Innholdsfortegnelse for 3/20/2023 i The Big Issue

Why ideas of ending poverty are stuck in the realm of fantasy Fantasy took me over last week when I spoke at a conference on future generations. Of late I had been dipping into the Victorian socialist William Morris’s book News from Nowhere. He imagines himself in the waning days of the 19th century falling asleep after a heavy debate at the Socialist Club and waking in the morning to find all the world’s troubles had been shrugged off. Gone was the increasing despoliation of man and nature by industry. Now London was a melting pot of handcraft workers and the woods of old had grown back into the heart of London itself, nature and man’s harmony with it restored. What a fantasy – and I borrowed a bit of…

HOW AI SEES HOMELESSNESS You probably have an image forming in your head already and it’s unlikely to be a kind one. It’s probably a lot like the one we have here. That was generated by Midjourney, a free generative AI that turns text into images. Give it a prompt and it will draw you a picture. You can ask for anything, Rishi Sunak doing the can-can around his California holiday home in the style of Salvador Dali, and it will return four images to choose from. They’re not perfect but neither is the technology. The image is Midjourney’s answer to that question. AI will only ever be as good as the data set it is trained on. These data sets are increasingly enormous but, while we can marvel at…

Autism advocate and editor-in-chief of Frank magazine Melanie Sykes has joined Big Issue vendor Kelvin Gregory on his regular pitch near Somerset House in Central London. Persevering as the rain gets heavier, Sykes finally makes a sale. “It’s interesting, actually,” she says. “People’s reactions to you even saying hello. People are very ‘head down’, aren’t they?” It’s all smiles as a sodden Sykes finishes her selling shift, and thanks Gregory for his support. “I sold four, which sounds really lame. But it’s not easy.” And she has a message to impart. “Don’t just walk past vendors. Please just pick up this magazine. It’s about spreading the word and getting people to engage with some proper literature about real issues.” It’s an LBC vs BBC sell-off as we roll into the…

“In the past I was a homeless alcoholic, addicted to amphetamines and living in a paranoid nightmare on the streets of London,” says Kellett. “After a short spell in prison, I was on a psychiatric ward where I was medicated and able to engage in therapy and art therapy. “I discovered that drawing pictures could be a personal and expressive way to come to terms with a chaotic background. In Prison Under Moon, I have used pens to try to describe how intimidating prisons and hospitals can seem when you are paranoid. I am still in therapy but able to live independently and attend art classes in the community. “I want my drawings to show that art can be for anyone.” outsidein.org.uk The work on this page is created by…

CULTURE INTERVIEW Sian Brooke It’s almost 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed, ushering in an era of peace in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Assembly was established, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) became the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), paramilitaries decommissioned thousands of weapons. But as we hit that anniversary, the promised sunlit uplands are still distant for some communities. The shadow of the Troubles is long, and many of the old power structures remain in place. Against this contemporary backdrop, the BBC’s new drama, Blue Lights, followsrookie PSNI officers in Belfast, a city where they still face unique challenges – and danger. Like many who aren’t from Northern Ireland, Blue Lights star Sian Brooke says she didn’t really understand the complexities of the…

Grim days in Westminster. The Illegal Migration Bill is arguably the most extreme and draconian piece of legislation the Conservatives have passed since they entered government in 2010. It does not tighten up the criteria for asylum seekers arriving in the UK. It completely closes down the asylum system. It doesn’t matter if they have been sold into sexual slavery, or been tortured, or escaped war. It doesn’t matter if they’re an Afghan who helped British forces before the Taliban takeover, or if they’re a woman fleeing persecution from Iran. Indeed, no one in Britain will ever hear what happened to them, because there will be no process to assess their asylum claim. They will simply be imprisoned in a vast new detention estate. And then the Home Secretary will…

“The Big Issue is a street newspaper and social enterprise that was first founded in the United Kingdom in 1991.” You probably knew this already. So did ChatGPT when asked: “What is The Big Issue?” The artificial intelligence adds: “Overall, The Big Issue aims to create opportunities for people experiencing homelessness and poverty, and to raise awareness of the issues affecting vulnerable individuals.” Spot on. Our Wikipedia page couldn’t have put it better. Adept and adaptable language models like ChatGPT have come on in leaps and bounds in recent months. The programmes consume information they are fed and, via a complex algorithm, regurgitate an answer drawing on online information. The AI essentially guesses each most appropriate next word in a sequence. That is why it is emerging as such a…

Big Issue sellers were guests of honour at a reception held at the House of Lords as part of National Vendor Week 2023. Vendors past and present gathered to share stories of inspiration. Among the attendees was recent cover star Steve Wyatt, who launched a successful furniture restoration business after hanging up his tabard and is opening a new shop with Repair Shop star Jay Blades. He explained that selling the magazine was the turning point in a journey that started with adoption and feelings of rejection, through addiction and into being a successful businessman. “It kept me out of more trouble than I was in and restored my faith in people who showed me kindness and gave me purpose,” Wyatt said. Matt Blackman has a similar story, living a…

