In Northern Ireland, they’re arguing over crisps. Stay with me, this is going somewhere.

While it may be a massive leap forward from armoured cars and tanks and guns, an argument over crisps, on the face of it, is a curious one. And it’s not even about the best flavour. There is a stooshie brewing because a flavouring additive needed to create smokiness in smoky bacon crisps (and presumably other smoky-related items) is being banned under EU regulations.

There are toxicity concerns over eight of these flavourings. And due to NI’s position as agreed within the Windsor Framework, that thorny post-Brexit legal agreement between the EU and the UK, many EU rules still apply in Northern Ireland. There is a flipside benefit to this as it allows Northern Ireland access to the EU single market for goods, unlike the rest of the UK.

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An issue with the flavouring hoo-hah comes with Tayto, the crisp manufacturer, a company with semi-mythical cult status in Northern Ireland. Tayto is an engrained part of the identity, like Irn Bru or the Grand National. Every schoolkid growing up waited for the day they’d get a trip to Tayto Castle. 

Tayto, if the smoky flavouring story is correct, would have to work out another way to make their smoky bacon crisps. (Incidentally, this should be no hardship. Smoky bacon is far from the best Tayto flavour.)

You’d imagine a pause on a foodstuff over toxicity concerns was a good thing. You’d be wrong. Jim Allister is furious. Allister is leader of the TUV (Traditional Unionist Voice), a party for whom the DUP is too wet and liberal. Jim is venting. “EU micro-managing and interference knows no limits when it reaches as far as dictating that Tayto in NI must stop producing smoky bacon crisps,” he thundered.

It’s down to what he calls the “iniquitous protocol”. That’s the Windsor Framework, which, remember, allows people in NI to have the best of both worlds. A good thing. NO! says Jim. “The fact that the government and its dud deal with the DUP does nothing to address such madness underscores the stranglehold that the EU is allowed to have over a proclaimed part of the UK.”

Jim is something of the Farage of NI politics – born of the establishment, but projecting as anti-establishment, raging about anything vaguely related to the EU, keen to bring down the bigger right-wing, pro-Union party. In fact, the TUV and Farage’s Reform have an electoral pact. There’s another similarity. While both trade on broad-stroke anger, both suffer under scrutiny.

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• A damning list of Rishi Sunak’s broken promises and screeching U-turns, from net zero to EU law

In this case, it isn’t clear if Tayto actually use any of the banned list flavouring. Jim is tilting at crisps, unnecessarily. But I suppose, for some in the political game, it doesn’t matter, because as we see increasingly in election time, noise and attention is more vital a political juice that truth and clarity. Which makes it ever more important that we stand up and challenge. 

Jim and his crisps are a MacGuffin, a device employed in many films to make us think initially they are important but really they’re of decreasing consequence, and are duping us as the real focus is propelled forward. Frequently we get caught in the MacGuffin, but we need to stay alert and ask questions and demand better. 

I don’t believe every politician is the same. I don’t think, to use that angry phrase, they’re all as bad as each other. 

But I do think every politician should be scrutinised. And if they stand up to it, if their plans are real and deal with the issues so many bruised and battered people feel – particularly in terrible outcomes in housing or health – then those hammering hot with their MacGuffin can be set aside. Let’s see how that goes in the next few weeks.

Incidentally, the best crisp flavour is clearly Tayto cheese and onion. Put that in a manifesto.

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on Twitter.

A version of this article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

Don’t be young. So far, that is the driving narrative of the election campaign. If you are young, well, tough – give us your vote anyway!

It was not so long ago that there were loud noises about supporting young people who had suffered during lockdown. It was recognised that formative years were being damaged. In the normal run of things younger people would have been out in the world, discovering themselves and their place in it, exploring how relationships work, getting jobs, building up some hope for the future. Instead, they were shuttered. Horizons narrowed.

As lockdowns eased, the Local Government Association published a report calling for children and young people to “be at the heart of plans to rebuild communities”.

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The Sutton Trust, a charity focused on social mobility and life chances, particularly for low and middle income school students, found that 80% of young people said their academic progress had suffered as a result of the pandemic. State school pupils were more than twice as likely to feel they’d fallen behind as private school counterparts. There were many similar documents from many organisations, governmental and third sector.

