Innholdsfortegnelse for 09-09-19 i The Big Issue

In France last week they were obsessed with a big cock. Stop it. Really. I know you’ll insert your own Brexit/ Boris punchline. I shouldn’t have said insert… This is all going terribly Frankie Howerd. As it happens, the story is about Maurice, a four-year-old cockerel with a penchant for very loud early-morning calls. Maurice saw his future – with or without a head – become a driving concern. It’s a story that went beyond France and picked up heat internationally. Maurice lives on the Île d’Oléron, a nice-looking place just off the western coast, a little south of La Rochelle. Every morning at 6.30am Maurice, as cockerels are wont to, sounds a dawn greeting. But this was too much for a couple who had a holiday home nearby. Retired…

Two Stockholm students are rewriting the narrative for homeless people by using their handwriting to create a new font. Julia Pagmar and Moa Pålstedt created the ‘One Letter, One Story’ typeface as part of their design course at Bergh’s School of Communication. The classmates collected the letters from people they met while serving food at shelters, having 26 people each write down the first letter of their name. Pagmar said: “Some opened up and told us about their childhood, how they became homeless and how they stayed positive.” The student hopes that the project will highlight that people experiencing homelessness are individuals, adding: “As you can see, each person has a different style.”…

A man approached me on a station platform and with poor English indicated to me that a small child of his was at Heathrow airport and his pockets were empty. “No nothing,” he said. I gave him £20. When I got on the next train he was still on the platform talking to other people with his hand out. Once in Los Angeles I met a woman in a laundromat and she asked me for $5 for her gas bill. I said that seems a very small bill and she screwed up her face and said, “Don’t motherfuck me man, I’m just trying to get $5 from a lot a people.” I said “So how much is the bill?” She said $320. I had just sold three prints of some…

01 Vendors will be able to obtain a card reader from iZettle through The Big Issue at a discounted price. 02 To use the device, vendors download iZettle’s app on to a smartphone and pair it with the reader through Bluetooth. 03 They can then enter the £2.50 amount into the app and it will appear on the device for customers to tap with their card or enter their card and key in their PIN code. 04 And that’s it! The iZettle reader is wireless and has eight hours of battery life, meaning vendors can work on their pitch all day without recharging.…

Danika uses the dynamic nature of watercolours to capture the raw extremities of thoughts and feelings she experiences – the depths of depression, the heights of elation and the questions of our existence as a whole. She lives in Brighton and has ongoing mental health issues. One of her main motivations is to inspire others as to the benefits of creativity for well-being. Danika is an artist with Creative Future. More of her work can be viewed at: creativefuture.org.uk BOOKS A short story collection that takes flight Jane Graham FILM Henry Cavill – no cape, not even a doublet Graeme Virtue RADIO Great news! Kevin Eldon will see us now Robin Ince MUSIC Autumn’s grim. Thank heaven for new releases Malcolm Jack The work on this page is created by…

01 The Talented Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation by Jeff Chang Snapshots of hip-hop from its authentic beginnings among those who made a movement out of the little they had, to hip-hop’s co-option by commercialism. Ends prophetically, calling for figures like Kendrick Lamar and J Cole years before they blew up. 02 Where You’re At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip Hop Planet by Patrick Neate Exceptional writer Neate sees how hip-hop has assimilated into cultures around the world. The first book on hip-hop I read that captures the feeling of being inside the scene. 03 The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop, and Why It Matters by Tricia Rose Legendary British rapper Ty (thanks bro!)…

M&S, Barnstaple Most days, 10am-3pm I was homeless in Exeter, sleeping on the streets. It was horrendous. It was the winter of 2015-2016 and I’d been working as an engineer but when I lost the job I lost my flat. I couldn’t believe it had happened to me. The horrible part is that you’ve got nowhere to go to unwind and you haven’t got a base to operate from. There were two Polish guys I used to team up with at night and we’d sleep in an open garage. It was -5C, we’d put cardboard and sleeping bags down and sleep in threes. In the mornings we’d be freezing cold, waiting for McDonald’s to open at 6am to get a coffee. Then in 2016 I was booked into a hostel…

A few weeks ago we told you how independent bookshop and Big Issue Changemaker Big Green Shop had started an ambitious fundraiser to get Greta Thunberg’s book, No One is Too Small To Make a Difference , to kids around the country. The bookshop’s co-founder Simon Key told The Big Issue that they will start sending 8,000 copies of the book to 800 schools this week after they smashed expectations to raise £12,705. Publisher Penguin vowed to match that figure. Key said: “It’s stuff like this that really keeps me fired up and motivated to keep banging on about books. “It’s not just about climate change, it’s about kids believing in themselves, they are not too small to make a difference.”…

The Big Issue: What does history show us about the pitfalls Boris Johnson must be aware of? Steve Richards: Each prime minister is guaranteed a honeymoon – there aren’t that many guarantees in British politics but that’s one of them. They all enjoy an opinion poll bounce, their colleagues are terrified of them because they’ve just been elected and they wield great power. They themselves think they are special because they have received the Shakespearean crown. The honeymoons are really intoxicating. And Johnson shows every sign of being mesmerised by the power. But one of the things I learned from writing the book is that prime ministers quite often sow the seeds of their own fall during this time of intoxicating power. In your look at Theresa May in the…

