Innholdsfortegnelse for 10-10-2016 i The Big Issue

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The UK has incredibly high statistics of stillbirth. Yet because of the stigma around baby loss, no one is talking about it. But stillbirth is a reality for around 14 families every day, who have to bury their baby instead of bringing them home. Every person I interviewed told me they had lost a bunch of friends when their baby died. People simply never called them again because they didn’t know what to say. Or they said awful things like “never mind, you can have another” – just about the worst thing you can say. Dads are particularly silenced when they lose a baby. They’re just expected to be the strong one, to be there for their partner. What about their loss? This often leads to repressed feelings and long-term…

Lord Bird will host a debate in parliament on October 13 to discuss the damage of illiteracy across Britain and the crisis facing public libraries and independent bookshops. “My late arrival as truly literate – 16 years of age – sprinkled magic dust over the pathway ahead of me, in the same way that education has helped many people before me,” said Bird, who was appointed to the House of Lords at the end of last year. “One of the principal reasons that I volunteered to go into parliament was to raise the question of literacy.” Earlier this year, Bird co-launched a Project Literacy campaign in the House of Commons with model and actress Lily Cole to emphasise the importance of “social literacy”, highlighting his own journey from illiteracy and…

“I was kicked out and moved into a bedsit at 16. It was such a relief” I was pissed off a lot of the time as a teenager. There were two big issues, to coin a phrase. One was that my dad suffers from depression and didn’t have it treated until he was in his 50s. It was particularly bad through my teenage years. And my parents were on the verge of splitting up for a long time, so the atmosphere in our house was terrible. My dad knocked out a couple of my boyfriends. Those sort of things overshadow everything else – and didn’t do my relationships any good. It was awful. Humiliating, embarrassing, frightening. Looking back, it is difficult not to feel that the whole time was coloured…

“Audiences didn’t like the outcome of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. So they turned it into an American victory” People often imagine that reality shows are the latest incarnation of showbiz spectacle, its vulgar and cynical perversion. But make no mistake. They are the origin of spectacle. The creator of the first reality show was Buffalo Bill, the producer of the famous Wild West show. It was created in 1883 and within a few years it became a gigantic show-producing business, performing all over the world. It’s said that in the course of its countless tours in the United States and Europe, it drew 70 million spectators. Which is an incredible figure. The Wild West show was indistinguishable from its director and star, Buffalo Bill, whose actual name was…

Read my lips I have just read your article about saving Newarthill library and wanted to suggest the possibility of it becoming a community library run by volunteers. This is what is happening in the London Borough of Lewisham with my local library, and this morning I was at a meeting with other people who are going to help run the library on a voluntary basis. It sounds like you’d certainly get local support for such a scheme judging by the massive response to your petition, so I hope you and others concerned might be able to consider this as an option for saving the library. As a former librarian myself, I think what is happening to libraries is tragic and I do hope you will succeed in saving Newarthill.…

“Unlike the mad, bad ‘Jack the Dripper’ Pollock, Clyfford Still is the cool and thoughtful opposite” Most people don’t do this, and it is not recommended, but here goes: you go to an exhibition of art and it brings you to a social, historical crisis. You’re supposed to look at art as art, or a field of cows as a field of cows, for instance. But a kind of spillage where one thing runs into another might take place. You may speculate beyond the surface of the art you view, and that is exactly what happened to me last week. The spillage took place at the Abstract Expressionism exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. My spillage has got nothing to do with the way that post-war US administrations used…

“The books weren’t complacent nostalgia. They were a celebration of a new Britain built out of ashes” I used to visit a beloved university English professor and his wife. He had won the Military Cross for hand-to-hand combat in the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945 but never talked about the terrible things he’d seen. After he died in 2003 I would meet his widow for lunch, and once when she asked for my news and I started talking with excitement about the flat my husband and I were buying in Berlin I saw her face fall in horror. “Have you ever been to Germany?” I asked, the truth dawning on me. “No. And I never would,” she said with determined distaste. I felt terrible. For failing to anticipate how…

ISSUE 1 Why Don’t the Homeless Just Go Home? was the provocative message on the cover of our very first edition. WHEN JARVIS MET BOWIE To mark the passing of David Bowie earlier this year, we revisited the interview where Jarvis Cocker interviewed the pop titan. RICKY GERVAIS Talking life after The Office, Ricky invited us to do a photo shoot in his own personal office, and donned The Big Issue iconic red tabard for our cover image. WE MUST NOT FORGET Sergeant Rick Clement was photographed by Bryan Adams, and the image that appeared on our Remembrance Day cover won British Magazine Awards Cover of the Year, drawing a standing ovation when Rick, Bryan and our team took the stage at the ceremony. STONE ROSES WORLD EXCLUSIVE When the…

1. LITTLE WOMEN Louisa May Alcott Perhaps never have the plight of sisters and their family bond been so well presented on the page. From childhood to adult years, the March clan tackle everything that’s thrown at them. 2. THE GODFATHER Mario Puzo Nothing says family like the mafia. An epic tale charting the highs and lows of generations of the Corleone family, it’s as much about coping with family bonds as it is about gangsters. 3. THE LOVELY BONES Alice Sebold Dealing with a family loss is something all too tragic, and Sebold’s novel doesn’t shirk from the good and bad. A mix of heartbreak, drama and the supernatural, it’s as unconventional as it is powerful. 4. THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE Robert Louis Stevenson Boys will be boys, at…

