Innholdsfortegnelse for November 9, 2015 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…

Do you hear that noise? It’s a low, rumbling murmuring; a non-specific growing grumble. It’s seasonal. That is the sound of general hurrumphing and moaning that Christmas is starting too early. It begins just as the John Lewis Christmas ad is launched, and follows a particular arc. The ad isn’t very good, it’s too expensive, who’s it for anyway, the clocks have just gone back, Christmas isn’t for months, this is all a con to take our money, damn it all! Who doesn’t like to moan? The weather – it’s all wrong for this time of year. Twitter – they’ve changed the favourite tag to a heart. What are they playing at!! Cheese – this cheese price war is confusing. On such big thoughts do modern sensitivities rest. But moaning…

We are a nation of generous people and, thanks to that, thousands of charities make a difference every day on an astonishing list of issues and causes. The RNLI has incredible supporters who volunteer for us, and their support enables us to launch lifeboats and provide beaches with lifeguards. The way we, as charities, treat our supporters says volumes about how we value them, and we believe our supporters should be treated with respect and gratitude. Too many established practices in tele-fundraising, marketing and data-sharing used by charities have been tried in the court of public opinion and found wanting. This is why the RNLI has decided to contact only those people who have chosen to hear from us. We anticipate this will cost us £35.6 million over five years,…

I was a keen cyclist as a teenager, until I had a very nasty cycling accident, which bashed my face up. My friend and I were cycling down a steep hill and we didn’t see a man with a pram at the bottom. I crashed into it and landed on my face on a very rough road. I knocked out four teeth and had 35 stitches – my mum didn’t recognise me when she came to the hospital. She walked past me. That upset her forever. And it affected me for a very long time – it probably still does, though I grew a beard to hide the scars. I refused to wear a mouth plate for years, so I had all these gaps. I was very odd looking. When…

@DanCromb An excellent article from Damian Barr in this week’s@BigIssue. More men should be proud of being feminists. Attention: deficit Does Ryan Bourne of the Institute of Economic Affairs think debt is a bigger issue than the poverty caused by the government’s economics [Big Finance, October 26–November 1]? Many other economists state that a small deficit is a good thing when it is due to borrowing to finance long-term investment, or it reflects rising incomes, confidence and investment, and it helps employment. For someone who thinks money is more important than the welfare of the population, why does he support a government that has increased the deficit by half a trillion pounds? Hannah Basson, Stroud RIP Jess My hearfelt sympathy to Ralph, the Torquay Big Issue vendor who is grieving…

IT’S A BIG DEAL We’re delighted to report that our writer James Campbell has been nominated for a top journalism award. Made homeless earlier this year, James’ incredibly moving and at times brutal diary has been shortlisted for Consumer Feature Writer of the Year at the Scottish Magazine Awards. Bravo! James is one of five nominations, with our writer Adam Forrest also up for the same category, while The Big Issue is also in the running for Online Presence, Cover of the Year – for our recent Dalai Lama exclusive – and Magazine of the Year. The awards recognise magazines that are produced in Scotland – where The Big Issue, that is sold across Britain, has its editorial base. The winners will be announced in Edinburgh on December 16. AIR…

I have bought myself a new watch. I paid with my credit card. It’s the most expensive watch I have ever bought: £69. I am lost without a watch. I was asked by someone why I, of all people, who was always late, needed a watch; to which I replied:“ I need to know precisely how late I am.” I was 17 when my father got me a watch for £3 from a department store near us. To be precise, the watch cost a lot more: as the watch was bought through a loan club, paid off each week, the interest rate was thousands of percentages. So my £3 watch might well have cost my dad an arm and a leg by the time it was paid off. But by…

1. THE BITTER CRY OF OUTCAST LONDON (1883) Andrew Mearns How the London poor lived before the welfare state. Congregationalist clergyman Mearns has an eye for detail and spares his readers none of it, exposing dreadful housing conditions and their moral consequences. 2. THE EDWARDIANS: THE REMAKING OF BRITISH SOCIETY (1975) Paul Thompson In this study of Edwardian lives, drawn from hundreds of oral histories, Thompson shows us, among other things, how you could tell exactly what class a person belonged to by glancing at his or her clothes. 3. BOYS’ WEEKLIES (1939) George Orwell Though better known as a writer of political fables, Orwell was also an acute social historian. This essay analyses the snobbish and stereotyped world of boys’ school stories. 4. THE USES OF LITERACY (1957) Richard…

I wanted to let you know about my Big Issue seller. I am ashamed to say I don’t know his name but his pitch is at the top of Victoria Street in Paignton, Devon, on the sunny English Riviera. He is so friendly and smiley. I see him almost every day and he always has a couple of people with him chatting and laughing. He tells me how he’s doing and, on a good day, he beams and says that he has to go and get a refreshed stock because “it’s flying out today!” Paignton is a sleepy little town, especially at this time of year, and I feel we miss out on many things that affect other parts of the UK. The Big Issue shows me another perspective and…

