or McDonald’s – that a wander around Asda feels like a leisure pursuit? Or maybe it’s because they offer a sense of community and unite us, like Strictly or Bake Off. Or maybe…

CIPRIAN DUMITRU, 37 I’m happy with how things are going on my pitch at the moment. I came back to this pitch this year after eight years away and people still remembered me. They knew my face, they knew about my problems, everything. I had to stop selling the magazine in Leyburn because I needed a liver transplant. I got hepatitis in the last few years I was in Romania. When I came to England in 2012, I found out I had cirrhosis of the liver and the doctor said to me, “If you don’t have a liver transplant you are going to die.” I asked him, “How?” I felt better in myself at that time. I felt happy, I felt strong. He said in one year’s time, your health…

I really like I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! As an annual indulgence, it’s impossible to resist. I don’t put up much of a fight, in truth. But I bet my delight at its return is nothing compared to Conservative Party HQ’s. Matt Hancock’s involvement is an answer to so many of their prayers. The announcement that he was to join the show made him the immediate lightning rod for all fury, distrust and complete disenchantment with our party of government. Still reeling that Liz Truss tanked the economy? MATT HANCOCK WILL EAT KANGAROO PENIS! Can’t quite believe Suella Braverman is Home Secretary again days after being fired? LOOK, LOOK HANCOCK IS MAKING A MOCKERY OF POLITICS BY PLANNING TO GET IN A BOX COVERED IN FROGS AND…

REVIEW The days of miracle and wonder It looks like hanging out with Florence Pugh in real life would be tremendous fun. With her wicked sense of humour, fashion-forward style and fondness for an Aperol Spritz, she is able to enliven even the most contractually obliged round of promotional activity. What seems strange though, is how rarely Pugh gets to tap into that fizzing, devil-may-care energy on-screen – her Black Widow banter and slapdash home-cooking show on Instagram during lockdown aside. In films like Midsommar (excellent but scarring) and Don’t Worry Darling (gorgeous to look at but muddled), poor Pugh is constantly being terrorised, traumatised or gaslit. It also seems unlikely that the 26-year-old’s next two blockbusters – Christopher Nolan’s atomic biopic Oppenheimer and the sequel to Denis Villeneuve’s doomy,…

TOURING The first cut is the deepest “We were robbed last night,” raged a recent viral tweet by cult Lancaster band The Lovely Eggs, directed at the O2 Apollo venue in Manchester after they’d just supported US slacker-rock heroes Pavement there. “[They] took 30 per cent of our merch sales,” the lo-fi psychedelic punk duo’s angry post continued. “Also forced to sell T-shirts for £35. Found out last minute. Tried to fight it. But management wouldn’t listen. This shit will kill DIY bands like us. O2 Apollo you should be ashamed of yourself.” Like so many others at the more DIY end of the music industry, The Lovely Eggs have simply had enough of this kind of thing, and influential voices quickly piled in to back them up. “Screw all…

Dave Buonaguidi asked me to write a little something about kindness. It’s incredibly kind of him to even think of me as a kindness connoisseur! I think it’s probably because I was on BBC Radio 4 the other day asking the government to stop being mean and show more kindness when talking about the 800,000 hungry kids who are slipping through the net and not getting a free school meal. Don’t get me wrong, I do my best to be kind, but you can always do better, right? If you’ll allow me to be philosophical for two sentences, kindness shouldn’t be a competition, it shouldn’t be a transaction and it shouldn’t be seen as a badge of honour. I genuinely think it’s something beautiful, intimate and something that means you…