Innholdsfortegnelse for 4/17/2023 i The Big Issue

At the end of last month, government figures revealed that UK aid to both Afghanistan and Pakistan is to be cut by 53 per cent, from £304.4 million to £141.9m, alongside major cuts to all regions, including East Africa which is in the midst of a four-year major drought. These decisions made by the government in the comfort of Whitehall directly impact people in regions facing humanitarian crises caused by conflict, poverty and climate change. In contrast, approximately £3.7 billion of the UK aid budget was spent by the Home Office in 2022 for housing asylum seekers in emergency hotels and accommodation while they await their asylum decisions. The increase in the backlog of asylum decisions, combined with a court ruling that the Home Office could not cease providing accommodation…

REVIEWS Unwinding the rage of a teenage boy in trouble Max Porter, writer-cum-saint of the experimental novella, has crafted a spectacular fourth novel, Shy. The narrative constellates around an evening in the life of Shy, a white British teen, deposited at Last Chance, a home for young men deemed too disturbed for society. Picture a ’90s kid stomping through the night, jungle music blaring on his Walkman, his pasty face ecstatic with syncopation. For Shy, music is a consolation amid the noise and haste, an escape from the muchness of a world beset by triggers. Shy’s chaotic brainscape is presented via a typical Max Porter polyphony, the acrobatic prose nosediving off the page. His rage comes like clockwork. Constantly kicking off, he trashes rooms and personal relationships – royally titting…

MEMOIR Eddie Piller’s electrifying trip back to mod’s second wave About halfway through his new memoir, Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances, Eddie Piller recalls a report card he received from his headmaster at age 13. “If he continues like this, I fear Edward will waste his not inconsiderable talents…” it reads. “Edward is at a crossroads, and at this rate I can see him becoming either Head Boy or being expelled.” Although he predictably didn’t choose the former path, instead zeroing in on what he calls “the important things in life: clothes, music, fanzines and scooters”, Piller’s not inconsiderable talents directed his life in what would be a far more entertaining direction. Since that foreboding prediction, Eddie Piller has accumulated many hats. He is a DJ, music producer, fashion designer,…

NEIL STOUT, 59 I started selling The Big Issue in Tavistock about five years ago and the people here are really nice, very kind and very supportive. That’s my only kind of hook in society at the moment, I’ve kind of been displaced from everything else. The only people who actually seem pleased to see me and want to support me are strangers in Tavistock, so I’ve stuck around. I used to do all sorts – roofing, scaffolding, pretty much every type of construction – but I’m on the wrong side of 50 now so that’s not really good for me any more. I lost my licence to work in construction a few years ago and it was going to cost me too much to get it back. I was…

If I have learned something since I went into Parliament and spent more time reflecting on the nature of government it is the abject waste there is, and the muddle of things. In some strange way I have concluded that I have never really left behind the Notting Hill slums that I was born to – the slums were simply exported into the rest of life. That though society did not live in a physical slum, the same stopgap thinking dominated the world beyond the slum. If you get what I mean. I realised, as I moved away from slum life, that slum thinking was the norm of postwar thinking. Like that, in the slums, there could be bright spots. Like an NHS that did its best to keep the…

I was a very, very anxious 16-year-old. About school, my body, getting thrown out of pubs, everything really. Sixteen is the age that your peers are starting to go out and I was delaying that as much as possible. My mum did quite a lot to try to get my sister and me to socialise a bit more because we were both timid. My sister got into it eventually, but I never really settled into that adolescent period. I was so anxious to achieve something, to get going. I’d gone from the little primary school next to the housing estate we grew up in to a grammar school. It was an opportunity, but also a sudden intense pressure to get good A-levels and go to a good university and get…

The ‘Big 5’ is an old term used by colonial-era hunters in Africa for the most prized and dangerous animals to kill: elephant, rhino, leopard, Cape buffalo and lion. The idea of killing animals for fun has always seemed outdated and cruel to me. Wildlife photography, on the other hand, is a brilliant way to celebrate the natural world and to highlight the threats currently facing many wild animals. That’s why I launched The New Big 5 Project, inviting people around the world to vote for the five animals they most like to photograph and see in photos – shooting with a camera, not a gun. More than 50,000 voted. The New Big 5 of Wildlife & Wildlife Photography was announced in May 2021: elephant, polar bear, lion, gorilla and…

IN MEMORIAM Catching up with Dad through our shared love of books How do you explain death to a dog? Coming back from the hospital without my dad, there was something achingly sad at seeing his dog’s expectation that he would be with us too. She slept next to my dad’s bed and always stayed by his side. This morning she heard a recording of his voice and has seemed confused ever since. We project emotions onto pets, but why not, when sometimes we find it so hard to express ourselves, concealing our emotions for fear they will trip us up or make us look foolish. My dad was not one to talk of love, but we were all fortunate to know that what was unsaid was nevertheless present in…

