Innholdsfortegnelse for 4-1-2016 i The Big Issue

WE BELIEVE in a hand up, not a handout... Which is why our sellers BUY every copy of the magazine from us for £1.25 and sell it on to you for £2.50. In this way we have helped hundreds of thousands of people to take control of their lives since 1991, and in the process created a global blueprint for social change. WE BELIEVE in trade, not aid... Which is why we ask that you ALWAYS take your copy of the magazine – it’s a bloody good read and 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…

This week in The Big Issue we introduce a new voice. He’s called Russell Monk. He was, until recently, a police officer. A difficult set of circumstances led to Russell becoming homeless. He has written a fascinating piece. It details how the system is fractured in so many places allowing so many people to fall through. Because of what he has lived through his perspective is unique. Russell is not the first rough sleeper we’ve published in recent months. In 2015 we started to carry James Gallagher’s diary. Raw, funny, poignant but never self-pitying, it told of realities, not received clichés, of life on the margins. Aside from being very good, they have one other thing in common. They wrote their pieces in libraries. Libraries provided them both sanctuary from…

Whatever jargon-filled treaty was agreed on at COP21, Paris’ recent climate change summit, one irrefutable fact stands. The world’s youth will be most affected by climate change. Leaders who attended the conference in Paris may not be alive when significant effects of climate change set in. But young people will spend most of their lives facing global warming’s consequences, wondering why our parents and their elected politicians failed to stop a most obvious, impending calamity. Vanuatu (below), an island under threat from rising sea levels, has a median age of 21.1 years; Tuvalu’s, another Pacific island, is 24.9 years; Micronesia’s is 23.8 years. These figures show how the ocean’s sinister lapping on the golden beaches of Oceania and other areas will unfairly impact the youngest in society. The refugees, fleeing…

When I turned 16 I was just becoming aware of politics and the wider world. There were all the disturbances in Europe in 1968 and marches against the Vietnam War, then in 1969 the Troubles in Ireland. It suddenly seemed like the world was quite a dangerous place. My father was a vicar so we moved around. I am a London mongrel, really. I was happy at home but miserable going away to school. I went to a strange school that was like Eton for paupers – a charity boarding school called Christ Hospital. You couldn’t go if your parents earned a certain amount. My father was from quite a poor background, and my parents were education-obsessed, aspirational in the sense of education being the way to improve and get…

44 TORN BY BRIAN AKPAH Brian was born in London in 1973 and grew up with foster parents. Of his art, he says: “Drawing elates me. I’m selfish, do what I want to do – draw from my head, from my imagination, using strong colours: red, yellow, blue. Once I start, that’s it – no break, got to work. I enjoy the mess, the clouds of chalk dust, the pastels crumbling on the paper – it makes me happy.” UNTITLED BY ANTHONY OKUYEDI Anthony is a Big Issue vendor with a pitch at the Thurloe Street entrance to South Kensington Tube Station in London. Selling The Big Issue has helped him broaden his contacts and clients as an artist. “I have had a few paintings exhibited at local galleries and…

Vin Diesel’s next Riddick film, the fourth, is set to shoot in 2017. Diesel has confirmed that the new film will tell the origins of the character. You won’t find Nicole Kidman in the upcoming Wonder Woman film. It seems scheduling conflicts led to her not taking on a role. Jeremy Renner will move from The Avengers to the world of boxing. He’s set to play Rocky Marciano in a biopic of the undefeated heavyweight’s life. Steven Moffat has revealed he’s been chatting to new writers for Doctor Who series 10. The scribes, whom he hasn’t named, would be fresh faces for the show. Terminator 2 will return to cinemas this year. The film, celebrating its 25th birthday, will get a 3D re-release. The planned film reboot of Charlie’s Angels…

Feeling green? [Re: Rant, Stop denying climate change, December 7]. I grew up in a small South Wales mining village. I was fortunate to become a product of a 1950s grammar school education system. At this time our geography lessons taught us that the vast forests of the equatorial and tropical regions were “the lungs of the world”. Mankind cannot go on destroying the planet. Mankind is beginning to look like a cancer spreading across the surface. Time to take stock. To be less greedy. Will future generations be able to walk in a park and feel a breeze against their face? Or are Center Parcs a precursor to the future? Only the privileged will be allowed under the dome, where nature is nurtured for those who can afford it.…

KEEP FILLING ’EM UP More than 3,000 empty properties in Leeds have been brought back to life in the last five years. Some of the Victorian terraced houses had been empty for 15 years, disproving the assumption old empty buildings are beyond repair. Leeds City Council, one of the most active areas in the country in bringing empty homes into use, has pledged to keep funding projects – including the Empty Homes Doctor (one of the houses rescued is pictured above) and working with social enterprises like Latch – highlighted during The Big Issue’s Fill ’Em Up campaign. Keep us posted on what’s happening or needed in your town or city. @bigissue REBOOT YOUR OLD LAPTOP FOR CHARITY A new project will see recycled and refurbished laptops given to homeless…

