Innholdsfortegnelse for 06-02-2017 i The Big Issue

WE BELIEVE in a hand up, not a handout... Which is why our sellers BUY every copy of the magazine for £1.25 and sell it for £2.50. WE BELIEVE in 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. WE BELIEVE poverty is indiscriminate… Which is why we provide ANYONE whose life is blighted by poverty with the opportunity to earn a LEGITIMATE income. WE BELIEVE in the right to citizenship… Which is why The Big Issue Foundation, our charitable arm, helps sellers tackle social and financial exclusion. WE BELIEVE in prevention… Which is why Big Issue Invest offers backing and investments to social enterprises, charities and businesses which deliver social value to communities.…

So you see, says Nigel Tufnel, these go up to 11. It’s a classic moment in Spinal Tap, Tufnel explaining why his band are louder than the rest. Triumphantly he shows that while all other amps go to 10 Tap’s go to 11. What could be better? 11! But why, he is asked, not just make 10 a bit louder and make that the loudest? He pauses, a look of forlorn resignation growing on his face. But these go up to 11… This is where we are. We’re in the ‘these go up to 11’ period of politics and broad social policy. Questions around elements of great change are met with excited claims that the alternative WILL be better, because it just will. Stop being so negative. Stop whining. A…

Big Issue founder John Bird has told the country’s aspiring business greats to help rethink the economics of poverty. In a speech for LBS Sloan fellows at the London Business School, Lord Bird said millions were being wasted without addressing the root causes of poverty. “It’s expensive to keep people poor,” said Lord Bird. “It costs the UK £1m, on average, to produce one Big Issue vendor. Eighty per cent of our vendors grew up in local authority care, which costs £15,000 a month, up to £250,000 a year.” Lord Bird also criticised underinvestment in schools and education, highlighting that around 30 per cent of the children who fail at school go on to form a large percentage of the prison population and long-term unemployed. “We’re spending millions every year…

“Are these people really architects? Or are they engineers of social collapse and social illnesses?” Going out of an exit from Victoria Station that I rarely use, I suddenly am thrown back to my childhood and early manhood. There is the café I visited many decades ago, and I stand and look at it as if I have been suddenly transported to a museum; and the café is an exhibit. I then know round the corner will be the Victoria Palace, and The Crazy Gang, a throwback to the ’30s and ’40s – even before my time – will be doing their regular shows. I know also around by the side of the station there will be the cinema that shows only cartoons and that you pay for a morning…

EXPERT VOICE Dr Mark Taubert is clinical director for palliative medicine, Velindre Cancer Centre, Cardiff, @DrMarkTaubert dyingmatters.org; twitter.com/ BywNawr There is a phenomenon I witness increasingly in my palliative care hospital work. Patients and those close to them ask: “What caused my cancer, is negativity to blame? Can I help defeat my cancer if I remain positive and optimistic at all times?” Cause and effect is a big topic in my clinics. There are of course some clearer associations, for example smoking and certain types of cancer, but what about cancer being associated with being a negative, pessimistic sort of person? “You just have to stay positive, doctor, if not you’d just have to give up, right?” Positivity is everywhere at the moment. Donald Trump often says that his mentor…

ANTI-FASCIST GROOVE This is London calling to the world that they were going to Rock Against Racism. The Clash were one of the bands who played in Victoria Park on April 30, 1978, and this picture of Paul Simonon was taken by Syd Shelton who documented the RAR movement, which at a time when the nation was divided on racist lines helped bring people together. Shelton captured images from protests across the UK, including the Anti-Anti Mugging March (right) in response to the National Front’s Anti-Mugging March in Lewisham in 1977. His vivid photographs have been brought together for a touring exhibition.…

The BBC rarely celebrates 23rd anniversaries but last week Radio 4 Extra did. In January 1994, a partly improvised series by two of the most vivid, absurd and imaginative creators in comedy was broadcast on Radio 3, a station revered more for its Stockhausen content than its comedy output. Peter Cook was near the end of his career, for all the lows that pundits pore over, every decade contained things of brilliance too. Chris Morris was about to make his name beyond Radio 4 with the incisive news parody The Day Today. Rather than mock the increasingly preposterous news media to extinction, it seemed to inspire them to become more ridiculous than the satire. Why Bother? is a series of 10-minute conversations between Arthur Streeb-Greebling and Chris Morris in the…

To celebrate the 2017 Academy Awards on February 26 we have three sets of Oscar-winning films to give away from The Criterion Collection UK. The legendary Joan Crawford was awarded Best Actress in a leading role for her iconic performance in MILDRED PIERCE (main image) at the 1945 Oscars. A new special edition Blu-ray of Mildred Pierce is released on February 27 packed with extra features, including a feature-length documentary on Crawford’s life and work plus the story of what happened on the actual night of the ceremony… In 1935 IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT made a clean sweep of the top five awards – Best Picture, Best Actor for Clark Gable, Best Actress for Claudette Colbert, Best Director for Frank Capra and Best Writing/Adaptation for Robert Riskin. HERE COMES MR…