MONEY WORRIES Reduced interest in things you know you enjoy If you’re feeling less enthusiasm for the interests and activities which were previously important parts of your life, and the feelings persist for weeks or months, that can be an indicator that something isn’t right. It doesn’t have to be a sudden, dramatic aversion to your interests – you might find that you just don’t connect with the excitement you know you once felt. Changes in appetite Maybe you find that eating regular meals has dropped down your priority list and it’s a chore to eat when you know you should. Or maybe your previously sufficient appetite has increased, and you find yourself inclined to eat more at times when you feel down. These symptoms are extremely common, and support…

REVIEWS Unearthed teenage secrets and inconvenient truths The dead or missing girl theme has truly been wrung out for all it’s worth. From shows like True Detective and novels like Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides, there is a morbid cultural fascination that focuses on the deaths of young white women, using their bodies as a narrative structure. Dizz Tate’s Brutes may begin with the panic over Sammy the missing preacher’s daughter, but the world of Tate’s debut novel blossoms around this cliched trope – opening up a kaleidoscopic image of overlapping teen girlhoods. In the recollections of suburban Florida, the reader enters a world imbued with small-town mysticism and the quickly fading naivety of young minds. Through the eyes of a gang of misfit girls and their singular male friend…

When I was 24 and working on a glossy magazine, I decided I wanted to see what went on behind the scenes at my favourite television programme, Match of the Day. So I called up the BBC press office and asked if I could spend a Saturday hanging about the studio. They said I could. It all seems like a dream now. Like some sort of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-type fantasy where the snot-nosed urchin is handed a golden ticket to explore his own personal Xanadu. But it really happened. The magazine I worked for wasn’t even that popular but, I suppose, nobody else ever had the naive chutzpah to just call up and invite themselves in for a poke around the nation’s flagship football show before. Journalism seemed…

OPINION It used to be standard. Certain broadcasts for TV shows would be available everywhere, except for viewers in Scotland and Northern Ireland. REAL TV wasn’t for uppity Celts! People up in the extremities didn’t need such programmes, and instead were fed local fare. Armando Iannucci created a brilliant sketch about this called Except For Viewers in Scotland. In it, he went to heaven, a multichannel paradise, where things that had been broadcast elsewhere to everyone except for viewers in Scotland could now be watched, like the first-ever live interview with an alien that had been replaced in Scotland by a Paul Coia quiz show about hills. Something similar is happening now, except for voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland. But this time they’re the ones holding the remotes. Two…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Thank you card First of all thank you for Big Issue Invest sending me a card saying thank you for support for 20 years, I really appreciated it! It’s great what you do for people and better the things they do for themselves, I’ve always loved the concept from your start point. I love the magazine, especially when it fully gives most sides of politics. I understand the natural left-wing leaning, but am also heartened to read letters and the occasional article from people with other non-left-wing views! Please keep that balance going forward; recently I do struggle with some of Paul’s editorials, but John’s comments always make sense to me.…

Verse 1: Listen up, I got a story to tell About a magazine that’s doing well It’s called The Big Issue, you may have heard It’s a street paper that’s spreading the word Started in the UK back in ‘91 By a guy named John Bird, he’s the one He saw the homeless selling papers in the street And thought, “Why not give them a job, it’d be neat” Chorus: The Big Issue, it’s more than a magazine It’s a way to help the homeless, a way to intervene It’s a chance for them to earn a bit of cash And get back on their feet, to break their impasse Verse 2: So now there’s vendors all around Selling the magazine, standing their ground They buy the issues for half…

The end of my school life was an absolute joy full of laughter. I sometimes wish I could laugh like that now. Every day at school was an absolute gas. I had six or seven really close friends. And whether it was playing football, sitting around giggling or listening to music – we were big into Heaven 17 and lots of exciting new electronic music – life was fun. They were good days. But I had no sense of the future. I was too busy living for the moment. So I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. Maybe a football goalkeeper? That would have been nice. I was working in a wine bar in Birmingham. I worked in the kitchen and my brother was…

SECOND-HAND VINYL For the record, charity shops tell the story of our musical journey I recall parental horror at my spending £7.99 on The Story of the Clash Vol 1 in 1988, so I dread to think what they’d make of Mr Morale & The Big Steppers [by Kendrick Lamar]. Today a new LP, admittedly often pressed in beautiful, heavyweight vinyl, is likely to set you back anywhere between £15 and £50. Charity shops and record fairs remain happier hunting grounds for more frugal delights, but rarity and condition cost. The thing I discovered while researching Into the Groove, my book about the story of recorded sound, is that the ten-a-penny fodder that flood our charity shop shelves have a value that is harder to quantify. In the midst of…

NARCISA I have been selling The Big Issue since 2018. I didn’t have a job and was finding it really difficult to find one. I have two little kids – they were just babies then – and I’m a single mum. I needed to be able to support us and look after them. I was living with my parents at the time and needed a way to get a home for me and my kids. I didn’t know what I was going to do so realising that selling The Big Issue was an option for me was a big relief. It was really helpful. I was born in Romania but came to the UK with my parents when I was young and both places feel like home to me. I…