Innholdsfortegnelse for 1/23/2023 i The Big Issue

THIS WEEK JOHN WILL BE Watching: University Challenge backlog Reading: The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Metropolitan Elite by Michael Lind Listening: Francis Poulenc’s Piano Concertos Doing: Building our All-Party Parliamentary Group for Business Responses to a Social Crisis I know where I was on September 19, 1965. I was 19, it was a Sunday and I was newly married and living with my wife in Edinburgh. On that day I went with her to the Botanic Gardens on the edge of the city, to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Now a colossal construction with hundreds of works and a vast building, it was then a small building among trees and grasses. I know I went there that day because I got the catalogue for an…

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY Every October, Peter Lantos receives a letter from Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp he was sent to as a child in 1944. “It’s a letter wishing me all the best on my birthday,” he says. Lantos considers it a sign of acceptance, reconciliation and friendship. “They are, in a way, saying we are delighted that you survived. It’s a nice gesture.” Peter Lantos was born in 1939 in the town of Makó in Hungary. His family owned a timber yard and his earliest memories are idolising his older brother Gyuri and playing with his cousin Zsuzsi among the logs and planks. Hungary was a Nazi ally until Germany invaded in March 1944, concerned that Soviet advances would cause the country to switch sides. The occupiers forced the Jewish…

REVIEWS Trying to find a bit of self-love, actually By now you could fill a shelf with all the books detailing the problems with straight relationships. It was therefore a much-needed breath of fresh air to read Monica Heisey’s Really Good, Actually. A hilarious novel which, apart from a few jibes about the failure of the ‘heterosexual experiment’, is more concerned with the relationship we have with ourselves than detailing toxic masculinity and the atrocities of men. Maggie is spiralling. She’s 28, about to become a divorcee, and her friends are either eternally single or heading down the matrimonial path she has already failed at. Despite her marital status putting her at odds with her peers, Maggie is incredibly relatable. She gets her validation from the resoundingly favourable responses to…

I bumped into Slash in a room full of swords and close to a hobbit’s feet. This is not a dream, though it is very similar to the plotting of many of my night terrors. This is what happened in Wellington, New Zealand. The night of our show about black holes clashed with Guns N’ Roses playing the local stadium. The streets were filled with the middle-aged out for a good time and possibly a slipped disc in the mosh pit. Pupils were dilated long before the support band hit their first note. That afternoon, Brian Cox and I had been invited to Wētā Workshop, the remarkably inventive special effects creators whose career started when Peter Jackson made films where walruses copiously vomited (if you haven’t seen Meet the Feebles…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Housing harumph As a happy social housing tenant, I was appalled by the letter from Catherine Bailey [Issue 1543, December 12], who had decided what is best for social housing tenants/citizens. And, of course, to meet the needs of people young and old we need to build more social housing. Yet the Tories have deliberately prioritised private renting over social housing, and even voted down a proposal for all homes to be fit for human habitation, and private rents are often exorbitant. There is also a weaker security of tenure. To aid Ms Bailey’s political education, some of us actually prefer social housing, as we pay for repairs collectively and have…

UK The Department for Health and Social Care has been allocated a budget of £180.2 billion for 2022/23. Of this, £152.6bn will be spent on the NHS. This is down from the £157.9bn spent on the NHS in 2021/2022, and the £156bn in 2020/2021, when there was the small matter of a raging pandemic to contend with. This spending represents around 45 per cent of overall government outlay on goods and services in the UK. Per person, the UK spends £3,536 on healthcare. USA Despite the reputation of healthcare in the US being poor and heavily privatised, the country shells out quite a lot of money on it. The US government spends $10,921 per person on healthcare, which equates to £8,951 – three times as much as the UK, despite…

I was a not incredibly confident 16-year-old, partly because school life was quite challenging. I’m dyslexic and in school in the ’80s, if you had dyslexia you were considered thick. The only support I got was being allowed to go into the art room and play with clay, which was brilliant. I loved pottery to the point where I used to bunk off school and go down to the V&A museum in London and spend hours there on my own, looking at pots and drawing pottery in the amazing ceramics department. I’d often fall asleep on a bench and a security guard would have to chuck me out at the end of the day. I was in there all the time. I loved it. My love of pottery started in…