Last week Ofsted announced it would begin measuring cultural capital as part of its school inspection framework. Yasmin Ibison, founder of youth arts project Critics’ Club, thinks it risks entrenching the white, middle-class face of theatres, galleries and museums in the UK. But she is working on the front line to do what many think the government won’t – getting disadvantaged children to engage with the arts while ending the cycle that leaves them undervalued and underfunded. After graduating from the University of Birmingham last year with a degree in French and Spanish, Ibison moved to London where she enrolled in social innovation course Year Here. While completing a five-month placement working with sixth formers, she was shocked to see that even the students studying drama and arts didn’t engage…

Ever-popular vendor Easton Christian will be among the first to get his hands on an iZettle reader. The 64-year-old, who sells the magazine at London’s White City, said: “I’ve definitely noticed a dip in the number of people carrying cash, which has had a knock-on effect on the number of magazines that I’m able to sell.” Norwich vendor Simon Gravell has seen success since he got his card reader at the beginning of July. The 51-year-old has taken to wearing a sandwich board-style sign on his pitch outside Topshop in the Norfolk city to let customers know that he is accepting a new payment method. “In the first month I had a card reader I did 63 sales off the reader. In the second month I had hit that mark…

SCOTLAND Waterstones, Sauchiehall St, Glasgow Tesco, Ingram Street, Glasgow Tesco, Halbeath, Dunfermline Tesco, Tantallon, North Berwick WALES Costa Coffee, St Catherine’s Walk, Carmarthen Co-op, High Street, Fishguard Tesco, Mermaid Quay, Cardiff Bay SOUTH WEST Bristol Temple Meads Co-op, Gloucester Rd, Bristol Bluebird Tea, Park St, Bristol Lush, Union St, Bath Lloyds Bank, Three Horseshoes Shopping Centre, Warminster M&S, Regent St, Swindon Sainsbury’s, Christchurch Rd, Boscombe, Bournemouth Waitrose, West St, Bridport Café Nero, St Thomas St, Weymouth Costa Coffee, Friarsgate, Winchester Exeter St David’s Co-op, Mutley Plain, Plymouth M&S, Lemon Quay, Truro Mallets, Victoria Square, Truro ENGLAND Sainsbury’s, Eden Street, Saltburn Flower Stall, High Street, Solihull Nottingham Rail Station McDonald’s, Clumber St, Nottingham M&S, West Bridgford, Nottingham Waitrose, High St, Daventry Co-op, Earlsdon St, Earlsdon, Coventry Blackwells, Broad St, Oxford Sainsbury’s,…

“Pan,” Captain Hook cries out during their final battle, “who and what art thou?” Back comes the cocky reply “I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg” – a remark that JM Barrie’s narrator dismisses as “nonsense”. But it would be equally nonsensical to expect any definition to fit Peter Pan without him giving it the slip. Lost child, action hero, egotistical monster, practical joker… you can’t pin him down any more than you can catch hold of your own reflection. Since his first stage appearance, he has starred in countless theatrical productions worldwide, played by both male and female actors, and in at least 10 major films. In ET, a mother reads her daughter the episode in which Tinker Bell is brought…

Is Henry Cavill out of time? I don’t mean to suggest the strapping 36-year-old is not long for this world, or that his post-Superman career is in an unrecoverable tailspin. It’s just that this big, beautiful English beefcake has forever been plugged into period pieces, as if being exposed to wifi might be his Kryptonite. The frisky 16th-century drama The Tudors was Cavill’s TV breakout. Before that, he and his chiselled chin-dimple had featured as handsome window dressing in would-be epics like The Count Of Monte Cristo and Tristan & Isolde. His first headlining movie role was as Minotaur-wrangling Theseus in The Immortals, just before he donned the Man Of Steel cape to play another hero who harks back to a different age. Until the most recent Mission: Impossible, it…

PM Boris Johnson had a shocker of a first week in Parliament. What’s the worst humiliation you’ve faced in a new job? Bridget Sarah Graham High-stakes stress at an exceptional time. Very few of us start a new job having to deal with that – thank goodness! Katharine Meader Any humiliation would fade away compared to this government. Seema Arora Even his family are turning their back on him. @SherlockFBNL Telling my colleagues after a night to the theatre I hated the lead actor. And one of my colleagues said: “That’s actually my cousin.” @EStudentin Stumbling in high heels and spraining my ankle while waving to my crush. He eventually married me anyway, so maybe not everything is lost for Boris yet. @jdmorrison71 I fell down some metal spiral stairs…

Boris Johnson’s administration announced £54m to end homelessness in last week’s Spending Round – but pledged nothing new for housing. Chancellor Sajid Javid said the “human cost” of homelessness is “too high” as he revealed the new funds that took spending up to £422m. Big Issue founder and crossbench peer Lord John Bird said: “It’s time to get to the root causes of destitution – illiteracy, low skills, high living costs, insecure work, low pay, family problems and an ineffective welfarism – and not just focus on the symptoms of poverty.” Homelessness campaigners hoped Javid would end the five-week wait for Universal Credit payments or raise local housing allowance. Faye Greaves, policy officer at the Chartered Institute of Housing, said: “An extra £54m for tackling homelessness is good but we’re…