On Christmas Eve 1968, William Anders took what has been described as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken”. Anders was aboard Apollo 8, the first manned spacecraft to leave the Earth’s orbit. He and his crewmen had spent several days studying the lunar surface, taking photographs from their capsule, their attention trained upon the naked expanse below. But then it occurred to Anders to look up. “This gorgeous, colourful, beautiful planet of ours [was] coming up over the ugly lunar horizon.” Anders turned his camera towards the rising Earth. Anders’ Earthrise provided the first photograph of our planet from space. The image was instantly iconic and the defining image of the first Earth Day, held in 1970. Over half a century later it is sobering to look back at…

100bn 200bn Since the year 2000 clothing production has doubled – from 100 billion to 200 billion items per year. Over that same period, the number of times an item is worn has decreased by 36% On average, we wear 20% of the clothes we own 80% of the time The average consumer now buys 60% more clothing than they did 15 years ago One white cotton shirt produces the same amount of emissions as driving 35 miles in a car It takes over 9,000 litres of water to make one pair of jeans (in countries where water access isn’t guaranteed) The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions Fast fashion generates more CO2 than aviation and shipping combined People throw away 92 million tonnes of textiles…

Clearly there is one universal talking point. If you thought it was the weather or the health service or even the diminishing size of Mars bars, think again. It’s potholes. The great modern curse. They are everywhere. Literally. To support this thesis, I give you The Terminator. Last week an online video appeared showing Arnold Schwarzenegger taking matters into his own hands. Cars and bikes on the street where he lived were suffering terrible damage, he said, when they came a cropper in a giant gash in the road. So, as local authorities were not dealing with this, he and some friends decided to get some asphalt and repair the thing themselves. Imagine driving down the street and seeing that happening. Next week, pollarding with Sylvester Stallone. Then a move…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Sign of the Times Many years ago, Financial Times journalists published a series of articles highlighting how the owners of Thames Water had, quite legally, gouged the system for all it was worth, often because Ofwat’s powers were over-limited. It has been clear since these articles were published that the privatisation of water companies has proven to be a fool’s errand. Let’s hope that now the problem is (again) newsworthy it can be resolved. I’m afraid there is little hope of privatisation’s financial beneficiaries being held to order; I recall from the FT’s articles that many of the corporations they set up after privatisation were registered in overseas territories, which may…

Featuring work by a stellar line-up of approximately 100 artists from around the world including Loie Hollowell, Lorna Robertson and Mahesh Baliga, Art on a Postcard is holding a special guest auction to raise money for War Child UK. Bidding starts at just £50, and offers the chance to take home a unique miniature work by a highly collectable artist, while supporting War Child’s essential work protecting children in war zones everywhere. The artwork pictured, titled People, is by British pop artist Julian Opie, who is known for, among other things, his quadruple portrait of the band Blur as featured on the cover of their 2000 compilation album Blur: The Best Of. April 18-May 4, online via theauctioncollective.com The work on this page is created by people who are marginalised.…

PREVIEW A missing mum, and a nifty tech thriller that raises the bar At the height of the pandemic, it felt like screens were the only way to reach out beyond our bubbles. Hunched over a glowing tablet or phone was where many of us worked, shopped and tried – with varying degrees of success – to distract ourselves. For all the benefits, it was easy to feel unsettled and even resentful. Surely not every aspect of the human experience can be digitised and beamed over wifi? That friction between the supposed convenience and sometimes frustration of doing everything online is the engine that powers Missing, a nifty new thriller that unfolds entirely via the main character’s laptop screen. That might sound like an unnecessary straitjacket if you are trying…

How does the UK compare? According to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2020, renewables accounted for 43.8 per cent of the electricity generation mix in the UK, a significant increase from 5.8 per cent in 2005. Still, the UK lags behind. In 2020, renewables made up 68.5 per cent of electricity generation in Norway, 59.5 per cent in Sweden, 57.5 per cent in Austria, and 50.7 per cent in Portugal. The good news is developing nations are skipping the heavy-polluting stage and embracing cleaner energy. Kenya is the world leader in solar panels per capita – over 30,000 panels are sold there each year. Meanwhile, 90 per cent of Costa Rica’s energy is produced by renewable energy. Even China, which releases over 30 per cent of the…

A December 2021 report in The Lancet found more than half of the 10,000 people surveyed aged between 16 and 25 globally agree that “humanity is doomed”. Yet Dr Chris Brierley, a climate scientist at UCL, says it isn’t true. “We’re not doomed,” he told The Big Issue. “Society has shifted dramatically in the past 20 or 30 years, and for us to tackle climate change, it has to shift again, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “If we’re able to reduce our emissions now, then it’s going to stop things from getting worse. Saying that we’re doomed is not going to help that.” The recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world’s leading climate scientists (including Brierley), suggested we must act…