Innholdsfortegnelse for 4/22/2024 i The Big Issue

‘Data’ tells you lots of things. It tells you, hopefully, what is happening. For instance, the data on the amount of children in child poverty. The data should throw up the figures, and what direction they are going in: is it increasing, or is it reducing? Data is about proving something. And proving something is about measuring things. Measuring results, outcomes and outputs is now expected in all manner of things to do with social investment – that is, the money that government or philanthropists invest to bring about change. You have to prove that what you are doing helps outcomes. When I went into parliament I did so to dismantle poverty. That was my prime objective. I had seen a preoccupation with what I somewhat rudely, perhaps insensitively, described…

As a flurry of recent news reports have shown, interest in the moon is increasing dramatically as China, India and a number of private companies are racing to establish bases on the moon and to put a lunar space station in orbit around it. Why? Because the moon turns out to have valuable resources needed on Earth – some of them currently in increasingly short supply – and hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested in getting at those resources, with the expectation of big profits and big advantages. The resources in question include chlorine, lithium, beryllium, zirconium, uranium, thorium and the rare-earths needed for mobile phones, computers and wind turbines, as well as basalt, iron, quartz and silicon. But above all, the ‘regolith’ – the surface dust and…

The Bad News 1. Emissions are bad Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from human sources are the main problem. We are dumping 40 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide and other GHG into the atmosphere each year. That has raised average global temperatures by about +0.2°C per decade over the past 40 years. Recently warming has reached +0.3°C per decade. It doesn’t sound like much, but you should think about global temperature like you think about your own body’s. At 36.8°C you feel fine, at 39°C you are running a fever, and at 43°C you’re dead. The Earth System is equally sensitive. The ‘never-exceed’ temperature after which very bad things start to happen, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is +2.0°C. Average global temperature in the past year has been…

At 16, I was going through what most lads are going through at that age: puberty, becoming a man. I was very sociable and cheeky. I loved chatting to girls. I wanted to be a football player. I was training every day and had aspirations of going professional. I just wasn’t good enough in the end. Music came later when I started going to the pub, got drunk and did karaoke. I loved performing and when you’re 16, you’re starting to look at what you’re wearing, you want to be seen, you want to be recognised. You want people to know who you are. I was obsessed with boybands. I loved Westlife, Blue; NSYNC were flying, Backstreet Boys were popping hits. I started really finding myself with music. And at…

REVIEW A different kind of love story Would it work if it was Subbuteo? That was a question that bubbled up in my mind even as I was being happily swept along by the ravishing new film from Italian sensualist Luca Guadagnino, the acclaimed director who pierced both hearts and peaches with Call Me by Your Name and turned ballet into a bloodsport in his Suspiria horror remake. His latest big swing Challengers is set in the sharp-elbowed world of professional tennis and tracks the fluctuating urges between a trio of very fit young players. Much is made of the primal energies being exerted on the court with every supersonic serve and grunting return. But a lot of the most erotic sizzle happens away from the net. So would it…

LONDON TIDE ‘The rich sail on the river, the poor work upon it’ For every day of the 10 years that I worked full-time at the National Theatre, commissioning plays and writing adaptations for the stage, I walked along the river front that runs outside the building. When the NT was sited on the South Bank in the early ’60s, the location next to the Thames was carefully chosen. The National wasn’t built in the West End, in Covent Garden or Soho or the traditional entertainment hubs of the city. It was placed next to the Thames. King’s Reach, this particular corner alongside Waterloo Bridge, is the only spot on the river where one can look west and see parliament, and turn and look east and see St Paul’s. The…

MIHAELA POSTARU, 27 I’ve been selling The Big Issue for four or five years. I was struggling, really, really struggling at the time and I heard about it from a friend. It was a good opportunity for me to learn how to save, earn and calculate money myself. The Big Issue has been a huge help with my confidence. To be honest with you, I think selling The Big Issue has helped me find myself. I meet new people, friendly people – not everyone is friendly but most of them. Even if they don’t buy the magazine they at least stop and chat with you and they ask you how you are or they offer you a hot drink or something to eat. I feel like here, on this pitch,…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Collage course Looking back at the homelessness article and BBC footage of treatment of rough sleepers [Issue 1608, 25-31 March], it seems to me that if any person, rough sleeper or not, were to behave in this way to the police they would be arrested and most likely end up in the (in)justice system awaiting an unfair trial. I often do collage from found pictures/words in magazines and do simple and sometimes complex pictures. Reading this and thinking about the disparity of the share of the world’s resources I thought I would do a simple collage with this page to process these thoughts and pass it along to you. Having MS-related…

