Table of contents for 10/28/2024 in The Big Issue

Something that schools should not have to be is a place of last resort for the hungriest of children in society The cost of living crisis, like Covid nasal tests and Line Of Duty, feels of another time. Though just a few months ago a dominant global concern, it’s now yesterday’s man. So, clearly, now it’s all over and everything is absolutely dandy and tickety boo. If only. This is the problem with neat phrases to sum up a host of major interlocking issues. When another phrase comes along, the older one is immediately binned. Like that meme of the bloke holding hands with his girl but rubber necking to check out the new girl who has just caught his eye. That meme also, ironically, is something that feels of…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue History repeats Reading from an information/display board on a visit to Upnor Castle in Kent recently, I was struck by a certain section of the text. To give some background, the information explained why the Dutch raid in Medway in 1667, during King Charles II’s reign, was so spectacularly successful. While plenty of credit was given to the Dutch for their timing and daring, it was the text following that took on a peculiar significance for me: “Doing nothing had become national policy in England. It was cheap. Many ships were in poor repair and pay arrears in the navy had become notorious. Once action had started, sailors, soldiers and dockyard…

Turner Prize-winner Jeremy Deller and former prisoner-turned-artist John Costi have linked up to co-curate a major exhibition of art by people in criminal justice settings. It will feature a selection of works by prisoners, secure mental health patients, immigration detainees, and other individuals in secure settings, from the UK and abroad, all submitted to the annual Koestler Awards, hosted annually by Koestler Arts, the UK’s largest prison arts charity. Deller and Costi were invited to select around 200 artworks from over 7,500 submissions. Both artists have long associations with Koestler Arts. Deller is a longstanding supporter of the charity, volunteering each summer to judge the Koestler Awards and write feedback to creators in prisons. “The awards are the art equivalent of Wimbledon,” he says. Costi first learnt about Koestler Arts…

Great literature is filled with imaginary harbours for lonely souls. Some of us seek refuge in Middleearth, some head to Hogwarts, some take themselves to Pemberley. Since I was about 13 years old, I’ve been returning to Rutshire on the regular, seeking sex, drugs and broadcasting scandals. Rivals by Jilly Cooper isn’t just a book to me, it’s home. I’m very excited that Disney + is taking on my favourite novel. Even if you’re not on intimate terms with Jilly Cooper’s novels, you could recognise them, and sketch an outline from memory. There will definitely be sex. And there will probably be a horse or two. The boozing will be lavish, the hyperbole more so. If you’re new to Cooper’s world, this is what I’d like to tell you: Firstly,…

“Homeownership is now a hereditary privilege.” This was the damning conclusion of Financial Times journalist John Burn-Murdoch in 2023. Our housing market isn’t only dysfunctional, it is ever more reliant on the Bank of Mum and Dad. Since the 2010s, parents have been a top 10 mortgage lender in the UK. We may shy away from it, but we are living in an inheritance economy, where access to housing (as well as the other big-ticket items in life) is increasingly tied to whether you are able to draw from the parental ATM. We can all recite the common complaints about spiralling cost of rents and a lack of affordable house building in this country, but it is worth noting quite how much parental wealth has become intertwined with the UK…

The latest disability pay gap statistics for 2014 to 2023 make difficult reading and remind us exactly why this government is committed to putting disabled people at the heart of all we do. With disabled employees paid 12.7% less than non-disabled employees in 2023, a similar pay gap as 2014, there has been a decade of lost potential which we are determined to tackle. We know that, on average, disabled workers are paid less than non-disabled workers, and are twice as likely as non-disabled people to be unemployed. It is simply wrong. With over nine million people economically inactive in the UK, we need workplaces to be inclusive and to support disabled people and those with long-term ill health. We know that over 40,000 disabled people want to find work.…

