Tag Archives: BIG ISSUE
The poison that is destroying civility and how to fight it
âHow did you get into first class? You donât deserve to be in first class. âYou should be in common class. In fact, you shouldnât be in this country at all. âYou donât deserve to be here. âšBloody foreigners. Where … Continue reading
How to win the coming culture war in 2017
A version of this article first appeared in The Big Issue magazine in January 2017. Journalism worth paying for. Available weekly from street vendors or subscriptions here. History rarely falls into neat numerical decades. I would assert the 1980s (yuppies, … Continue reading
How should broadcast news journalists interview and talk about extremists?
Over the weekend I spoke to veteran ex BBC journalist Robin Lustig, Berlin correspondent Damien McGuinness for an insight into Germany’s media and Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s 2012 senior strategist for 2 articles I wrote for The Guardian and The … Continue reading
Lessons for Trump and us all from the Ronald Reagan Memorial Library
âI wonder what itâs all about, and why We suffer so, when little things go wrong? We make our life a struggle When life should be a songâŠâ We should perhaps we grateful that the teenage Ronald Reagan never grew … Continue reading
When Cathy met Ken: Revisiting Cathy Come Home in Brexit Britain
The other night I watched Ken Loach meet Cathy – or rather the young actress Elle Payne, playing Cathy in a Cardboard Citizens’ staging of his 1966 landmark TV play Cathy Come Home. The production featured many actors with experience of homelessness. … Continue reading
The economics of burkas, bikinis & The Nice Guys
According to a recent BBC World Service programme about Malawi, the nationâs population hit 17.6 million this year and is expected to double by 2040, which the countryâs finance minister described as âscaryâ. âA ticking timebomb of poverty and … Continue reading
The trouble with superheroes taking on terrorism..
I love superhero comics and they’ve never been handled with more love than by writers and filmmakers who grew up on them too. And yet.. And yet.. In the latest Captain America Civil War film, when a terrorist bomb goes … Continue reading
The man who knew infinity: Difficult history & dreaming spires on film
How do we re-visit history? Watching the continuation of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign at Oxford I went to see The Man Who Saw Infinity with a greater consciousness of how our institutions choose to tell their own versions of … Continue reading
The Teen Within…
This week’s Something Understood gives voice to people who I reckon are rarely heard on radio. Teenagers. The readings are all done by young actors and much of the music and poetry you’ll hear was written by them, or about … Continue reading
Marriage, Margaret Thatcher & the closet of female expectations
This article first appeared in The Big Issue. Journalism worth paying for (subscriptions available) For years my mother kept an entire cupboard where she used to save up things for my trousseau; the old fashioned concept of a brideâs personal … Continue reading