At 16 I was just beginning to find my voice. I began life in Sri Lanka, then moved to Ghana when I was five, then England, so I’d been an immigrant twice over already. I think I understood even when I was five that life didn’t seem to be going well for us Tamils in Sri Lanka, and my parents were moving to Africa with great optimism. I’ve never bought into this idea of Africa as the dark continent where everything goes wrong. For us, Africa is where things started going right. As a younger child in Ghana I was very timid. I arrived in school in England when I was 11 and by 16 I was beginning to be a bit more confident, able to express myself. Thinking I…

Contactless payments now far outweigh cash transactions, with one in five Brits ditching notes and coins entirely, while tapping a card against a reader accounted for 5.6 billion payments last year. That means Big Issue vendors, working hard for a living across the country, were financially excluded by only accepting cash. We have seen that reality take hold in recent times so that’s why we decided to do something about it. Some enterprising vendors have already decided to take it upon themselves to offer cashless payments. But we want to give everyone who sells The Big Issue the opportunity to have a card reader so we launched a trial with iZettle in December to assess how it could be done. The Swedish firm report that 80 per cent of their…

Vendors come to The Big Issue with a whole range of challenges. Many of them have no o›ficial papers, no ID, no bank accounts and no banking history. They are members of “the unbanked”. Part of our mission in helping prevent poverty and the causes of poverty is to allow those men and women outside to find their way back in so they have the tools to dictate the terms of their own lives. The iZettle project is a vital part of this. It means allowing people to enjoy financial freedom. There are various steps, some small, some complex, but all help people to ultimately help themselves. Given that society is increasingly cashless, the need to be part of this system has grown. That might mean, for example, helping them…

Downton Abbey first aired on September 26 2010. Sunday nights were never the same again. Huge audiences tuned into ITV to watch the developing romance between Matthew Crawley and Lord and Lady Grantham’s eldest daughter, Lady Mary; the dastardly activities of servants O’Brien and Thomas; or just to catch a glimpse of Isis the dog. At the dawn of the age of austerity, audiences lapped up a tale of benevolent wealthy landowners and their loyal servants and the show became a global smash, with the version of Britishness created by writer Julian Fellowes having particular appeal to US viewers. Once the show reached the US in January 2011, its status as a global phenomenon was sealed – with the series airing in 250 territories worldwide, attracting a worldwide audience in…

Tel Aviv-based Etgar Keret is no household name in the UK. But his short stories, graphic novels and screenplays have been enchanting a growing band of international followers for over 20 years. There aren’t many Israeli authors writing in Hebrew whose work has been translated into almost 50 languages (‘including Farsi!’ the press release for his new collection Fly Already delightedly informs us). But Keret’s conversational style is so irresistible, his dialogue so unpretentious and authentic, his throwaway one-liners so damn funny, it’s hard to imagine any reader with a sense of humour and a curiosity about humankind not being charmed by his work. Martin Amis once said Henry James was a great writer, but not always a good host. He often took sport in displaying his intellectual superiority, like…

The American Dream has rarely looked so curdled than in Midnight Cowboy, a bruising movie about hustling on the mean streets around Times Square in the late 1960s. It won three Oscars – including Best Picture – but the film’s key cultural legacy might be the universal urge to shout “Hey, I’m walkin’ here!” to evoke a particular aggrieved New York state of mind. This week’s 50th anniversary re-release offers a chance to admire the two excellent performances at its core: Dustin Hoffman as peerless gutter fink Ratso and Jon Voight as the golden slowpoke new in town. Midnight Cowboy is in cinemas from September 13…

It’s around this time of year with another summer a full three seasons away that nature presents us with a stark choice: scream despairingly into the void, or find something else to look forward to. Laid out ahead like a well-fluffed comfort blanket, the new music release schedule for autumn-winter – or as industry types call it, rather less sentimentally, “quarter four” – proffers just such crumbs of consolation. It’s traditionally the music business’s busiest phase each year not because it’s all about fleecing spend-happy back-to-uni students out of their loans and getting everyone shopping good and early for Christmas, but because it’s when our favourite artists take it upon themselves to generously help light up the drawing-in nights and warm our hearts and souls as temperatures plummet. OK fine,…

A hand up, not a handout... Our sellers BUY every copy of the magazine for £1.25 and sell it for £2.50. Trade, not aid… Which is why we ask you to ALWAYS take your copy of the magazine. Our sellers are working and need your custom. Poverty is indiscriminate… That is why we provide ANYONE whose life is blighted by poverty with the opportunity to earn a LEGITIMATE income. The right to citizenship… The Big Issue Foundation, our charitable arm, helps sellers tackle social and financial exclusion. Prevention… Big Issue Invest offers backing and investments to social enterprises, charities and businesses which deliver social value to communities.…