APPRECIATION Celebrating the big energy of Gerard Butler This week sees the UK release of Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, a knotty coming-of-age story in which cinema’s greatest showman gives us a peek behind the curtain. After decades of making blockbuster thrill rides and compelling dramas that connect emotionally with mass audiences, the multiple Oscar-winner has mined his fraught upbringing and first faltering film-making steps to craft a bittersweet monument to… and please imagine a masterful John Williams orchestral swell here… the magic of the movies. This week also sees the UK release of Gerard Butler’s Plane, an unsubtle action thriller in which the fist-flying Scotsman stars as an airline pilot determined to protect his civilian passengers after crashing on to a militia-controlled island in the Philippines. After a long career…

Nick Cave said something interesting last week. That’s not uncommon. He’s no slouch. On this occasion, he was reacting to a question from a fan. Cave does this a lot on the Red Hand Files, his online repository where he answers any number and range of enquiries from devotees. This one was about artificial intelligence. There is an open access AI bot, ChatGPT, that some people have been playing with to see if it can create as well as a human. Mark, from Christchurch in New Zealand, fired in a load of Cave’s lyrics, got a resulting set of lyrics and sent them to Cave asking for his reaction. “The apocalypse is well on its way,” said Nick. “This song sucks.” Nick Cave’s problem with it all is twofold. One,…

KSI is easy to define but impossible to categorise. Knowledge. Strength. Integrity. Olajide Olatunji – or JJ – was 15 when he registered an account on YouTube and started uploading videos of himself playing video games, using three letters as his online alter ego. This kickstarted a career that has turned KSI, now 29, into an all-conquering multimedia mogul. He has tens of millions of followers across social media. He’s a rapper who can sell out arenas, a boxer who can sell out those same arenas. He’s the head of a business empire that encompasses restaurants and impossible-to-source soft drinks. KSI is an influencer with real influence but his staggering popularity can be hard to keep up with, especially if you’re over the age of 30. So who is KSI?…

Paul Dano is one of the great character actors of our time. From his breakout role as Dwayne the elective mute teenager and wannabe pilot in Little Miss Sunshine to fiery preacher Eli (and his identical twin Paul) in There Will Be Blood, awkward Pierre Bezukhov in BBC One’s War and Peace and brutal John Tibeats in 12 Years a Slave, the breadth and depth of the collected oddballs, psychopaths and misfits he has played is impressive. Each fully rounded, fully developed – and fully inhabited by the actor. Then came The Batman, last year’s box-office saviour (alongside Top Gun: Maverick). Dano, for so long an indie darling, stepped into the blockbuster spotlight in style as The Riddler, a psychopathic loner influencer. Now, Dano begins 2023 in another huge film…

John McNaught is a versatile and prolific artist working in Glasgow visual arts charity and gallery Project Ability’s Aspire workshops. A new solo exhibition covers every angle of his extensive and diverse painting practice. In 2006, John suffered a massive stroke which has inhibited his speech and movement. He has been attending Project Ability since 2010, igniting his passion for painting and building his confidence with his practice. John has a wonderful intuitive response to colour, shape and composition that breathes life and emotion into his work. His eclectic paintings of landscape and portraiture have been exhibited nationally and internationally. All work in the exhibition, including this untitled oil on board painting, is for sale, with prices ranging from £45 to £85. Project Ability Gallery, Glasgow, until February 18; project-ability.co.uk…

INTERVIEW Joe Cornish Joe Cornish has “never knowingly” seen a ghost. But, he says, you never really know. “When you leave the room, I might say, ‘I just spoke to Laura Kelly today,’ and they might say… ‘but Laura died last week.’” A willingness to find the spooky in the everyday bodes well for Cornish’s latest project. As showrunner for the big-budget Netflix adaptation of Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co books, he’s been fully immersed in a world plagued by ghosts that can kill you with one touch. As is so frequently the case in Cornish’s imaginative landscapes, our only hope is the heroism and competency of young people. His directorial debut, Attack the Block, had a gang of youths, led by John Boyega, face down an alien invasion.…

WILL PAYNE, 58 I’m lucky, I have an absolutely amazing pitch. St Werburgh’s is gorgeous. Some communities are fragmented [but] here it’s very together. A lot of people are quite affluent, but they’re also very nice, very giving as well. I’m charming to everybody. Whether they buy or not, I’m always the same. I’m a chataholic. I chat away all day. I know everyone’s dogs and all their kids and it’s great. I’m a passionate environmentalist. I’m one of the original members of Reclaim the Streets [which campaigns for community ownership of public spaces]. So being outside Better Food suits my ethos as well because they’re very ethical. I’m a vegan and they do a lot of vegan food and the staff are incredible, like a family. I’ve sold The…