Table of contents for 9/2/2024 in The Big Issue

The tinderbox of poverty is continuing to be the spark of unrest The riots a few weeks ago told a big story. That the state cannot acquiesce to disorder. That you will get sent down if you are caught. And it will put a deep hole in your life for a few years to come. Perhaps for ever. I saw the rogues’ gallery of people sentenced and it showed a social uniformity of depressing scale. All without exception were not from the same social class as even that supposed working-class boy, Sir Keir Starmer. They had the marks of labour but not of the Labour Party. Their gaunt pictures were frightening; they seemed like the lost generation of the inheritors of poverty. They had precious little skin in the game,…

I’ve always loved linguistic mashups. These are new words created by blending parts of existing ones together, such as ‘bromance’ or ‘brunch’. It’s true that some of them – like ‘chillax’ – now grate on the nerves, and others can feel a little ungainly (I’m thinking ‘mansplaining’ here), but this has become by far the most popular method of inventing new words, and there’s no denying their usefulness. The writer Lewis Carroll named them ‘portmanteaux’, likening them to two parts of a folding suitcase. And he himself gave us some of the best: ‘chortle’, for example, is a perfect blend of ‘chuckle’ and ‘snort’. But my favourite mashup in a long time is much more recent, and not only is it smoothly creative, but it also carries a powerful message.…

CULTUREART “I was going through a breakup,” says long-time regular Street Art contributor Vallely of the inspiration for this artwork. “That’s why it’s called Bleeding Love. I wanted to use strong colours.” Vallely’s colourful artworks are her way of helping to deal with a history of depression and homelessness. She has recently been working with the charity HomeLess Made, designing a series of cards. “My style is based around music and the sixties,” she says. “I give half of my takings to homeless people in Kensington.” The cards can be viewed and bought at: homelessmade.co.uk/pages/mary 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…

MORE THAN ONE STORY The power of narrative: a lifeline beyond survival Over the last nine weeks, we have showcased a groundbreaking series of short films that change the narrative on homelessness. The More Than One Story series explored the range of reasons people can find themselves without a safe, secure or permanent place to call home. Each monologue was written and performed by people who have first-hand experience of homelessness, poverty or inequity. It was created by Cardboard Citizens, a charity that uses the power of drama and performance to transform lives, in collaboration with Black Apron Entertainment. Cardboard Citizens Artistic Director Chris Sonnex was the driving force behind the series, and a piece he has written serves as a fitting finale. This Is What It Means is a…

I have lost Katharine Hamnett in the Oxfam store. We met briefly, a quick “hello”, but now she is wandering around her local charity shop in Dalston, East London, on the hunt for items to take home. Her dog Arthur traipses loyally behind her. The fashion designer renowned for her punchy and political slogan tees is ecstatic when I track her down. She has discovered a large woven blanket, perfect for the picnic she is planning for her 77th birthday. Oxfam is as excited to have her as she is about her picnic blanket. Mannequins wear white T-shirts with one of Hamnett’s signature slogans, crying out in bold black letters: ‘NO MORE FASHION VICTIMS’. When we talk, Hamnett explains: “The environment is the fashion victim. The planet is the fashion…

POLITICS These are the ticking Tory time bombs Labour must navigate as parliament returns By Liam GeraghtyBig Issue Deputy Digital Editor Prime minister Keir Starmer has warned October’s Budget will be “painful” and called on the country to “accept short-term pain for long-term good” after criticising the state of the nation inherited from the Tories. Labour must navigate a number of overlapping crises in the weeks and months to come. Some of them – as political tradition dictates – left by the previous Conservative government. This was put into focus when the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, set out to “expose the scale of what has been uncovered” with a speech in parliament on 29 July where she accused the Tories of leaving a £20 billion black hole in the UK’s finances.…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Friends reunited I am writing to you to share my story about your vendor in Sevenoaks, Ronnie. I live in Singapore and I was lucky enough to have some free time this year to come to the UK to visit my elderly parents, which was a great joy for us all. One Saturday I brought my mum to Sevenoaks. As we walked along the High Street, your vendor Ronnie enthusiastically greeted my mum, who for years supported him every week, buying the magazine when she was still mobile enough to come shopping on her own. Ronnie and my mum chatted animatedly and I was astonished that Ronnie had even remembered where…

For many of us, a dose of caffeine is a beloved daily ritual, taking scarcely longer than the time it takes to boil a kettle or measure out a half-cup of coffee grounds. But this simple act is underpinned by a vast global network of farmers and processors. Around 125 million people worldwide depend on coffee for their livelihoods. Pak Udin, a 70-year-old farmer in Java, Indonesia, is one of them. “We start with the cherry,” he tells Big Issue, speaking through a translator. “It is all about this cherry.” Udin and his wife Rohemah manage a two-hectare farm called Cipaganti, on land leased from the government. Some 80% of the world’s coffee is produced by smallholders like this. Sprawled across a lush hillside amid towering shade trees, Cipaganti appears…

