Innholdsfortegnelse for 3/6/2023 i The Big Issue

In the face of this emergency revolutionary thinking is required A stopping, a halting, a reflecting is required of us in a time of galloping events. According to the Levelling Up ministry, the latest figures for street homelessness show a 26 per cent increase in two years. So here is a government source admitting that their plans to get rid of street homelessness by 2024 are unlikely to be achieved. Covid and inflation continue to undermine the authority of government actions and intentions. Our social fabric is being eroded because of the pandemic’s bitter legacy, and inflation seems to make social planning a mere unpalatable irrelevance. We are being screwed by the Ukraine war which is making more people in the world poor because of inflation. Covid has decimated the…

NOW I WANT TO DISMANTLE THE STRUCTURES THAT TRAP WOMEN THERE If being a woman is hard, being a poor woman is even harder. Socioeconomic status (SES) is a measure of social and economic position based on income, occupation and education – in old money, your social class. And gender intersects with SES to create unique difficulties for women. Despite the myths of a classless society, there is a ‘glass breadline’ – an invisible barrier of social norms and preconceptions preventing social mobility, trapping people below it. It’s tough for anyone who finds themselves in this position, but being a woman makes you even more likely to get stuck there. It’s not just the material constraints of living in poverty that make it hard, it’s the emotional strain. I know…

London’s celebration of art from beyond the margins The Other Art Fair presents a series of beautiful, thought-provoking new works created by female refugee artists originally from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Titled Refugee Art Works (RAW), it’s curated in partnership with KarmaBank, a charity providing micro grants to help displaced artists fleeing war and other abuses to re-establish themselves. The artwork pictured is by Mariia Bezusa, a Ukrainian psychologist and artist with refugee status here in the UK. Mariia has become one of the de facto coordinators of KarmaBank, offering therapy workshops to fellow refugees and the public, despite facing her own challenges in rebuilding her life and avoiding homelessness when the Homes for Ukraine scheme ended. Refugee Art Works (RAW), March 9-12, The Truman Brewery, London;…

CULTURE INTERVIEW Jessica Barden is making a splash. The Big Issue arrives on set of new ITVX drama You & Me just as Barden – star of Channel 4’s Bafta-winning drama The End of the F***ing World and Netflix thriller Pieces Of Her – is repeatedly jumping into Brockwell Park Lido in South London with divers and camera operators all around her. You & Me, the debut drama from writer Jamie Davis which boasts Russell T Davies among the executive producers, is a modern coming-of-age story set in South London. Across three episodes, Barden and her co-stars Harry Lawtey, Sophia Brown and Lily Newmark navigate the complexities of love and loss and fate, with the always brilliant Julie Hesmondhalgh among the supporting cast. And the Lido is just one…

OUR VENDORS More people are getting a hand up from The Big Issue as the cost-of-living crisis bites In this age of uncertainty, one thing can be relied on. If someone is in urgent need of financial support, they can turn to The Big Issue. New figures confirm that we worked with 3,642 vendors last year. That amounts to a 10 per cent increase in the number of people selling the magazine, with 899 individuals signing up to sell for the first time, earning an income to support themselves and their families, while becoming less reliant on tax-funded benefits. Thanks to Big Issue readers like you, vendors were able to earn a staggering amount of money. Over 2.2 million magazines were sold last year – an amazing 34 per cent…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Walk this way I feel I need to point out an inaccurate headline exists on page 17 of Issue 1551 [February 20]. ‘On Wednesday February 1, hundreds of thousands of people walked out of their workplaces across Britain.’ Not true. The fact is they walked out on January 31. On Wednesday February 1, on strike, they stayed out, thus failing to walk in. Walkouts were a feature of industrial disputes during the last century when a workplace show of hands in favour of a strike literally meant the workforce left the site. Postal ballots for strike action put an end to that practice. John Laughton, Kent Stealth wealth In the article…

MY CULTURAL LIFE BRIDGETTE SIBLEY Waitrose, Southsea, Portsmouth I was so thankful for The Big Issue’s support during lockdowns. They got me jigsaws while I was off my pitch. That’s my hobby – it’s so therapeutic. It’s the only time I really relax – 1,000 pieces are just right. I can knock a jigsaw out in two days if it’s a weekend or I’m not selling The Big Issue. STEWART M&S, Dundee Cookbooks are actually one of my favourite things to read as I love cooking in my spare time. I like to watch war documentaries more than anything, I just love learning about the history. My favourite band is Iron Maiden and I’ve been listening to them since I was a kid. ANDRÉ ROSTANT Carnaby St, Soho, London Best…