As a nation, we have not yet fully dealt with the mental health hammering young people took. However, for a moment it seemed that a generation would see something positive come out of the dark days. Get real.

It’s time for national service. Do your duty! Government cuts have decimated numbers of the army, so, see you 18-year-old, you’re going to be in fatigues by sundown! It will be interesting to see how that message is implemented in parts of Northern Ireland.

Such was the speed and resulting fallout mess from the making-it-up-as-he-went-along Sunak GREAT PLAN that it was quickly refocused to be less about the army and more about volunteering over months of weekends. Have a part-time job you need to do and no rich parents behind you? Suck it up. Labour, while making light of it, weren’t exactly strong in their list of alternative plans for younger voters.

As for education, the only idea that seems to have moved headlines was a Tory plan to scrap ‘rip-off’ degrees. I’m not sure what rip-off means here, though the metric for judging these included poor drop-out rates and job prospects. The plan is, instead, to funnel money into creating more apprenticeships. It should be noted that the number of young people starting apprenticeships in England fell from 131,400 in 2015 to 77,700 in 2022-23. The drop-out rate is almost one in two.

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It is a positive thing to bolster job specific apprenticeships. But it shouldn’t come at the cost of hammering kids who want a degree. The answer, surely, is to invest better in both, rather than demonising one against the other. And then help the pathways into work improve so that young people – whether leaving school, university or going through an apprenticeship – can find a job with prospects.

Also, let’s start to properly fund second-level education. It’s easy for some politicians to bleat on that kids aren’t prepared for life when they leave school. Well, rather than continuing with the system as it is, overhaul it. Work out what is needed in the contemporary age. Listen to teachers and educational professionals. Make change for the long term, not an election soundbite.

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

This kind of thinking requires a level of actually caring for and liking young people. Not to see them a homogenous menace, or, that because they don’t vote for your party, to cast them aside.

This week, among the flurry of first week of election polls, YouGov presented one fascinating piece of voting intention. Under 50s (not ALL in the first flush of youth) went 59% for Labour, 12% for Greens and 8% for Conservatives.

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It was like transfer deadline day.

Everywhere, on Wednesday, there was fevered speculation about whether or not a general election would be called. And when I say EVERYWHERE, I mean on some Twitter accounts that then copied other Twitter accounts. But it gave political and lobby correspondents a chance to talk like they had the inside line. Except it frequently came off more like a bloke sending a message to Sky Sports that his cousin, who works baggage handling at Manchester Airport, had just seen Mbappe buy the Daily Mirror as he waited for a taxi, so he was DEFINITELY signing for City. Transmuted to Westminster, it meant a reporter saying, I had been due to meet a senior minister for a coffee and HE HAS JUST CANCELLED!

The speculation played out this time. The PM decided not to wait on multiple Rwandan flights or further drops in inflation or changes to NHS waiting lists or a hope that there would be an English buoyancy and good feeling if the English national team did well in the Euros (clearly little faith in Southgate). Instead cashed his chips and decided to let us all decide. Maybe he’d a fortnight in Florida in August booked and didn’t want to miss it.

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Calling it for early July, just after Scottish schools break and many parents are trying to save some money on a holiday for which they’ve been waiting all year, before chiselling prices hit in, doesn’t exactly show a great deal of respect for the Scottish electorate. Or indeed any great concern for their votes.

The announcement came on the same day the government launched a new website with guidance on how to prepare for an emergency “such as flooding, fires and power cuts”. They advise, just for the home (there is other gear needed to keep in the boot of your car): getting a battery or wind-up torch; a portable power bank; battery or wind-up radio; a first aid kit (including tweezers); hand sanitiser or wet wipes; bottled water (up to 10 litres per day); non-perishable food (including a tin opener and something for pets); baby supplies. The general election campaign is going to be a gas!

• Rishi Sunak’s net zero U-turn is a ‘big miscalculation’ that will ultimately backfire. Here’s how
• No Rwanda flights before election, Sunak admits – as calls for urgent asylum reform grow louder

More telling, the announcement allowed the press to move focus from shamed former post office boss Paula Vennells as she was quizzed at the post office inquiry. All those years the sub-postmasters waited to have her exposed to the public glare to see if she’d take finally responsibility for so much that was ruined, and off she pops, quietly, thanks to a prime minister who gave up. Perhaps the buck passing that has marked the statements of post office senior management during their appearances will be called out in the inquiry findings. At some point somebody will be held accountable.

