Innholdsfortegnelse for 07-05-20 i The Big Issue

letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @SharonGChiara Big lover of @BigIssue & enjoyed this thought-provoking article by @rcbregman “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas lying around”- Milton Friedman #UniversalBasicIncome @jacky_writes One of my favourite pages in @BigIssue is the fact checking. Every myth is something I’ve seen shared by fam/friends, it’s SO easy to fall into the trap of misinformation and it’s SO dangerous. @LauraMa82162322 Just brought from McColls, going to subscribe, glad to see your keeping up the good work..stay safe one and all Sally Potter Subscribed online from today. Really pleased to read that the vendor I know best, Nick, and Briony are OK, good luck to all you vendors, stay safe!…

MY BINGE-WORTHY BOXSETS I’ve been loving Mae Martin’s sitcom Feel Good (above) on Channel 4 and catching up with Pose, the series about the New York ballroom scene of the 1980s. I’d never watched 24 Hour Party People but I used to live in Manchester and miss it quite a lot, and that was really good fun. There’s a little nod to The Trip in that film, the early rapport between Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. MY SOUNDTRACK There’s a cool but retro band called Litany I’ve had almost on loop. The brilliant DJ and record producer Andrew Weatherall was a friend of mine. I’ve been listening to his work since he died, the original Primal Scream stuff that he worked on, lots of really extraordinary music that he produced.…

Language is breath. Its inspiration, a hunger. Its release, an appeasement of trauma, stress, after years of coping alone. As a child growing up in the Seventies, reading and writing offered an imaginative outlet, a vital, addictive escape from a daily, disruptive violence. Home is home; you may not feel safe, but it is the only one you know. One day at school my teacher questioned me about the bruises on my arms. I was confused, unsure what words I should use. Even at five years old I knew telling the truth would not help me. And so I made up a story. I said I had fallen out of a tree. As she smiled, comforting me, I realised how that story had helped me. It made the truth less…

Now that everybody who appears on TV is trapped in a little Zoom box, buffeted by watery, gurgling wifi connections, an uneasy uniformity has been established. We have realised that even incredibly famous and important people have shit spare rooms, unattractive soft furnishings and children who barge in unannounced. And no matter how you try to spin it, there’s just no way to hide the fact that every human being on Earth looks like a jacket potato in a front-facing camera. It’s never been so obvious that television is just smoke, decent lighting and mirrors, which seems like a good time to talk about Talking Pictures TV. Occupying a space in the netherworld of Freeview between the OH REALLY? channel and Now That’s What I Call Six Hours of Rick…

Days I'll remember all my life. That’s the line of a favourite song of mine sung by the wonderful singer Kirsty MacColl [a cover of a 1968 Kinks song]. I’ve been playing it a lot recently. In times like this the familiar is comforting to me, reassuring. And I will remember these days, because these days, these times are like no other. I am lucky, in that I’m a writer, and I’m used to imposing a routine on my day, because I have to, and I want to get on with my story. I have a time and a place to do it, and so I’m used to being inside, four walls around me and a closed door. So these days of self-isolation are much the same for me. Except…

The Big Issue: If we know we're not the best artist and can’t create perfect pictures, what should we aim to create? Sarah McIntyre: It’s not always the perfect drawings we really connect with (and possibly share on social media), it’s the pictures that make us laugh. Or the ones that feel relatable. I’d say, rather than trying for perfection, aim for connection: draw something that makes your child smile, or gives granny a good belly laugh. Sometimes the drawings where we’re being a bit silly turn out to have the most life to them. Why is perfection not the most important goal? When we aim for something epic – like creating a 300-page graphic novel when we’ve never even drawn a comic strip before – we inevitably get lost…

01 Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi This autobiographical graphic novel about an independent girl, growing up in Iran and moving to Europe on her own, has deservedly become a classic. It’s combination of the personal and the political rendered in striking black and white, and works very well by being both honest and raw. 02 Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier This is not only about sisterhood, it’s also about children dealing with illness and mortality, and it does so in a very engaging, moving, thoughtful way that is never too scary or too dark. 03 El Deafo by Cece Bell A heartwarming graphic memoir about growing up with hearing loss and trying to fit in. It’s a real page-turner and made us both laugh out loud more than once. 04 The Prince…

Among the cancellation of everything fun forever (remember fun?), the most heartbreaking cancellation is of course that of the Eurovision Song Contest – the television event of any year, and yes, I am aware of the Olympics. As a replacement for the annual transnational festival of high camp, bitchery and over-the-top song on the night (Saturday May 16) when the final would have been broadcast live from Rotterdam’s Ahoy Arena (seriously, that’s what it’s called), you could always watch the BBC’s Eurovision: Come Together, a highlights package of classic moments from through the years hosted by Graham Norton, featuring pre-recorded performances by stars who had been scheduled to compete this year. Or better still, through the power of the internet and your imagination, you could join me on the couch……

A hand up... Proceeds from sales of this magazine are being used to tide over our vendors until they can get back to work on their pitches. Not a handout… In ordinary circumstances our vendors buy magazines for half the cover price and sell at full price, keeping the difference. They earn a legitimate income, and gain valuable social and employability skills. With your support now, we will continue to do so once the crisis has passed. 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.…