MATT BERRY HE IS TOAST OF LONDON ORGANS I have a large organ collection. My obsession began when I was young. My mum and dad were fantastic. They knew I was interested in music, so they bought me a little Hammond organ, put it in my room and just left it there. They never pushed me to have lessons but it was the coolest thing. I still have it. And because I can’t read music, I had to come up with my own songs, so I got a cheap four-track tape machine. The first time I saw an organ as the lead instrument was The Doors. Ray Manzarek plays so brilliantly, that was a huge influence. So I have a Vox Continental that The Doors and Elvis Costello used; an…

For years my mother kept an entire cupboard where she used to save up things for my trousseau, the old-fashioned concept of a bride’s personal belongings collected to take to her new life. She came back from trips to India with saris – formal silk ones to impress my future in-laws – and elegant jewellery to wear to parties or to business dinners with my future husband, like a good corporate wife. There was even a beautiful velvet-lined wooden canteen of Sheffield silver cutlery, and I used to look at the hostess food trolley in the corner of the dining room and wonder if it was destined to be mine. I was fascinated by her single-minded belief in this imaginary grown-up future that never came. But then I look at…

Pope Francis rarely grants interviews. For some months The Big Issue, alongside our street paper colleagues, have been working on securing a meeting. Two weeks ago it happened. On October 27, Marc, a former magazine vendor from Straatnieuws , The Big Issue equivalent from the Dutch city of Utrecht, headed into the Vatican and sat down with the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. Marc was accompanied by Dutch journalists Stijn Fens and Jan-Willem Wits from Trouw newspaper. It is still early when we arrive at the service entrance of the Vatican, to the left of Saint Peter’s Basilica. The Swiss Guards have been informed of our arrival and let us pass. We head to the Domus Sanctae Marthae because that is where Pope Francis lives. The Domus Sanctae…

Art nouveau doyen Alphonse Mucha’s Slav Epic paintings – 20 huge canvases depicting the mythology and history of the Slavic peoples – is the story of 20th-century European art in microcosm. Hidden from the Nazis during World War Two and denigrated after the 1948 Czech coup as decadent, it was recently the centre of a fight over where it should be displayed. A new Mucha exhibition in Norwich includes works such as this powerful political poster, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the founding of his beloved Czechoslovakia, alongside his paintings of the actress Sarah Bernhardt and other languid art nouveau beauties. Alphonse Mucha: In Quest of Beauty , until March 20, 2016, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, UEA, Norwich; scva.ac.uk…

Doctor Who is to stay on our screens until at least 2020, showrunner Steven Moffat has confirmed. Furthermore, the mighty eyebrows of Peter Capaldi have signed up for another series. The BBC is to tackle Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. An initial eight-part series has been ordered, which promises to be far more faithful than the underwhelming film, The Golden Compass. Don’t hold your breath for a standalone Hulk film, though. Mark Ruffalo, who’s played the character in two Avengers films so far, has now declared that the project “feels even further away”. Nicole Kidman may be the next addition to the Wonder Woman film. She’s reportedly in talks for a part – possibly as the mother to Gal Gadot’s title character. You probably know this by now but…

The genius, the rage, the self-loathing, the relentless creativity: it’s all there in Kurt Cobain’s Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings. Effectively the Nirvana singer and guitarist’s first solo album, this posthumous collection of 13 previously unreleased tracks (31 in its expanded deluxe edition) derives from film director Brett Morgen’s trawl through 108 tapes of archived material when collating a soundtrack for his recent Cobain documentary, Montage of Heck. Like the film, the album is a raggedly revealing, troubling and imperfect journey to the centre of a supernova of late 20th-century youth culture – an artist whom countless millions may claim to know but no one will ever really understand. The timeline stretches from Cobain’s pre-fame days in Olympia, Washington, to the last months before his suicide in April 1994.…

Send answers, with CHRISTMAS HORROR as the subject, to: competitions@bigissue.com or post to The Big Issue, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 1HW. Include your name and address. Closing date is November 17. Include OPT OUT if you don’t want to receive updates from The Big Issue. We will not pass on your details to any third party. For full T&Cs see bigissue.com. William Shatner is typically brilliant as the narrator of this portmanteau of horror tales, which was star attraction at FrightFest 2015. A Christmas Horror Story is a nasty, funny, bloody seasonal spin through the terror unleashed in the town of Bailey Downs. With gore-tastic special effects from the team behind Resident Evil: Apocalypse, it’s dark with big laughs and bigger scares – a bad-ass perfect gift for any…