That may not be a campaign topic. There are so many questions that need answered that it will be hard to zone in on just one. So much for the Renters Reform Bill!

At Big Issue, we’re ready to speak for those who have their voice quietened or feel left behind. It will be a general election of change. And we will work to make it positive.

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on Twitter.

A version of this article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

Competence is the new rock ’n’ roll. For a time, everything that was emerging and popular was the new rock ’n’ roll. Comedy was once. So was cookery. For a while kindness was it. Intermittently rock ’n’ roll is the new rock ’n’ roll. It’s a banal language trope. But it serves a useful purpose. Which is fitting as now, after a period of political chaos, a commitment to getting business done in a timely and orderly fashion is the very thing. 

In Scotland, decent and sensible John Swinney is running the country. A year ago he was yesterday’s man, liked by many but not exciting enough to electrify the electorate, and too close to all that had gone before. After a year of Humza Yousaf not really getting anywhere and increasingly failing to unite his party or get policy through, Swinney was seen as the only one for the job, the safe hands in a time of flux. There wasn’t even a leadership challenge within the SNP. In his speech accepting the role of first minister he acknowledged that the things he had to really get hold of were “dry and technical”. 

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This was not the shambolic self-serving charisma of Boris Johnson, promising the world and delivering nothing, but the serious language of serious business. He also put eradicating child poverty at the top of his to-do list – hardly the chatter of a popinjay. 

Incidentally, this is also timely, coming as it does as we launch our Big Issue campaign for an end to poverty as an election commitment from all parties. John, give us a ring. We can talk through it.

In Westminster, though Labour still soar in the polls, the recurring message is that the lead comes despite Keir Starmer, not because of him. He is seen as a leader of good and even sense rather than of inspiration. 

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As a reaction against the flightiness of those who had been in power before – and the disaster of Liz Truss remains a blight the Tories cannot shake – it’s understandable. People want lives of calm with a chance for things getting better. Conversations are not full of political science (unless John Curtice is involved) but rather about failing football managers, and how the neighbour is parking and why the trains don’t run and the roads are full of holes.

Political leaders can make all sorts of claims about how incredibly well they are doing and how things are really getting better. But every one of us feels the reality as lived experience. Make lives better in straightforward ways, not by governing through vapid sloganeering. 

There will always be external factors that impact any election (the debate about how Labour handles reaction to the Gaza/Israel issue is not going to go anywhere, unless accommodation is reached there) but, at risk of getting all Aesop on you, it does feel like it’s time for plodders to win the race.

That said, it could be moot anyway. This week, climate scientists, in a huge poll collected by The Guardian, said we’re goosed. The Earth, they believe, is on a catastrophic climate path sailing right through the 1.5°C global temperature rise this century resulting in a “semi-dystopian future, with famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms”.

Let’s see what the competent nice guys do about that, SHALL WE!?!

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on Twitter.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

Voyager 1 has woken up. Out there, in interstellar space, tens of billions of miles from us, beyond the solar wind, lost in that great silent dark both the Voyager satellites move ahead.  

For some time, Voyager 1 had been transmitting gibberish. It’s hardly surprising. It launched in 1977. Over 12 years ago it had already gone further than any other man-made object ever. But rocket scientists, being, you know, rocket scientists, set about fixing it. I struggle to find the stopcock to fix a leaky tap. They had to repair a broken computer chip on something 15 billion miles away. 

And they did. So now this bundle of metal can keep telling scientists all manner of things. I don’t understand what they’re waiting to hear. Already, the Voyagers, initially conceived to give us some more information about Jupiter and Saturn, have been remarkable in what they’ve found – for instance, 23 new moons in the outer planets of our solar system. 

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All of this is dandy and no doubt helps our understanding of how the universe was formed (I don’t know if it does, but space experts frequently say such things) but that’s not why Voyager 1 and 2 are really interesting. They’re really interesting because of the record. 

Each Voyager carries a gold-plated record encrypted with the knowledge of life on earth. It’s a really glorious creation. It looks beautiful and it says something of the era in which it was conceived that the best way considered to carry information was on a 12-inch record. They’ve also sent a stylus and instructions for use. If life beyond us gets hold of it, and it’s not scratched, and they have a decent record player, secrets will unfold.  

