Innholdsfortegnelse for 2/12/2018 i The Big Issue

Welcome to this week’s Big Issue where we’re looking at Horrible Histories. I wasn’t that bothered about history at school, mainly because of how we were taught. Now I love reading about it. I was one of the lost generation – I started just as the comprehensive system came in, and they didn’t really know what they were doing! I like how Horrible Histories has made history much more exciting. I find all history pretty interesting. At the moment it’s the Renaissance and Da Vinci period that interests me. I’m also pleased to hear that Franz Ferdinand are back with a new album, which you can read about on page 37. I remember when I first heard them back in 2004, and I hope they’re still as good as they…

I can understand if the rest of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is fed up with the Northern Ireland bit. For nearly 30 years a dirty little war murdered and maimed and made a mess of itself and infected much else. And now, as if Brexit wasn’t tricky enough, the border question is becoming the pivot on which everything is turning. Councils in the rest of the UK are sailing close to the wind. There is barely enough money to keep the lights on and to empty the bins. Don’t even start on social care and vital homelessness provision. Council taxes are going to balloon. There is a growing crisis in prisons. The NHS, while not on the floor, needs a lot of oxygen. And yet…

People are trying all sorts in the quest to end homelessness. Total amounts of cash donated towards homelessness charities is on the rise, up from £384m in 2015 to £582m in 2017, according to the Charities Aid Foundation, while there are a host of initiatives, ideas and organisations actively trying to dismantle poverty. At The Big Issue we are offering a forum for just those sorts of bright ideas, with our Big Issue Platform. Even Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are doing their bit, taking time out from royal wedding planning to grab a bite to eat this week at Edinburgh cafe Social Bite, which employs homeless people and gives them new work skills. Now a kilt- maker has given homeless people a lift – by registering a “Homeless” tartan.…

As a teenager, I spent a lot of time watching the weather forecast because I wanted to go out on my bike . I haven’t changed much. Even then, I thought a lot about what I could do to make the bike better, upgrade it, change it, make it lighter, make it go faster. I’d always liked model making. I loved plasticine for years, up until I was at least 13. I was terrible for that. But bikes were my main vehicle for obsessional behaviour. I hated PE. Of the 60 or 70 people who the school put through the exam, I was the only male who failed Physical Education. Maybe the only one ever who went from failing PE to becoming a sporting world champion. I was so exhausted…

THE BOOK THIEF Markus Zusak This beautiful, haunting, unique book, narrated by Death, tells the story of a girl living in Germany during WW2. It shows the power of love and stories even in desperate times. ONLY EVER YOURS Louise O’Neill If this stunning book doesn’t bring out your inner feminist, I don’t know what will. It’s dark, gripping and clever. But not for the faint hearted. I cried a lot. THE GIRL OF INK & STARS Kiran Millwood Hargrave This tells the tale of a cartographer’s daughter as she tries to rescue her best friend. The story is so unusual and Kiran’s style reads like poetry. The female protagonist is so strong – the perfect antidote to the fairytale princess. 1984 George Orwell The only book on this list…

We need to talk I recently visited Nottingham and noticed a lot of homeless people trying to get through their day and stay alive. It was bitterly cold and I noticed a man who was selling The Big Issue standing there and I paused for some time and noticed that the majority of people blanked him out for reasons I can only guess. I stopped and bought a copy and asked him how many he sold and how long he had been stood there. He told me that it was two hours and that I was his first customer. He actually was quite timid but really respectful. I then went to a theatre to collect tickets and on my way back saw him again. He told me he had sold…

It was a simple photo of a bench that changed perceptions of anti-homeless measures. Stuart Semple’s shot of bars placed on a Bournemouth bench to discourage rough sleepers from bedding down went viral at the end of last month – notching up almost 8,000 shares on Facebook since January 27. He caught the attention of street-savvy rapper Professor Green, who responded by filming designer Max Murdo detaching the bars by hand – turning the screw on Bournemouth Council and reaching another 150,000 viewers. A 27,000-signature petition followed and the bars, which had been installed following a decision made last summer by a “multi-agency group following many complaints about people lying on them throughout the day”, were removed on February 6. In a bizarre step, the council responded directly to the…

Last week I went all Star Wars , all big threats to the galaxy. I seldom write about that stuff. I write about poverty, about saving the NHS by keeping the healthy healthy, so we can put more resources for those that, through no fault of their own, need them. I write about art, and, at times, walking to free parks, and doing things for jack shit. In the early New Year, I went to that vast old power station on the Thames at Southwark that – in our modern times – has been turned into the Tate Modern. And there I saw the most wonderful collection of drawings, paintings and sculptures by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. I can’t see the wrong in any of his work. The place…

1. Heaven knows a song about the life of Charles Dickens told via The Smiths is anything but miser able. With Al Murray on drums, randomly. 2. Go Gaga for Cleopatra. The Egyptian queen sings her autobiography in the style of Lady Gaga, who is our modern-day equivalent, I suppose. 3. Adam Ant stole his style from highwaymen so Dick Turpin nabbed it back for a song that pricks the romantic myth of the ruthless dandy . 4. The Horrible Histories crew recruited Rowan Atkinson to play Henry VIII as Elvis. ‘A little less reformation…’ with shackled nuns as backing singers. 5. Paying tribute to the RAF pilots of WW2 in a boyband-inspired classic, managing to pack a whole lot of history and jokes about Douglas Bader and Robbie Williams…