As a writer and a reader I’ve never really understood the concept of ‘genres’ in fiction. It has always felt to me as being only the concern of publishers and booksellers, something that lets them market a book in a particular way. But I’ve always been drawn to books that cross those artificial boundaries, and we have two crackers to talk about this week. First up is Blood Like Mine by Northern Irish author Stuart Neville. Neville has primarily made a name for himself as a crime writer, but his writing has always delved into the more intriguing hinterlands of that genre, mixing literary, supernatural and horror influences into the bargain. On the surface, Blood Like Mine looks like a serial killer thriller set in the huge spaces of the…

CULTUREA GUIDE TO GRIEFAnd Mrs My debut comedy feature And Mrs is coming out in September. The film’s about a reluctant bride-to-be (Aisling Bea) whose fiancé (Colin Hanks) dies, yet decides to find closure by marrying him anyway. Classic comedy setup, obviously. So here are a few thoughts I’ve picked up along the way as I’ve tried to process my own grief by directing the film. (Yes. I am aware that therapy would have been cheaper.) 1. It’s OK to laugh about death I’ve never laughed harder than the week I knew my mum was about to die from Covid. Crying next to her deathbed, my family and I would tunelessly belt out her favourite song, The Rose by Bette Midler. We inherited Mum’s unerring ability to empty a karaoke…

‘The readiness is all’ To be or not to be, that is the question I asked Sir Ian McKellen at the end of our interview the last time he was in the Big Issue magazine. It was 2016 and we met at the BFI Southbank as he launched a Shakespeare on Film season to mark the Bard’s 400th deathday. We stuck to topic by only asking questions inspired by Shakespeare quotations. Is now still the winter of our discontent? “What I like about that first line is the first word, ‘now’,” McKellen said. “Shakespeare is now. Not tomorrow, not yesterday – now.” True in 2016 and probably will be true again after Starmer’s “painful” October budget comes to pass. I tried to trick him with “All that is gold does…

Sir Ian McKellen holds up his right arm to show a red sore spot, then taps the top of his spine. “I fractured my wrist, which is getting better. I chipped my vertebrae up here, which seems to be OK,” he says. On 17 June, he fell from the stage of the Noël Coward Theatre in the middle of a performance of Player Kings, a condensed version of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 (still lasting well over three hours) where he was starring as Falstaff. During a fight scene, McKellen caught his foot on a chair, lost balance and landed heavily on the front row. The news was met with widespread concern and an outpouring of good wishes befitting a beloved national treasure. “I feel like a man…

Manchester’s Moss Side was once known for riots, following violent mass protests in the early ’80s. In the next two decades the suburb continued to garner negative press: like Nottingham, it became a focus for gang and gun crime and was part of the area dubbed “Gunchester”. But this August, while riots erupted across much of the UK, Moss Side seemed insulated from unrest thanks, in part, to the strong community organising that began when thousands of Somali refugees moved there in the ’90s, fleeing civil war in their country. Multi-service youth hub Millennium Powerhouse, which opened in 1999, provides young people with services ranging from sports, arts and crafts, dance and music to mental health and careers support. Meanwhile, Somali Adult Social Care Agency (SASCA), founded in 2007, offers…

Sixteen was an interesting age for me, because it was the first year that I knew I wanted to make music. I hadn’t actually told anybody about it yet. Nirvana had just blown my mind – I’d seen them live in 1992 in Belfast. So I was pretty certain that the thing I saw that guy Kurt Cobain do up there, that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. But I wasn’t sure that I was ever gonna get to do it, obviously. I got a guitar for Christmas when I was 14. One of those where you get the guitar and the amp. My dad found it in the back of a newspaper, something like that. It was a wee tiny amp. And I wish…

In my capacity as a TV reviewer, I should probably be writing about season three of The Bear, or telling you about some amazing, obscure new A24 show that you can only watch if you rig your wifi router with a paper clip and a bit of tinfoil. I’m sorry though, I can’t – I’m too busy watching back-to-back Murder, She Wrote on Great! TV. Yes, I’m now eschewing modern life and all its very demure, very cutesy bollocks, and living in the very early ’90s, where Jessica Fletcher is still using a word processor and there’s a convoluted plot line involving a video store and a stolen diamond necklace. Am I alone? Well, it certainly feels like that, but now we all exist in our own separate TV bubbles,…

MATTHEW CAMPBELL I’ve been selling the Big Issue on and off for about 12 years. I’ve had pitches all over London. I’ve pitched in Covent Garden, I’ve pitched in Pimlico, in Victoria, and quite a few other places – the Strand, Elephant and Castle and Waterloo. I’m a born-and-bred South Londoner, through and through. I live in a social housing place in Vauxhall, and my family are still in Lewisham. I’m about to turn 57, and my mum wants me to come round for dinner. She knows I haven’t got a wife, so I’ll spend the day with her. I’ve had lots of different jobs. Before the Big Issue I was a door-to-door salesman, selling household goods for a catalogue company. That gift of the gab helps with the Big…