A tense situation between residents of Touvre, a small farming community of about 5,000 in Côte d’Ivoire, and a company searching for lithium in the area, came to a head last spring. Villagers took to the streets to protest against the business’s activities. They were met with live gunfire from AK-47s and tear gas from the local police. Though no one was shot, three women were taken to hospital, according to reports. At the heart of the residents’ discontent, says Coulibaly Ibrahima, Cote d’Ivoire’s director general for mines, was that the licence to search for lithium in the area had switched hands from Ivorians to a foreign company: Firering Strategic Minerals, which is registered in Cyprus and listed on London’s AIM stock exchange. Around the time of the deal, prospecting…

Yes, it’s another film where Liam Neeson’s armed with a gun on the poster. But In the Land of Saints and Sinners, coming to Netflix this week, is more thoughtful and grounded than most. As a gang of terrorists hide out in a small village in County Donegal, they cross paths with Neeson’s Finbar Murphy, a former hitman pulled out of retirement to defend his community, and perhaps find redemption along the way. The film stars Irish acting royalty including Ciarán Hinds, Colm Meaney and Game of Thrones’ Jack Gleeson, all facing off against a ruthless Kerry Condon. The role is the complete opposite of Siobhán, the sister of Colin Farrell’s character in The Banshees of Inisherin, which earned Condon an Oscar nomination. She calls The Big Issue from Abu…

The row around the Commonwealth Games is fascinating. At present, nobody wants to host in 2026. Victoria in Australia pulled out. Neighbouring city Gold Coast, in Queensland, which had suggested it could step in, quickly stepped out. The hokey cokey then saw Singapore and Malaysia also say no dice. The Canadian province of Alberta ruled themselves out of the 2030 games, just to make it clear there was NO WAY they’d get in on the 2026 action. So don’t even think about asking. At present, if you have an Argos gazebo and a water feature in your back garden the Commonwealth Games Federation might come knocking. A fortnight ago, Glasgow was asked if they’d take on the event. Games organisers were quick to insist there would be no cost to…

The power and potency of Earth Day has waxed and waned since its inception. Originally conceived at the Unesco conference in 1969 as a means of highlighting growing desires for environmental protection, following a serious oil spill in Santa Barbara, it was launched in 1970. The global impact of Earth Day and its aim to make us aware of the fragility of what we have around us, and do something about it, reached its zenith in 2015. At the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21), on Earth Day, 175 countries signed a legally binding agreement to limit global warming and to reach net zero on greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of this century. In the intervening short period, the idea of doing right for the planet and for…

Fossil fuels are running out. Fortunately chemical engineers like Yasmin Ali are not running out of ideas. On a Zoom call with Big Issue, Yasmin Ali laughs when asked what she does for a living. “Where do I start?” Between speaking engagements and her new book Power Up, Ali is one of the UK’s leading chemical engineers. She, and others in electrolytic hydrogen production, are turning water into hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen, says Ali, is “the most abundant element in the universe”. The only catch? It’s generally found molecularly attached to oxygen in the form of water. Ali explains that “zapping” the water with renewable electrical currents produces a carbon-free fuel that could power cars, heat houses and keep our world running. Before entering the hydrogen field, Ali worked as a…

It’s 8am on a crisp Tuesday morning in my local park. The Leaf Man emerges from the mist. In certain artistic circles, and among his hundreds of Instagram followers, the intricately hand-cut designs that Aasen Stephenson painstakingly carves into leaves are highly coveted, and they’re all crafted in his Northampton studio. The conditions, I’m told, make this morning perfect for our meeting. “You have to collect the leaves at the right time,” Stephenson explains as we walk. “I go out on a morning with a nice dew like today’s, and after a windy night is always best.” I pick up the first leaf I see and hold it out for inspection. A shake of the head. “You want a fresh fallen leaf; no decay, symmetrical, no folds or creases.” Finding…

REVIEWS Art imitating life in a war of egos When Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? premiered on Broadway in 1962, it was an instant smash. Set over the space of a booze-fuelled night in the unhappy home of a middle-aged, upper middle-class couple, it’s a raw, harrowing, intensely claustrophobic, desperately funny and terribly sad psychodrama hell-bent on eviscerating the hypocrisies of bourgeois western society. A film adaptation of this Great American Play was the next logical step. As detailed in Cocktails with George and Martha, Philip Gefter’s absorbing account of its production, the 1966 classic starring real-life married couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor was beset by behind-the-scenes drama and occasional eruptions of absurd showbiz farce. Like the play itself, Gefter’s story focuses on four protagonists at…

I do not enjoy organised activities, and that includes playing any kind of game or taking part in anything that a group of people has decreed is ‘fun’. Even the word ‘games’ makes me break out in hives and takes me back to rounders-related torture at school, where I consistently failed to hit the ball with the stick. (Or was it a bat?) If you never wanted to see me again, the best way to go about it would be to invite me to a day out at Go Ape, or a climbing wall, or an escape room. I’d block your number before you could say ‘Crystal Maze’. Depending on the circumstances and the people in the room, even board games and card games can also activate this primal terror.…