Actress Greta Gerwig’s winning feature debut as writer-director takes its title from its lead character: Lady Bird, a 17-year-old Californian brilliantly played by Irish actress Saoirse Ronan, who is desperate to leave her home town in Sacramento for the faraway sophistication of college on the East Coast. I say that Lady Bird is her name, but it’s more accurate to report that this how our heroine, with whimsy and wilfulness that are her trademarks, has elected to be known. Her real name, and what her parents call her to vexed protests, is Christine. The eternal push-pull of individual desire and familial obligation – between forging your own identity and growing out of the one foisted on you by your parents – is a central concern of this lovely, sweetly affecting…

Among the 600 fast-turning pages of Lizzy Goodman’s book Meet Me in the Bathroom – an entertainingly sprawling and scuzzy oral history of the New York City music scene 2001-2011 – I was pleased to find three tangential cameos from my home city of Glasgow. Two of them dependably cruddy. There’s a bit when The Strokes’ drummer Fabrizio Moretti gets in a drunken argument with a local in a late-night curry house and subsequently breaks his hand punching a postbox in a fit of rage. There’s another bit where a member of LCD Soundsystem, on the band’s first visit to the city, comes fleeing back from an ill-advised evening jog because he’s just witnessed a horrific act of football-related violence. Ah, Glasgow. Then there’s the meteoric rise of Franz Ferdinand…

Hi, I was just reading ‘I’m not a risk to anyone. I’m just me’ [January 22-28] and would like to comment. I don’t know how long Kim McGuigan’s conviction was for or what job she was applying for but I used to work for a local college at the job centre supporting clients with CVs, interview skills etc. Through this work I discovered that a lot of people who have had a conviction do not realise that under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 they do not have to disclose the conviction unless you were convicted for more than a four-year sentence, these are never spent. If you were sentenced to more than 30 months, your conviction does not need to be disclosed after seven years. If you were sentenced…

Our cover star from last week’s magazine, Freda Hodgson, aged 104 (and a half) became a sensation on social media as we shared her remarkable life story. From remembering suffragettes to working on the home front during wartime and cooking for the Queen, Freda has lived the highs and lows of the last century. If you missed it, you can read all about her on bigissue.com. Freda was thrilled with it all. She said: “It’s only taken 104 and a half years but I’ve finally got my face on the cover of a national magazine!”…

Anti-homeless spikes outside Southwark Council apartment block attracted a131,897 signature petition in 2014 Spikes outside McDonald’s restaurant in Leeds attracted 78,000 signatures in 2015 Spikes outside Manchester Selfridges in 2015 saw10,785 signatures Spikes on trees to deter birds from nesting in Bristol had 102,866 signatures in 2017 Bournemouth anti-homeless bars on bench petition hit 27,362 in 2018 The row about sprinklers outside Consol salon in Bristol led to a 550 strong petition in 2018…

From the Savage Stone Age to the Terrifying Twentieth Century, via Awful Egyptians, Rotten Romans and Stormin’ Normans, for 25 years the Horrible Histories books and hilarious award-winning hit TV series have shed light on the gristliest, goriest, gut-wrenchingly awful aspects of our past. There’s blood and beheadings, murderers and marauders, dastardly deeds (and a lot of alliteration). After a quarter of a century kids still lap it all up and the generations who grew up with Horrible Histories are now studying history at university. The books are sold across the globe – upward of 30 million copies of them – and the monstrously popular TV show has amassed a treasure hoard of awards. Who knew the darker parts of history could be so popular with kids? Sunderland-born dramatist-and-actorturned-teacher-turned-bestselling author…

This week we have a couple of novels that manage to walk that delicate tightrope of humour and darkness. First up is the The Hoarder, the second novel from Irish author Jess Kidd, whose debut, Himself, was shortlisted for a bunch of prizes in 2016. The Hoarder shares a lot of similarities with Kidd’s irrepressible debut, uniting wonderful creativity and imagination, an engaging sense of humour in the face of some dark material, and more than a whiff of the supernatural about proceedings. This time round the novel is based in west London, where the curmudgeonly and elderly Cathal Flood is holed up in his formerly grand home, nowadays surrounded by the piles of stuff he’s compulsively accumulated over the years. The story is told from the point of view…

“This season has been dazzling, tense, funny, sad, frustrating, grim and packed to the gills with humping” There’s really nothing like a stylish French police thriller. Les flics corruptes! Les voiture chases in Renault vans through the banlieues of Paris! Le constant humping! (There is always humping, usually in the middle of the day when British people are occupying themselves by opening a bag of Quavers and reading the Daily Mail sidebar). While Sarah Lancashire does her best to be a flawed, seen-it-all DI who has had her heart broken one too many times, my favourite female cops are Euro cops. Saga Norén, of course, nails the intensely unwashed look every time, while Sarah Lund and her jumpers come in a close second. But at the moment, my favourite leather-jacketed,…