Innholdsfortegnelse for 11/27/2023 i The Big Issue

I had the privilege of speaking recently at a conference in Lisbon focused on harm reduction and homelessness. It was both enlightening and inspiring. As we seek solutions to reduce drug-related deaths in the UK and to improve our approach to individuals facing drug dependence and homelessness, Portugal’s experience provides invaluable lessons. In England and Wales, approximately three million adults aged between 16 to 59 use drugs. In 2021, nearly 5,000 individuals died from drug poisoning, a 6.5% increase from 2020 and the highest drug-related deaths since record-keeping began in 1993. Over the past decade, heroin-related deaths more than doubled, and cocaine-related deaths have surged fivefold. The situation is even more severe in Scotland, earning the country the unfortunate title of the drug death capital of Europe. Portugal’s situation in…

Paint a picture for us – what kind of teenage boy were you? I wasn’t your typical teenager. Whether it was because my mum cut my hair or because I wasn’t allowed to sit in the front seat of the car until I was 15, I retained a wonderfully childlike quality long into adolescence. I’d spend weekends – not sniffing glue or kissing with tongues – but collecting conkers or drawing pictures of the Red Arrows or writing letters to the Red Arrows. The day before my 15th birthday, I had my passing out parade at the Scout hut. I shook hands with every Scout there, saluted the Scout Leader, lowered and folded the flag and then, while the others ran off to the recreation ground to hoik up a…

REVIEWS Consumed by status It should come to the surprise of no one aware of Nathalie Olah’s bibliography that her latest Bad Taste: Or the Politics of Ugliness, is as relentlessly class conscious and anti-capitalist as her priors Steal as Much as You Can and Class. Bad Taste is a book that invites us to question all the choices we believe we have made entirely of our own accord and to reckon with the preordained nature of consumerism. Olah’s scrupulous gaze is diverse as she demonstrates that taste is more than choosing maximalism over minimalism; it is used as a marker of morality, of class and of status. Olah astutely unpacks the way Frasier turned the therapist into a proto-podcaster, the abundant and therefore rebellious fashion choices of Diana and…

SHEEP THRILLS While shepherds watch their flocks There are four rams on the farm at the moment: a Derbyshire Gritstone, a Romtex, a Shetland and a Lleyn – but the Lleyn doesn’t like other sheep and spends as much time as possible with the cattle. Somehow, all the cattle heard on the grapevine that this ram, hardly a tenth the size of our bull, had been forced to teach the bull a lesson for refusing to treat him as an equal. Now, all the cattle do just that. In winter, when we put hay in feed racks for them, the cattle all wait for the ram to choose where he wants to stand before clustering round him to eat. As Shakespeare tells us in As You Like It “Your gentleness…

I am within 10,000 words of the end of the book I have spent years writing. I have been asked by my agent, who now has to sell it, what in my opinion is the theme, the purpose, the lesson of my book – that is, if it has a lesson and is not just a piece of entertainment. He asked me this because he was looking for a purpose for the book, knowing I was trying to share wisdom and not simply be a page-turner among many page-turners that just keep the reader busy for a period of time. I had to pluck something from the air, yet I could not, just could not, say what the book is about. I’ve explained that it’s about bits of my autobiography,…

A recent investigation by The Big Issue found that refugees across the country are being evicted into homelessness, forced onto the streets by government policy. Since our special report on 6 November (below) detailing fears of the coming wave, we’ve kept digging. Big Issue readers got in touch. That led us to Adam [not his real name], and his experience. This week, we tell his shocking – and avoidable – story. We’ve also been using Freedom of Information requests to get hold of the data telling the true extent of the crisis. Across the country, vast numbers are being driven into homelessness, just like Adam. And we’ve been getting answers, as Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham tells us what it’d take to put things right in his city. Adam waited…