They drift up like smoke signals on the horizon. We search eagle-eyed for stories of positive turns. Look there, South Korea one day reports no new cases. And over that way, the death toll is steadily dropping in Spain. Schools are reopening in Denmark. Hairdressers too. In Switzerland they’re also allowing the barbers to dust down their chairs. When, like me, you have become little more than a hairball with eyes, that is succour. And I think it’s OK to say so. There is a bit of fear over holding up such things as both missed and important in the teeth of ongoing agonies of loss that so many face, in life and in livelihoods. But we need the light and must allow it to run through the cracks. In…

FROM CUSTOMERS I would like to send a message of support to my Big Issue vendor Bianca. She sells the magazine in Wolverhampton city centre by Clarks shoe shop and always has a lovely friendly smile. We always have a chat. Please let her know I am missing seeing her, I hope she and her son are safe and well and look forward to buying my Big Issue from her as soon as she can get back to her pitch. Sarah Daybell We miss your lovely smile and greeting Monica in Woodbridge, Suffolk. We hope you and your family are well. We hope you are coping with the home schooling. We are buying our copy of Big Issue from McColl’s in our home village and appreciate it very much but…

It’s surprising the amount of people who are against social mobility who are themselves socially mobile. That means they are not ground down, don’t have to attend foodbanks, and are not living on the paltry amount awarded to most recipients of Universal Credit. They are not the working poor. They are not stuck somewhere where life is grim. Yet there they are, saying things like social mobility suggests getting people to aspire out of their class or social situation, thus leaving other poor people behind. I of course am socially mobile, and have been for most of my life. Because education and skills training obtained through the prison service and the youth reformatory system enabled me to up my game with regard to work and socialising. Hence my ability to…

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler are giants of children’s literature. Books featuring their most famous creation, The Gruffalo, have sold more than 17 million copies and their latest collaboration, The Smeds and the Smoos, was the bestselling new picture book of 2019. Parents with young children isolating at home will be more familiar then ever with Donaldson and Scheffler’s stories. Together they created special panels using their characters to explain social distancing to young kids (see below). Scheffler also illustrated Coronavirus: A Book for Children, explaining to young readers how you catch it, the measures used to tackle it, and more helpful information to put kids’ minds at rest. It has already been downloaded more than a million times. Following that, the pair were keen to support The Big Issue…

Time to put your creative skills to the test – follow in Axel Scheffler's footsteps and design a cover for The Big Issue! We’re on a quest to find Britain’s brightest young artists. Our Spring Cover Competition is seeking entries from artists of 12 years and under to draw or paint a design for a magazine cover that will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people. The theme is HEROES, it could be based around the NHS, community champions delivering food parcels to those most in need or it could simply be their favourite superhero who is inspiring kids through lockdown. The winning entry will be on the cover of The Big Issue magazine, brightening up the day for our subscribers and grabbing the attention of new customers who…

There’s a line in a recent interview with novelist Naoise Dolan which encapsulates what makes her such an intriguing fiction writer. Explaining why she’s unsuited to small talk she says, “I need to know the underlying purpose, why things are the way they are, which means I discover why people act the way they do when others wouldn’t have to analyse that behaviour. I can explain why people do things in a way that completely spooks them.” Dolan’s debut Exciting Times is swooping up plaudits, mostly from critics enthusiastically calling her the new Sally Rooney, or critics attacking the lazy journalists who call her the new Sally Rooney. The comparison is hardly an insult, but it’s based more on the territory they share (young Irish women scrutinising the complexities of…

The Assistant On digital platforms now At some point Hollywood will surely make a Harvey Weinstein movie, and it will probably end on an inspirational note – the fall from grace as finally, the predator gets what’s coming to him. But I doubt that film will match the intelligence of The Assistant, one of the earliest dramas about #MeToo, written and directed by Kitty Green. It’s a claustrophobic slow-burn indie following the day in the life of the PA to a bullying New York film mogul, clearly based on Weinstein. Cleverly, Green never shows us the monster in the flesh. (Why bother? We already know from the newspapers and Weinstein’s trial what went on when the door was closed). What interests Green is how an entire company creates a culture…

NEED HELP? Why not get together with other Big Issue readers @BigIssue; @bigissueuk; facebook.com/bigissueuk Get the answers in next week's mag! Good luck 1 & 2. What is the only palindromic band to have a palindromic UK Top 10 hit…and name the song. 3. Who invented the printing press in 1440? 4. Margaret Thatcher was the first, but who was the second longest-serving UK Prime Minister of the 20th century? 5. What is Alan Partridge’s middle name? 6. In which year did the Spanish Civil War start? 7. Which UK sandwich chain was founded by Jeffrey Hyman in 1983? 8. Which Hollywood legend was born Archibald Leach in Bristol in 1904? 9. According to Guinness World Records, what is the world’s most venomous spider? 10. Which US state is Helena…

‘Reading is an escape for me. It’s compulsive’ JACK RICHARDSON, 42 PITCH WAS: Bird & Blend Tea, Park Street, Bristol We’re working hard to support vendors throughout the Covid-19 lockdown after we were forced to temporarily stop them from selling on the streets for their own safety. That has meant ensuring they have supermarket vouchers to buy food or help to cover utility bills – but it is also means meeting needs that affect their wellbeing. For Bristol vendor Jack Richardson that need was for more books. Jack, who has ADHD and Asperger’s syndrome, dives into reading to combat depression and the speed at which he goes through books is remarkable – he’s read all of the 150 books he owns while in lockdown, some for the sixth time. As…