There are sounds of humanity, of the wind, of laughter, there is a greeting in 55 languages, there is whale song (wouldn’t it be amusing if they thought whales ran the shop) and best of all is the music. Carl Sagan oversaw the compilation. This is the heart of things. There is a joyful innocence in thinking, you know, if we get beyond Ursa Minor, into Andromeda, and it’s picked up, I’ll do them a tape.  

Making a compilation of music for somebody else is one of life’s rich joys. It’s a sign of companionship, of sharing, of showing off (a bit) and of realising that when all is said and done, if hope has been lost, or feels temporarily suspended, there is always music.  

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Until quite recently I did a radio slot on BBC Radio 5 Live with Colin Murray, one of the great broadcasters of our time (and an old pal). It was called Midnight Mixtape and was very straightforward. He’d pick a theme and invite listeners to suggest tunes. He and I would then settle on a selection of them. A huge community built around this very simple idea, and for each of them, each piece the music cargoed an ocean of emotion. It was a joy. And a simple wrinkle on an age-old thought. 

On that Voyager mixtape there is, amongst other things, Beethoven, a little Mozart, some music from Benin and Papa New Guinea peoples, there is Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (the dramatic closing moment that many movie score writers have ripped off subsequently). And there is Bach, the only person to appear three times. 

There is an old cliché that Bach is so huge and glorious in the scope of what he wrote that he is evidence of the existence of God. It’s unlikely that saying has got as far as Ursa Minor but how hopeful it is that in the minds of great thinkers looking to extend a hand of welcome, it was Bach that was considered the one to properly, positively reflect mankind among life beyond. 

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on Twitter.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

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 public purse, that it’d be a scaled-down version, that they’d make £100 million available to the host city and that the rest, the odd £30m-£50m, could be raised through commercial means. That’s confidence for you. 

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Glasgow hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2014. It was a fantastic event.  

The sun shone, the streets gleamed, the city felt alive. The event cost £543m. The arguments about
legacy remain. It unquestionably helped lift the city – there is a world-class velodrome that frequently hosts global events, the athletes’ accommodation built in the east end of the city is now occupied by a generation of people on the housing ladder, bringing life and investment, and there will be young athletes who were inspired to take up sport because of it. It also helped remind those outside the place that Glasgow is a great, big, successful European city. 

On the other hand, there is an argument that half a billion spent on infrastructure development with more staying power could have delivered similar outcomes. 

Which brings us to the question of 2026. Should Glasgow host? Or should there be a Commonwealth Games at all. Glasgow, like most major cities, has its own financial pressures at present.  

• Glasgow’s historic buildings have been neglected – but we must not repeat the mistakes of the past
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The city council declared a housing emergency in November. There is a fear of a budget shortfall of £107m over the next three years within the council. Vital services will inevitably be cut. And with vacant city centre properties and streets that could do with some TLC, the city doesn’t feel quite where it was in 2014.  

Inevitably, there will be a public purse burden. Even with the investment from organisers, big projects have a habit of soaking in costs. But what if Glasgow were to say yes? What if the positive influx of people, who’ll spend, boosting the city, the hotels, the restaurants and the theatres, kickstarted something that would have been impossible without a catalyst like the Commonwealth Games.  

Glasgow is on the cusp of something. Amid the inequality there is investment. Big financial employers like Barclays and JP Morgan have been growing their bases in the city. Given how close the Commonwealth Games in 2026 is, this could become a test for similar-sized cities looking for a jump start. Take a massive event, mostly without damaging meagre public resources, see the city improved, then test for lasting boosts. It goes beyond the sporting benefit into something that residents could feel for years. 

If some of the big financial institutions got involved, then things could really go through the gears. The
Commonwealth Games becomes about the common good, not simply a sporting jamboree.

Whether there should actually be a Commonwealth Games at all in this era is a whole other, more complex, issue. 

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on Twitter.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

I’m jealous of Rishi Sunak’s feet. It’s because of the Sambas business. He was pictured this week wearing a pair of boxfresh adidas Sambas during an interview. This led to something between a kerfuffle and a furore.

Sunak matched the classic cult shoe with a pair of his signature tight trousers. While he may have wanted to channel Oasis circa 1995, he was closer to a works function at a No Way Sis gig. The look didn’t land. And Sunak apologised. Which, I suppose, is a way to humanise him.