I’ve lived in London my whole life and experienced a wide array of public disturbances along the way. I was 15 in 1990 when the poll tax riots kicked off and recall a couple of teachers and pupils coming into school on the Monday morning with a few bruises and some exciting tales to tell. In 2003 I was working for Channel 5 news, covering the protest against the Iraq war. I was among the million who marched on parliament in what turned out to be a futile attempt to convince Tony Blair not to invade. I got to know legendary protester Brian Haw, who I interviewed for a BBC documentary in 2006, spending a night with him shouting at the House of Commons through a loud hailer. I’m a…

Brian Cox made an interesting point. That’s the scientist, rather than Logan Roy. It came in the wake of Patrick Vallance’s testimony at the Covid Inquiry. Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser during the Covid period, laid out problems with Boris Johnson. The former PM found the science around Covid “difficult at times”. It was “a real struggle” to understand the graphs around lockdown modelling. And he was “bamboozled” a lot. Turns out that tossing up a few choice cuts of The Aeneid in Latin and then hammering out short slogans in lieu of an actual programme for government doesn’t prove that you’re full of the right stuff necessary to lead a country. Sorry Nadine. It came a number of days after potty-mouthed political iconoclast Dominic Cummings lashed into Matt…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Future fears Though I’ve been living in Spain for the last seven years I felt I had to write to commend you on your excellent magazine. At various times over the last 30 years, I’ve bought your magazine from vendors in Bristol, Totnes, Reading and probably elsewhere. Every time I hand over a few quid for my copy I know I’m helping someone – in however small a way – on their path out of homelessness. I’m also invariably humbled by the stories of those struggling in difficult circumstances as well as inspired by those who have managed to get their lives back on track. The puzzles and arts coverage help…

“I think there is increasingly the case, given the nature of the labour market, to let people work while they’re waiting on their outcomes,” Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, tells The Big Issue. “The Home Office would always say there’s a pull factor. But I’m not convinced any more about that. “I don’t think you can reduce support and not let people help themselves. We need a public debate about that issue. I think there’s more public support for it than people might realise.” Statistics uncovered by The Big issue show the crisis is already hitting Greater Manchester hard. From August to mid-October, 80 refugees in Manchester became homeless after leaving asylum accommodation, 65 in Salford, 46 in Wigan, 40 in Oldham, and 15 in Rochdale. Across the…

CULTURE ART “Creativity heals the soul,” says long-time regular Street Art contributor Forman, who is in her late fifties, lives in Brighton and copes with physical and mental health challenges including rheumatoid arthritis and bipolar disorder. She says, “The art process is therapeutic. It helps us to grow to become better versions of ourselves.” Forman’s latest series of moon artworks are all about the changing seasons. “Nature is always a work in progress,” she says, “as we all are.” The work on this page is created by people who are marginalised. Contact street.lights@bigissue.com to see your art here. To see more and buy prints: bigissueshop.com. At least half of the profit goes to the artist.…

REVIEW A man at war with the world and himself A stubborn megalomaniac with a gift for marshalling vast armies refuses to rest on his impressive laurels, preferring to push on towards that next, possibly even greater triumph. But enough about Sir Ridley Scott. As he prepares to turn 86, the seemingly indefatigable filmmaker is probably sparking up another fat cigar to celebrate having succeeded where Charlie Chaplin (in the 1930s) and Stanley Kubrick (in the late 1960s) failed. All these auteurs imagined a bold, brassy biopic of one of history’s greatest military strategists and/or inveterate warmongers. But only Scott’s Napoleon has made it all the way to the actual screen. His handsomely staged two-and-a-half-hour epic mixes thumping scenes of warfare with a dysfunctional relationship drama to often slightly queasy…

FERAL Every day’s a different story. My pitch is quite new, and I’m in the process of building it up. You’ve got to be in it to win it, and the more you see people, the more they talk. Having that one-to-one conversation is important, and it reciprocates. It’s good for the sellers, because it’s good for your head. But it’s good for the people you’re talking to as well. Some people don’t have anybody to talk to in the day. Some of the best conversations I’ve had with people have been with people who have nothing. They don’t have to be anybody. You just chat about all sorts, there’s no hierarchy. Bath is great, there’s lots going on. I was in Wells before. I wanted a different outlook, a…