Innholdsfortegnelse for 5/28/2018 i The Big Issue

This week there’s an interview with Gary Lightbody from Snow Patrol on page 22. I love my music and I like them. Big Issue readers can get their hands on a free vinyl copy of an exclusive version of a new song. Jumpin’ Jack Flash by The Rolling Stones is 50 this year. The Stones were at their best in the Sixties and Seventies if you ask me – read about it on page 37. And The Big Issue wants to hear your experiences of mental health care on page nine. My good friend has schizophrenia and paranoia but we couldn’t even get carer’s allowance. It’s a very, very underfunded area and that has to change. My story is on page 46.…

Nobody really knows anything. As a basic starting point, I give you Arsenal FC. They are a big club, one who have been a dominant force in English football for decades, and with a global reach. Several weeks ago, their long-standing manager Arsène Wenger retired. Urbane, multi-lingual, he was a chap who always gave the impression of somebody who was trying to remain calm despite having slight acid reflux. Still, he was a great manager. He led Arsenal for 22 years to multiple trophies. His departure prompted lively debate about a successor. Hours and hours of sports radio broadcast was filled with insiders and experts keen to explain who would take over and why. Last week, out of the blue, a man called Unai Emery got the job. Which nobody…

Activist Army – reassemble! The Big Issue is in the running for a prestigious Cover of the Year award and we want your help to win… Our Activist Army cover, which mobilised people across the UK ahead of last year’s snap election, is in the running for the PPA Awards as one of the 10 best magazine covers in Britain – which it clearly is! Now it’s up to people power to help us win. Vote for us on the PPA’s website at ppa.co.uk/Events/PPAAwards2018/Cover-Of-The-Year-Voting And get your family, friends and that bloke you see while walking the dog to back us too. Props too to Big Issue publishing MD Russell Blackman, who is shortlisted for Team Leader Of The Year at the awards.…

Eugene is a service user at Portugal Prints – a creative arts project for people with mental health difficulties based at Arlington House in Camden, London. Over the years he has spent many hours drawing homeless people. “I get to see a lot of the lads and women on the streets of London,” he says. “I have seen some terrible things, too many to mention. Nighttime is very dangerous and painful. I get so tongue-tied over the subject of homeless people. It’s been going on far too long. I hope things will get better in the future.” Street Art is created by people who are marginalised by issues like homelessness, disability and mental health conditions. Contact streetlights@bigissue.com  to see your art here. BUY STREET ARTI You can buy…

IN 1949 THE YEAR WILBUR SMITH TURNS 16… Israel is admitted to the UN / George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is published/ Rationing of clothes ends in Britain My teens were a pretty miserable time. Reading became a sneaky pleasure for me. In those days all the heating and cooking in the house was done with wood, and one of my chores was to go off with the tractor and trailer and a gang of guys who would cut the wood and load it on and I’d bring it back. I always used to sneak a book down the front of my shirt, so I could perch up on the tractor with a big hat on and read my books even in the middle of the day. My father never caught…

“For all the agony it inflicts, writing is the purest joy I know” The first lie I tell about my debut novel, Johnny Ruin, is that it took me six months to write. In reality, I’d been chewing the idea for a decade. When I eventually sat down to write the book, in 2015, it poured out. But the truth is it took me 10 years to write a novel in six months. Johnny Ruin is about a man on a road trip through his mind with Jon Bon Jovi. Heartbroken, depressed, and on a mission to fix himself, the narrator is unable to separate the facts of his life from the fictions, from the lies he has spun to cope. But he has help. Jon Bon Jovi, part spirit…

François Ozon’s last film was the World War One drama Frantz . It was a sombre, restrained work (shot in black and white, or shades of graveyard grey) that I admired a great deal. I like his new film L’Amant Double too, but whereas Frantz maintained a decorous poise, this latest is unruly and lurid, an exhilarating splurge of bad taste after a bout of scrupulously maintained good behaviour. Returning to his roots in cut-glass camp and twisty psychodrama, Ozon begins with a moment of provocation: an anatomically explicit close-up (which, in a stunning transition, dissolves into a weeping eye). Both body parts belong to Chloé, a 25-year-old former model complaining to her doctor of chronic stomach pains. Having examined Chloé, her doctor declares her physically fit, and recommends a…

The Classic Brit Awards return next month after a five-year rest. Tokio Myers, the winner of last year’s Britain’s Got Talent , leads the field alongside Dame Vera Lynn and film and TV composer Hans Zimmer. This diverse bunch are each up for awards; it has already been announced that Myers will be named Breakthrough Artist of the Year. “Bloody hell, it’s up there with the best of the best,” Myers says of his competition. The classically trained pianist stormed through the BGT process with his musical mash-ups that mixed Debussy with Sheeran and Beethoven with Adele. A record deal was part of the prize. “For me it’s more interesting the fact my album isn’t a classical album.” Looking at the list of nominations, it’s bizarre to think they could…

Up in the air Practically speaking this idea [Easing the homelessness crisis with Airbnb, April 23-29] is a non-starter. Property insurance companies would be horrified. Having spent years in an industry where housing people is critical to their rehabilitation, alas, there are some who seek to destroy, utterly trash, exploit and degrade every property they are offered, to such an extent that beyond such a point, no further properties are offered. Until such people are weeded out, as they repeatedly prove unable to live in society even when given multiple chances, those who seek a new opportunity and future will see their plans and hopes eternally destroyed. Martin Mather, Facebook Game changer I bought my first copy of The Big Issue in 2015 and it has completely revolutionised the way…