REVIEWS Coming of age in Warhol’s surreal world The Factory, Andy Warhol’s studio in New York, was a home and inspiration to an eye-popping cadre of artists, musicians, freaks and misfits. It produced some extraordinary, revolutionary output (The Velvet Underground, Warhol’s own challenging pop art) and some that has not proved so memorable (almost everything else). Oh, to have attended a single one of its many libertine evenings. In Nothing Special, debut Irish novelist Nicole Flattery takes us there, after a fashion. It is 1966 and Mae is a 17-year-old who, escaping a turbulent home life, finds herself working in the famous studio, transcribing tapes of Warhol’s thoughts and interviews with hangers-on and protégés for a novel the great man is planning. She is drawn into the surreal world around…

Did you have a favourite Little Chef ? I don’t know if there are any left now. I think they have become coffee outlets or adult superstores for the covert admirer of hardcore pornography and vibrating eggs. When my friend Lyndsey and I used to travel to Latitude festival, we were great admirers of the Little Chef in Essex that had a Happy Eater weathervane – a sign of hostile takeover with a lollipop for finishing the deal? My mum’s favourite Little Chef was on the Tiverton bypass. I’m not sure why she appreciated the omelettes so much or whether it was the joy of knowing we were nearly on our summer holiday. We never got closer to Tiverton than the bypass, but today I cross the boundary to visit…

How much does what you like inform who you are? How much have the things you like shifted you as you shift with them? We all carry significant cultural moments that transport. They can be hugely personal or wildly in communion with others. The theme tune to Lovejoy, and the past comforts that evokes; the bit in Radiohead’s Let Down when the tone changes and the thing swoops and that which was dark is flooded with light and everything is suddenly, immeasurably, better; an image of Eric Cantona, leonine, collar up, chest out towards the Stretford End; a line in a poem that for reasons you can’t explain, or don’t want to, fires you up; John Coltrane! When you start thinking about it, many will come. And with them the…

“Restoring furniture is kind of like restoring yourself,” Jay Blades – the face of the BBC’s wholesome and beloved The Repair Shop – tells The Big Issue. The other person with us wholeheartedly agrees. After all, Steve Wyatt is the living embodiment of it. Wyatt, 45, used to sell The Big Issue at Pero’s Bridge in Bristol for three years as he battled to overcome his drug addiction. After turning his life around to become a successful furniture restorer, he and Blades will open a new shop together in Poole, Dorset, next week – the latest step on a remarkable road to redemption. So what brought these two men from seemingly different worlds together? The love of restoring scuffed stools, chipped chairs and tatty tables back to former glories, of…

By the time I was 16 I was well into my big school education; I’d been very happy as a Winchester Cathedral chorister until I was 12. I loved living in that intensively musical world in a massive cathedral – it was an absolute dream. I mean, at the age of eight, to be put through a voice trial, and to find that the organist of Winchester Cathedral decided I was good enough to be in the choir, that was a magical moment. Afterwards my mum and dad drove me into Winchester and said, you can have anything. I chose a pale blue Dinky Toys car transporter. It was a very brilliant day and I was very happy there. But that musical world was all over when I hit 12.…

ANALYSIS Making a killing from Disney icons If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise… especially if you bump into Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. The depressive bear and his perky sidekick – originally created by author AA Milne and illustrator EH Shepard in 1927 and further popularised by animated Disney adaptations since 1961 – have undergone a gruesome makeover. In the thrifty new horror movie Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, the beloved duo have been reimagined as terrifying serial killers with slightly wonky masks. They work out their abandonment issues in various wince-inducing ways when a grown-up Christopher Robin belatedly returns to Hundred Acre Wood with his stressed wife and some other imminent victims in tow. The idea of a hulking, mute…

CLASSICAL Is Cate Blanchett’s Lydia Tár based on a real person? Lydia Tár is giving the Berlin Philharmonic a briefing on Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Her baton whips the air; the ensemble closely follows. The rehearsal gives an insider view on the internationally acclaimed – notorious, even – US conductor, whose accolades include Oscar, Tony, and Grammy awards. Scenes filmed in Tár’s industrial-chic Berlin apartment reveal intimate portraits of turbulent family life with her wife, Berlin Philharmonic’s concertmaster Sharon Goodnow and their young daughter. The detail in the documentary is exquisitely captured, from the rogue metronome in the music room to the footage of Tár running into the night and the ominous signs of abuse. Throughout the near three-hour film, spidey-senses tingle; we brood; all is not as it seems. Turns…