All I could think was, at least he can wear them. I have wide flat feet. Too many generations of Irish farmers trotting over wet bogs. It means that Sambas and me could never get together. They are a narrow shoe. When I attempted to secure the look and get my feet into a pair of original navy suede Sambas I looked like I’d had an accident. And so I was forever outside that part of the Mod circle.

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I don’t know if the whole thing was staged to allow a conversation that would make Rishi more like the rest of us – look, LOOK, he wears trainers and everything! And then have him laugh at himself when he realises the outcome.

It was the dominant line from the prime minister over the early part of the week. Which is telling. The other really striking photo story of the week was of the farmhouse in Trimingham in North Norfolk which needs to be demolished as the land around it has collapsed into the sea. The erosion which led to the loss of that one house, and several others in recent months, was not caused by the advance of the sea, but by rain. Heavy rain.

Of course, north Norfolk is not the only part of the country to suffer from chaos caused by excess rain in recent times, it’s just the most dramatic image.

And there is no doubt that this is due to climate change. Despite the best efforts of some deniers to claim it’s part of the cyclical nature of weather, the evidence is all around us. At the moment in deep puddles and swollen rivers. In March, it was in temperature. March was the 10^th consecutive hottest month on record for global air and sea temperatures. Yet, despite the chaos brought by the weather, the impact on day to day lives of millions, on the crops in fields, I couldn’t find a line, at time of going to print, from Rishi Sunak, about commitments, new or simply reaffirmed, to doing something about it all.

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Just a few months ago, he backed away from net zero and major British climate promises. He was, he said, on the side of drivers. The freak by election win in Uxbridge and South Ruislip that seemed to be fuelled by anger over the London ULEZ extension has a lot to answer for. When was the last time a by election changed the course of major government policy, and in turn all our futures?

At the time, Sunak also insisted that he’d back new North Sea oil drilling, green lighting the Rosebank development. His argument was that it would help stabilise energy production for the UK and keep jobs in the industry. He didn’t say a lot about the CO2 emissions that would come from burning the potential 300m barrels of oil. Or which nation would see their energy production stabilised.

The warning of 10s of thousands of jobs being lost is the big scare that is frequently used to slow down the green energy production move. It’s a legitimate fear. But it’s unlikely. In an interesting recent report on transition by PWC – yes, I know how to kick back and relax, it’s called The Energy Transition and Jobs report – there is a lot on timelines and how workers can move to fill the green skills gap from sunset jobs (such as jobs in coal-fired power stations). It provides interesting insight.

Among many stats, one jumped out. Even during the energy crisis, it  says, quoting Stuart Wyness, CFO of Stena Drilling, one of the world’s biggest drilling contractors, when you’d expect a ‘huge asset push’ businesses didn’t want to commit to purchasing new drilling equipment. When those whose business is drilling are notifying us of slowdowns it does rather fly in the face of government chat and bluster and makes us question why the government would pull back from the inevitable.

Perhaps Rishi Sunak would meet people whose homes are flooded or are crashing into the sea and tell them. Or maybe he doesn’t want to get his Sambas wet.

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on Twitter.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

I am big fan of Toast of London. At present, I watch, then rewatch, old episodes. It is completely absurd. Things happen without reason, actions have no real consequence, regardless of how outlandish, and reality and time are fluid concepts.

In case you are yet to land on Toast, it is, at heart, based around the life of a failed, or at best failing, Soho-haunting actor and voice-over artiste called Steven Toast. He’s much more convinced of his talent than anybody else. He has no real sense of humour or self-awareness. He messes up every job. His nemesis is Ray ‘bloody’ Purchase. There are characters with names like Clancy Moped, Duncan Clench, Cliff Promise, Jane Plough (pronounced pluff), his chain-smoking agent, and Clem Fandango. Toast really hates Clem Fandango, the sound engineer for his voice-overs.

In Toast’s world Bob Monkhouse is hosting the Royal Variety show (he’s not dead), Toast becomes besotted with the charismatic Jon Hamm, leading to Toast’s father invertedly leaving Hamm everything in his will, and Toast burns down the Globe Theatre to avoid a critical mauling. This barely begins to take us into Toast’s world.