Guilty of knocking out booze, drugs and models-numbed albums to diminishing returns since going mega global stratospheric in 2008 with the Sex on Fire-fuelled Only by the Night, there are signs man-rock foursome Kings of Leon might be getting the feeling back. Their make-up or break-up seventh set WALLS is titled after the acronym for We Are Like Love Songs, which is clearly terrible, if at least not as terrible as that being the actual title. WALLS throws caution to the wind in its naming by inviting unkind puerile rhyming teases with another, perhaps quite apt, word starting ‘b’. Let’s not even talk about the cover art, depicting creepy humanoid models of the Nashville brothers-plus-cousin-quartet drowning in what appears to be milk or another, perhaps quite apt, viscous pale fluid.…

I empathise entirely with Damian Barr’s plea to save his local library at Newarthill [September 26–October 2]. As he says, closure of libraries has been an easy option for councils up and down the country over the last few years. Six years ago, Dorset County Council planned to close 20 of its 40 libraries across the county, hoping that there would be little response or complaint. However, 19 of the 20 libraries earmarked for closure are still open, due to the determination of local people who were willing to staff their library on a volunteer basis. Our library in Chickerell near Weymouth has actually increased its opening hours since it became a so-called ‘community library’ five years ago, and is also being used more and more for local community activities.…

Let’s start with Emily Kay. Emily is 12 years old. She has two brothers, Peter who is 15 and Christopher who is eight. She lives with them and her mum and dad in Chesterfield. They are a happy family. However, Emily’s mum has cerebral palsy. As do her brothers. Following a serious car accident, her dad has mobility issues. Emily acts as their carer. She has some help from her gran and two adult carers but Emily, who is 12, gets up in the morning to get them all ready. She prepares them meals, cleans, tidies, fetches medicine. Last week Emily won the Children of Courage award, with the support of the charity Action for Children. This is what Emily, 12, said: “It can be really tiring looking after my…

WATER WAYS BY DAWN TOMLIN Dawn has suffered from anxiety and depression nearly all of her life. “In the last two years I have begun to produce artwork that not only gives my inner voice an outlet but it has given me a focus, a purpose in my life. This artwork represents the weeds that I sometimes feel pulling me under and down in life.” SMUGGLERS BY STEVE MCINTOSH Steve submits his work via London homeless charity the 240 Project. He taught himself to draw at a young age from DC comics. “My drawing feels more technical than artistic; puzzles, crosswords and historical facts influence me and occupy my time, though my work comes from my imagination. I just take my time – each line is considered, not instinctive.” WHATEVER…

BUSMAN’S HOLIDAY The Denmead Queen, Waterlooville This pub is named after, and its carpet incorporates, a local-built single decker bus dating from before the Second World War. The fleet of 15 was used by dockers going to and from work. GLORIOUS Sir Michael Balcon, Ealing Could this bright and bombastic carpet be inspired by the fact it is in the home of the British film industry? The pub is named after Sir Michael Balcon, legendary film producer at nearby Ealing Studios. CINEMATIC The Forum, Hexham You can’t get more art deco than this. The glass-shard shapes, the fanning style and the strong lines are reminiscent of the Odeon’s early graphic design. The Forum ’Spoons lives below The Forum cinema, which is still screening films. From the day we are born,…

JACK & VICTOR’S FLATS Still Game is set in Craiglang, a fictional part of Glasgow, but it could be an unloved part of any city in the UK, where deprivation strengthens the sense of community. Jack and Victor live next to each other in a high-rise block, constantly having to evade the ever-watchful eye of nosy neighbour Isa. THE CLANSMAN The heart of any community is the local pub. Pulling pints behind the bar at The Clansman is Boaby, who hates his regulars about as much as they hate him. But at the same time, they rely on each other, and underneath the apparent vitriol is a camaraderie and genuine affection. NAVID’S SHOP A quintessential part of of any neighbourhood is the local shop, run in Craiglang with zero enthusiasm…

Tessa Farmer’s work is populated by sinister skeleton fairies that represent how she overcame depression. The fairies (in The Hunt, left, and The Captive Bumblebee, below) are small but successful survivors, fighting back against something bigger than themselves. Farmer – former Artist in Residence at the Natural History Museum – taxidermies her own animals and asked her wedding guests for either John Lewis vouchers, or dead things. The work will be displayed as part of the exhibition Perfectionism III: The Alchemy of Making at the Griffin Gallery, London, until Nov 18; griffingallery.co.uk…

“Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence,” wrote Samuel Beckett. Perhaps if there are enough of them and they are loud enough, it can merge into a Jackson Pollock-like canvas, a spectacle of thrown paint. If I had synesthesia that is what I might see listening to Brian Blessed’s Radio Adventureson Radio 4 Extra. I would not normally review something I haven’t yet heard but I’ll make an exception. Blessed is now 80 years old, and this three-hour broadcast combines a new interview and an array of his radio appearances, from Down Your Way to 2015’s Midweek, where he told the story of delivering a baby in a park and biting through the umbilical cord. Who knows which of his stories really happened at the time, they become…