Sharing is caring When I lived in Flemish Belgium a couple of years ago, consumers had the chance of signing up for a ‘groepsaankoop’ (group-purchase), organised, I think, by the local authority. Households in a district could buy electricity collectively, so getting a lower than average price from the supplier. You could also opt for ‘green’ energy, guaranteed generated from renewables only. I wonder if anyone has thought of a similar scheme here in the UK? Richard Tagart, West Sussex Hope trumps fear I was saddened by Damian Barr’s Forward together in this age of uncertainty [Comment, Jan 23-29], particularly the line: “I haven’t felt this anxious since I was a child.” Now, I don’t know Damian Barr but I would guess he probably has a good job, lives in…

ART BY DAVID BIRD “I have a history of mental illness, I was homeless in 2008 and I went into hospital,” says David. “I still live in vulnerable housing – I am a carer for my mum now and I sleep on a sofa in a small flat. After being bullied at work I had a breakdown. I like drawing to deal with anxiety and depression. I am hopeful, I try to build a bright future.” SITTING HERE BY DARREN GREG JOHNSON Sitting here… Sitting here freezing cold I try and remember what I was told About the way to live my life avoiding trouble, avoiding strife. I walked around with greatest care but still, I didn’t get anywhere ‘Bloomin well try,’ they’d shout out loud… I gave my all,…

“I’m absolutely gutted there’s been no Labour woman prime minister or deputy prime minister” I was a fuming teenager. They talk about the angry young man – I was the angry young woman. I looked at my mother cooking my dad’s breakfast, then his dinner, not having been able to practise as a lawyer even though she’d qualified because she had to prioritise being a housewife. And I thought no way, that’s not going to be me. I didn’t want to accept a world in which the only value of a woman was whether she looked good. My mother never said to us, I want you to have the opportunities that I didn’t. She didn’t wring her hands. That would have been like complaining, not accepting her role. She just…

“If every displaced child stood holding hands, the line would stretch the circumference of the world” There is a picture, a photo, which always comes to mind when talking about the refugee crisis. Taken in 2001, it shows a dilapidated boat full of desperate people seeking asylum. There is a mother, holding her child in the air, pleading. It is just a single moment, and yet, this one photo was the moment when I became acutely aware of the millions of people seeking asylum, and the moment I realised how easily we can lose our humanity. Directly before this photo was taken, an Australian Navy vessel had intercepted the boat in Australian waters. The Navy had thrown a handwritten note onto the boat, instructing it to turn back. When the…

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Steve sells The Big Issue in London I’ve had my tough times but I’ve got my own mini-business with The Big Issue and that keeps me going. The Big Issue keeps the lights on in more ways than one. It gives me structure and it’s got me back on my feet. Wesley sells Hus Forbi in Copenhagen The magazine has provided me with a source of income when there has been nothing else and it has given me a lot of fun experiences and friendships. Michalis sells Shedia in Athens Shedia saved my life, saved me psychologically and I stopped thinking about committing suicide. When I sell the paper, people stop and say “kalimera” (good morning) to me.…

1. ROOM Emma Donoghue Not ‘inspired’ by the Josef Fritzl case but ‘triggered’ by it, apparently. The sense of claustrophobia is actually the least grisly aspect of this book. 2. THE REMAINS OF THE DAY Kazuo Ishiguro From Brideshead Revisited to Atonement, writers have long played with the country house as a symbol of a vanishing England. Ishiguro adds a heartbreakingly unreliable narrator who can’t see what’s in his own heart, let alone his employer’s Nazi sympathies. 3. REBECCA Daphne Du Maurier Manderley, with its gothic shadows and watchful housekeeper, helped inspire One Folgate Street, the starkly minimalist house in my novel The Girl Before. I even called the computer system that runs the house ‘Housekeeper’. 4. HOWARDS END EM Forster The richest and most satisfying of Forster’s novels makes…

I have a confession to make: I am terrible at the piano. I wish I could play but I just can’t make my hands do two things at once, never mind read two lines of music at the same time. My idea of a nightmare situation would be to be forced to play piano in front of a concert hall full of people – which is why my heart skips a beat every time I see the words David Fray on a concert billing. When I see that little ‘r’, I breathe a big sigh of relief, knowing there hasn’t, in fact, been a terrible misunderstanding – it’s actually the fantastic French virtuoso who’ll be caressing the keys. His dexterity and multi-tasking abilities are utterly unlike my own, even if…