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Co-written by Arthur Mathews, who co-created Father Ted, and Matt Berry, (Toast himself), it does what Father Ted frequently managed – shows up the vacuity, vanity and self-importance of many people and the ludicrousness of things we accept as reality. Some of the episodes are over 10 years old, but they feel increasingly apposite.

We are in the era of absurdity in public life. Take the government’s plan to criminalise rough sleepers. Part of that involved fining rough sleepers £2,500 for being a rough sleeper. That sounds like a Toast subplot. At what point does somebody in the meeting when such an idea is conceived say, hold on there lads, just had a thought – if they had £2,500 maybe they wouldn’t be rough sleeping.

The government is lucky they still have a few good people among them, like Bob Blackman, with the sense and backbone to call out such plans. Asking for deep thinking to get to the heart of why there is rough sleeping in the first place – well that game’s a bogey.

There is also the teetering collapse of Thames Water, a company that passed so much money to shareholders it didn’t reinvest enough in its network, flowed waste with merry abandon into ever more polluted rivers and then said, hold on, if you want us to fix this mess, you, the public, will have to pay almost half as much again on your bill. Cheers! Even Toast might baulk at that particular storyline.

I quite liked this week’s new absurdist wrinkle where keen atheist Richard Dawkins, whose most celebrated work is called The God Delusion, said he was culturally Christian and actually into loads of Christian stuff. Holy smoke!

Every time Rishi Sunak says, I know what the public want, which is the opposite of what every single opinion poll says, I hear it now in Toast’s booming voice, wrong but with so much conviction. Though Toast has better trousers.

The thing about absurdity is that there is rarely a moral, things are nonsensical, outcomes are not helpful and history repeats. The world is a mess, we’re either pushing the stone back up the hill or smacked around the chops by an unwelcome non sequitur.

If Labour are given a chance to break this cycle with a crushing majority at the next general election, they mustn’t waste the opportunity. Such will be their mandate that they’ll have a chance, for a while at least, of rolling the stone over the hill, and fundamentally making change for the better.

A lot of commentators are warning the post-election honeymoon will be brief because public finances will be so bust. But the NHS and the welfare state were birthed during a period when the country was broke. Imagine if a new government went bold rather than meek.

That is not such an absurd thought.

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on Twitter.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

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There is a quiet, absurd nobility to the Sanday Easter egg story. 

To recap, there are 500 people living on Sanday. It’s up there in the Orkney islands, minding its own business, full of beaches and bronze age remnants and Norse names, as close to Norway as it is to Glasgow. Or thereabouts. 

A few weeks ago, Dan Dafydd, owner of Sinclair General Stores on Sanday, ordered Easter eggs for his shop. He thought 80 would be enough. By now, you’ll know Dan made a mistake. He ordered 80 boxes. He ended up with 720 eggs. I don’t know much about Sanday except that Peter Maxwell Davies was from there. So, for a time, I had an image of Dan, eyes fixed on the North Sea, hair billowing around him as he listened to Farewell to Stromness on repeat and contemplated his chocolate future. Go on, Dan. 

Dan has spoken of his “embarrassment”. He has also talked about finding “non-conventional” means to get rid of the eggs. Not sure what that meant at first – was he fashioning them into a large neolithic chocolate henge? 

Turns out, Dan set about raffling some of them with a ‘guess the number’ competition (unless something curious is going on, surely the number is 720) with each guess costing £1. It’s open to non islanders, so given the publicity, there is a chance of a fair sum being raised. The money is going to the RNLI, which makes all sorts of sense for an island community. 

Dan has no reason to feel embarrassment. At some point we have all misordered – the wrong volume, the wrong size, the wrong trousers. We have all been the casualty of lack of online focus. 

And Dan’s is a wholesome tale, like the secondary, very gentle, storyline on a formulaic Sunday evening TV show. I can see why it was widely reported. People need Sanday Easter egg stories.

A report by Dr Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, recently said “young people are really struggling”. For one of the first times, young people are less happy than the older generation in the US. This shift is expected to be repeated in western Europe, though a detailed study isn’t yet available.  

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We all want our children to live at the gates of a brighter future, where their opportunities are brighter than our own. That’s not to say ours were bad, but it’s a natural instinct to wish them better. The US report doesn’t explain it – though Dr Murthy has been warning over the toxic impact of social media for some time. 