“A fighting spirit drives one to heights. But loud and angry is dimmed by time. Thinking needs to replace it.” There was a heated discussion about leadership in the modern world that broke out a week before Christmas. It involved a prominent football manager who used cunning, encouragement, ridicule, threats and, it seems, bullying to achieve his ends. Once upon a time this form of leadership produced astonishing consistencies in team performance. And the team and the manager were seen in idyll terms. But then suddenly the same, apparent, concoction of crudities and courageous encouragement led to instant failure. The unfailing became failing. The king’s crown was seen to be made of unlasting material. All fell apart. The manager was a mismanager of the team rather than its blacksmith producing…

FRANTUMAGLIA Elena Ferrante (Europa Editions, April) April brings us Frantumaglia: bits and pieces of uncertain origin, a collection of writings, letters and interviews from Elena Ferrante, the fêted and famously reclusive Italian writer whose Neapolitan Novels have bewitched a generation of readers and critics. This volume sees her address personal issues such as her literary inspirations and headline-making choice to keep her identity a secret, as well as the wider topics of Italian politics and culture. Though slim, it should keep her army of devotees nourished for a while. JG AND YET… Christopher Hitchens (Atlantic, January) Previously published in various publications, we already know the calibre of Christopher Hitchens’ final collection of essays And Yet... How cruel, that ellipsis, that promise of a thought to be returned to in due…

How free is free? Under pressure from big names in pop, online music streaming services – their massive listenership derived from drawing in customers with no cost subscriptions or trial periods – might leave you asking yourself that question in 2016. After Taylor Swift and Adele took their music off Spotify, it’s reported to be considering introducing premium albums available only to paying customers (artists earn more from paid-for streams). Spotify’s competitor Apple Music is ‘pay only after a free trial’, giving them muscle to secure exclusives like Swift’s concert film The1989 World Tour Live. It’s rumoured Rihanna’s new album Anti will be exclusive to Jay Z’s paid-subscription streaming service Tidal. Evidently well aware of how beholden they are to superstars – this year, Rihanna notched up a billion plays…

I realise that I could have thanked The Big Issue seller outside the Coliseum Theatre, St Martin’s Lane, for his thoughtfulness earlier on this page. However, on December 5 I was approaching the theatre pushing a friend in her wheelchair. We had not had a good cab journey and were dropped further away from the entrance than we expected. I’m sure we looked harassed. The Big Issue seller offered to show us to the door with the ramp, as it is not obvious, and then opened it for us. As it opens outwards this is a difficult manoeuvre whilst pushing a wheelchair up the ramp and we were very grateful. We did say thank you but were then immediately amidst the rush in the foyer of the theatre. We did…

I fenced solidly from aged nine to 17, when I went to drama school. I was British under-16 and under-17 champion, and competed in Germany, France and Hungary. I wanted to be in the Musketeers after watching the film with Oliver Reed (pictured below). There is this scene where he is fencing and gets his cape caught in a waterwheel. I was transfixed, who wouldn’t want to do that? At Lamda, I taught fight choreography. I worked with Rory Kinnear when we did Romeo and Juliet. In my last year I got a job as fight captain at The Globe, choreographing Mark Rylance, so I got to talk with him about acting, auditioning, Shakespeare – and we fenced before every performance to warm him up. I still train with the…

If Lily James was already known to UK audiences as Lady Rose in Downton Abbey, last year’s title role in Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella, alongside Cate Blanchett, shot her into the stratosphere. Now, just five years after graduating from drama school, she leads one of the finest casts ever assembled for a British TV series. War and Peace follows Natasha on one of the great literary journeys – from impulsive, wide-eyed teenager (the book opens with her aged 13, in this adaptation she is 15), through love, loss, heartbreak and the deepest sorrow, to wisdom and contentment. “This was the most demanding and challenging role I have had by far,” says James, when we meet at a Mayfair Hotel ahead of the premiere. “I tried to really play the youth at…

Soul of Africa makes shoes that change lives. The range of leather boots and shoes for men and women are made in Ethiopia, and for every pair purchased Soul of Africa is able to pay wages for the workers and support children at Brave Hearts charity in Addis Ababa. See the latest range and buy online at vivobarefoot.com/uk/collections/ranges/soul-of-africa Order online using the code BIGSOA to receive 25 per cent off the price between January 16 and February 1. Terms & conditions: the discount applies to one order only per household, available only to shoppers in the UK, and must be redeemed between January 16 and February 1.…

To celebrate Agatha Christie’s 125th anniversary, the BBC brings her hugely acclaimed book and one of the bestselling crime novels of all time to life in the thrilling three-part murder mystery drama, And Then There Were None. With a stunning cast including Charles Dance (Game of Thrones, The Imitation Game), Miranda Richardson (Mapp and Lucia, Parade’s End), Toby Stephens (Black Sails, Jane Eyre) and Aidan Turner (Poldark, The Hobbit trilogy; pictured), the drama is set in 1939 and follows 10 strangers with dubious pasts drawn to a remote island off the Devon coast. Stranded, with their hosts absent, each is accused of a terrible crime – and the ultimate price must be paid, one by one. Released on January 11 on DVD (£19.99, Acorn), we have five copies to be…