The Most is the fourth novel from Maine resident Jessica Anthony, described by literary giant Richard Russo as one of the most inventive writers working today. Witty, provocative, rich with insight and deep with melancholy, it features a ‘normal’ 1950s middle class American family with multiple cracks just below the surface. Though the tale might seem standard, Anthony throws enough unpredictable spokes in the wheel to keep us curious and committed until the end. Kathleen Beckett is a mother of two who used to be a tennis champion but gave it all up to be a mother and housewife. Kathleen’s handsome husband Virgil is an insurance salesman, the kind who plays golf with the company partners, goes drinking with the in-crowd, and enjoys the lustful stares his good looks often…

TELEVISION Mr Loverman I had just two days to read award-winning Bernardine Evaristo’s Mr Loverman, a book waiting in the middle of my ever-growing ‘to-read’ pile, before my audition for the BBC adaptation of the book. Time wasn’t on my side. But the audiobook was. So, I closed my eyes and listened to James Goode’s masterful reading. Chapters of tears followed by chapters of laughter and more tears. Beautiful storytelling with unflinching honesty at its core. Each character and setting was so familiar to me: it reminded me of the uncles growing up, who lived with their best mate in a one-bedroom apartment. And there was Hackney’s Ridley Road market, streets that I had walked up and down many times with my family and then again when I was homeless.…

I first visited New Orleans in my 20s, on a trip I had envisioned as a revelatory rite of passage. I travelled through Nashville, Memphis and Clarksdale trying to find something tangible that would bring me closer to the music that had enriched my life. I plotted my itinerary around record shops, and via the jaded expressions I was met with by the people behind the counters I quickly learned that mine was not only a well-trodden path but a slightly excruciating cliche. I was naive. In fact, much of the trip was not what I had expected; riding the Greyhound Bus was grim and risky and nothing like the doggedly romantic adventure I had imagined. And although New Orleans, the final stop on my trip, was similar to the…

Vincent Lewis, star of Prince William’s Homewards documentary Before I sold Big Issue, I worked as a sparky – an electrician – on [Cardiff ’s] Millennium Stadium, and the Severn Bridge, and on a recycling plant in Holland too. Every time I pass Cardiff, and I see it, I think: ‘yes, I worked on that’. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve been selling Big Issue for 12 years now. I was in Porthcawl and a gentleman came along and said he would bring me breakfast. Often, people say that and don’t come back. But he came back, and he brought me £50. I used the money to start selling Big Issue. Then I moved from Porthcawl to Cwmbran by accident: I got…

In the 1970s, UK house prices were around four times the average income. This figure has risen to between eight and nine times the average income today. Meanwhile, rents have surged. Though often framed as a supply issue, the housing crisis is fundamentally about affordability. Community-led housing (CLH) is gaining momentum as a response, offering a participatory approach driven by local needs. An increasingly successful model of CLH is the Community Land Trust (CLT), a democratic organisation that owns land or assets for the benefit of locals. CLTs ensure long-term affordability by linking rents and prices to local incomes, while their legal structure shields assets from market fluctuations and private sector exploitation. Urban CLTs such as RUSS (Rural Urban Synthesis Society) are creating standout examples of CLH. Other CLTs have…

The new government has placed homes at the heart of its agenda, with reform to the housing system in England viewed as essential for both economic growth and social equity. This is not simply a question of fixing the planning process, however. We need to see careful regulation, significant funding, a commitment to long-term sustainability and a particular focus on the many buildings in our communities that are currently being overlooked. The clear message from the Labour Party Conference was “build, build, build”, focusing on the victory of the “YIMBYs” (Yes In My Back Yard). Policy proposals so far have centred on increasing the supply of new homes through reforms to the planning system, the release of “grey belt” land, and the establishment of new towns. In the rush for…