There is more to it, no doubt. The spiralling cost of housing, the diminishing chances of work that pays and brings security, the existential threat of climate change. It’s a wonder a younger generation isn’t simply nihilistic. 

When Mel Stride, the minister for work and pensions, cautions that UK attitudes to mental health have gone too far, making it too easy for people to get signed off work and that there are 150,000 with mental health conditions he wants to get back into work, I’m uneasy. It may be that there needs to be a change in assessment for some, but by finger pointing he immediately makes anybody suffering subject to accusations that they’re at it.

Given we’ve taken the best part of a generation to get people to talk about mental ill health, Stride’s is an unhelpful intervention. The Centre for Mental Health calculated recently that the annual societal cost of mental ill health is £300 billion. You could argue about the thoroughness of those figures. It’s a very chunky number. But clearly, getting to grips with it will take more than Stride’s insistence that, in effect, a load of folk need to pull themselves together. 

And this is a why a story about the over-ordering of Easter eggs on a tiny Scottish island matters. It offers an alternative, even for a moment, to the diet of doom. It will not change things on a big scale. But it will offer a buoy in a moment of choppiness. 

Here’s to you Dan Dafydd, and your bad maths. Here’s to you. 

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on Twitter.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

I like the spat between Sir James Dyson and Jeremy Hunt. According to insiders – you know INSIDERS! – the chancellor didn’t take Dyson’s criticism of his economic policy well. The pair met in Downing Street a week or so ago.  

Dyson has been very vocal in support of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini budget. I suppose if you’re a billionaire you’re somewhat insulated from crippling mortgage rises. 

According to a source – you know a SOURCE! – the bagless vacuum king has been so annoyed recently at government fiscal plans, and at corporation tax deadweighting growth, that he has been writing “quite aggressive letters” to the treasury. So Hunt had him in for a meeting. On a sidenote here, if you’re not getting responses to your letters to government, keep going! You never know! 

Anyway, the meeting didn’t go well. According to somebody familiar with the meeting – you know FAMILIAR! – it was “fiery” and ended up with Hunt telling Dyson if he thought he could do a better job of being chancellor, well, why didn’t he bloody go and do that then. Or words to that effect. At this point, in my mind, big Brexiteer Dyson made a catty remark about the hand dryers at No 11 being useless and flounced out. Though there is no evidence for this. 

I quite like Hunt’s impatience. It doesn’t say much for a coherent fiscal policy, but at least shows a human side and one that, in a moment of frustrated clarity, probably illustrates that the chancellor himself realises he has run out of road. 

And maybe Dyson has a point. There isn’t going to be much growth in the engine until you do something to get the engine running. Dyson speaks as believer in entrepreneurship being the solution. There is nothing wrong with entrepreneurship, but eventually that does rather help the entrepreneur, or at least the shareholders he grows to serve, and perhaps not the population as a whole. 

Rachel Reeves, who is looking most likely to move into No 11 after the election, has been saying she is, essentially, going to go for a slow and steady approach. Because, as we all know, voters love politicians who can illustrate they understand the moral of one of Aesop’s Fables. But that doesn’t feel like it’ll cut any mustard, certainly not with the quite aggressive letter writer. 

How about somebody stands up for social democracy. I know it’s a bit out of fashion, something of a commitment to full or close to full employment, honest and fair redistribution of taxes, properly functioning, rather than punitive, welfare state, essential utilities in public ownership for the greater good, proper comprehensive education at a level that works across the board and good and available social homes.  

There are elements of social democracy as a political plan returning. Recently, mayor of West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin and Glasgow City Council announced they would follow the lead of Andy Burnham, Greater Manchester mayor, and look to bring buses back into public control. This is clearly a good thing and preserves essential routes, is better for the environment and helps keep costs down for users.  

The list of recently failed private train companies who had to be bailed out by the public purse is long. Rail provision as a publicly owned utility always plays well in opinion polls. 

Reinvestment in publicly held services from money generated by those services could help growth, without seeing money trousered by a gilded few. 

Alan Bennett once wrote about never having had to tread the “dreary safari from left to right”. At present, with an election looming, the move in the other direction is one that a lot of people will make, but without as much enthusiasm as they might wish to have.  

Imagine if shackles were loosened and a radical, deliverable, plan for social democracy rose up. Quite aggressive letters would just float away. 

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on Twitter.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play