Back in May 2018, the late Conservative housing secretary James Brokenshire announced £28 million would be put towards creating three pilots for a new approach to tackling rough sleeping. That approach was Housing First – the pioneering idea of giving someone who is experiencing street homelessness a home alongside the support they need to keep it. Brokenshire announced three pilots would be set up in Liverpool City Region, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands. More than six years later, those pilots are still running but face an uncertain future, with funding still to be confirmed beyond next year. That’s anathema to the point of Housing First. The model, devised by clinical psychologist Sam Tsemberis in New York in the ’90s, is intended to support an individual for as long as…

When Jackie McAnoy found out what had killed her son, Simeon, she’d never heard of nitazenes. News of 33-year-old Simeon’s death came in a Facebook post, and as she pieced together what had happened, nobody explained to her exactly what this new drug was. “I feel like he’s been treated like nobody,” says Jackie. Big Issue has been investigating the human toll of nitazenes – powerful synthetic opioids which have been linked to 284 deaths across the country. Last week, we revealed that in Birmingham, where Simeon’s life ended, at least 21 people had died after taking them over the summer. Yet the city’s authorities are reluctant to comment. Deaths from nitazenes, many of them happening among the UK’s homeless population, pass unremarked. After a Taliban crackdown limited heroin supplies,…

Just some thoughts this week about global capitalism. I love reminding people that the largest amount of money in the world is not to be found in the bank accounts of the richest. The largest amount is in the pension funds of the people of the world. The teachers, the firemen, the undertakers, the union members, the cleaners; anyone who has a pension in fact. The last time I looked it seemed that if you put the wealth of billionaires together you get something like £25 trillion. But pensions are worth combined about £60 trillion. The pension funds drive capitalism on. They allocate money to banks and investors, to governments and to individuals who make businesses happen. It’s people’s capitalism. Billionaires often access pension money in order to buy businesses…

My main preoccupation at 16 was finding some other people that looked like myself. I grew up in Romford in Essex, and black people in those days were as rare as hens’ teeth. I was the only black pupil in the school, and I was just desperate to get out. And I could see all the things that were going on in America with the civil rights movement. I think I just wanted to be Marsha Hunt. She was appearing in Hair in the West End at that time. I was trying my best to look as though I had an enormous afro. Ours wasn’t a close-knit family. I was brought up in a white family. So immediately I was on the outside. And they held the casually racist kind…

All families have secrets. Don’t they? Even if you think your family doesn’t, maybe it’s just because no-one has uncovered them yet. And that’s what happened to me. Out of a clear blue February sky, over a chatty lunch, a friend said: “You know about your grandmother? Her death in the asylum?” My grandmother, Charlotte Agnes Raymond, died at 36, leaving three children to the mercies of housekeepers. I knew that – but not the rest. My response was the starting point for the entire five-year project of researching and writing my novel, Lotte. I looked across the table and carried on as if the asylum was no surprise. “Oh yes,” I said, “of course I know.” What was I doing? In not acknowledging it was a family secret, was…

There’s a classic joke about an old man standing on a mountaintop, surveying the town he grew up in. Approached by a couple of passers-by, he tells them: “Look at that church. I helped build it. But do they call me John the Church Builder? They do not. Look at that school. I taught four generations of children in that school. But do they call me John The Teacher? No. And yet, I fuck ONE goat...” Apologies if you’ve heard that a million times. It’s an old one but a good one. It’s not just funny, it has a moral which rings true in any society: very often, public opinion is based on highly selective evidence. But we must not allow anecdotal evidence and isolated incidents to sour our view…

Last year, while researching my book Happy Death Club: Essays on Death, Grief & Bereavement Across Cultures, I had the opportunity to spend a month in Mexico during Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). The annual holiday takes place on days when people believe the veil between our world and the world of the dead is at its thinnest, allowing those who have died to return to us. Other countries have similar death-related holidays in late October and early November, and Halloween (which evolved from the Gaelic festival Samhain) is celebrated around the world. Most people outside of Mexico perhaps know about Day of the Dead either from the Pixar movie Coco, or from the Bond movie Spectre, which opens with a dramatic chase scene set around the…