One referendum was overshadowed in the news last week. Villagers in Northumberland beauty spot Beadnell headed to the polls to decide on a proposed ban on second homes – and delivered a resounding 90 per cent vote in favour with 767 in support, 85 against. Fewer than one in five of the village’s homes are occupied year-round. North Northumberland Coast Neighbourhood Plan campaign opposes construction of new homes in the parishes of Beadnell, North Sunderland and Bamburgh unless they are restricted for primary occupation “in perpetuity”. The move follows a similar crackdown in St Ives in 2016. ON BIGISSUE.COM  THIS WEEK • London’s 24-year-old Young People’s Poet Laureate Momtaza Mehri is revitalising the rhyme and reason of poetry • How the Street Child World Cup is kicking off…

“I’d rather be poor in the UK than either of the republics I’ve lived in” I missed the royal wedding. I’ve missed all of them. From Princess Elizabeth marrying Lt Philip Mountbatten in 1947, I’ve lived through 14 of them. And not once, even when I lived minutes from Kensington Palace – and was therefore a neighbour – was I asked as a Notting Hill street urchin to join the celebrations. Nor later, as I grew to maturity and became one of London’s most prominent washers-up at a hotel close to Kensington Palace. And nor when I was washing up for democracy in Parliament. I was overlooked and not allowed into that inner or innermost circle of people who make up the backdrop of any royal wedding party. The family…

TBI: An eight-tonne section of Robin Hood Gardens is being preserved by the V&A and transported to Venice for the Architecture Biennale. You have been in charge of the British Pavilion at the event – what do you make of this? SJ: When I did the British Pavilion it was to tell the story of British modernism leading up to the post-war New Towns – how people reimagined better cities, ways of living and ideas of what it is to be a citizen. This was eventually articulated in urban planning projects like Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities, which took the best of the city and the best of the country to produce what turned out to be Welwyn Garden City and Letchworth. That model was important in the post-war period of…

When I heard the BBC were doing King Lear with Anthony Hopkins, I wrote to Piers Wenger, controller of BBC drama, and said I would like to audition for a role. I am never seen for classical roles and I think that is to do with my background – which is ironic, because Tony is the son of a baker and grew up in Port Talbot. The casting director didn’t want me. I suggested myself for a number of roles and was finally offered Oswald. When I walked into the rehearsal room, the director Richard Eyre said: “Why are you here? Oswald is a small role, and we’ve made him even smaller.” I just pointed at Tony Hopkins and said: “Because of him.” When I was at drama school, I…

The genre of British ‘place’ writing has exploded in the last five years and made literary superstars of its best proponents. Mesmerising wordsmiths like Helen Macdonald, Horatio Clare and literary national treasure Robert Macfarlane have given rise to an industry of ornithologists, geologists, entomologists and etymologists who take us rocking and rolling over the British landscape, singing songs of past dwellers and personal woes as they go. In general, the genre has held up well, with glints of diamond often found gleaming among the inevitable slew of copyists. But few are as impressive as the formidable Benjamin Myers, who has developed a voice as pure and authentic as it is stark, honest and resolutely northern. Durham-born Myers began his writing career as a music journalist, but didn’t take long to…

It’s exactly 50 years since The Rolling Stones released Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Back in those heady days of the late spring of 1968, Mick Jagger’s fledgling sexual legend was such that he still as yet had no known children, while the world’s most high-functioning derelict Keith Richards – a man who, as Del Preston speculates in Wayne’s World 2, “cannot be killed by conventional weapons” – still had some of his own teeth. That groovy Delta blues fiesta has since gone on to become the most performed song in the quintessential English rock’n’roll band’s entire, mammoth 56-year repertoire, and thus one of the most performed songs of all time. There are at least 1,135 documented inclusions of Jumpin’ Jack Flash in Stones setlists at the time of writing – a…

I write to tell you of a wonderful person called Peter who sells The Big Issue near the bus station in Port Talbot. He is there rain or shine, always happy and he really makes my day when I see him. I am 80 and suffer with arthritis but I can get about some days better than others. So yesterday when I asked Peter how he was he said, “Much better”. I didn’t know he was ill so I asked what was wrong and he told me he has arthritis in his spine. What a brave man. I know the pain from arthritis but I cannot imagine what it must be like to have it in your spine. To me and my husband he is one of the greats. Pauline…

Giving free books to strangers? Yes please! An independent bookshop in London has launched a Twitter campaign for customers to pay-forward a book for someone who wants one. The Big Green Bookshop’s #buyastrangerabook campaign allows followers to pay for a book for another person every Wednesday. And it’s flying off the page, with owner Simon Key selling 56 books in its first trial earlier on this month and 75 the following week. And he is now encouraging people to pay for books to go to schools. It’s part of a campaign that The Big Issue has helped to drive, through our work with Simon in the Independent Bookshop Alliance, which is lobbying Westminster for support for indie retailers to level the playing field against online giants like Amazon and give…

It’s the Cinderella service of the NHS, subject to brutal cuts and soaring demand. Government is promising more money but those on the front line say that after decades of underfunding it’s not enough to ease the crisis. We want to hear your stories of treatment that was inadequate, hard to access or just took too long to arrive. Most importantly, we want to know how this affected your health, your recovery and your life. Mental Health Awareness Week has been and gone, in a way that mental illness stubbornly doesn’t. Amid powerful stories of crisis, treatment and recovery, this year critics began to point this out – highlighting that the issue needs more than just a week in the spotlight. And while the problem’s growing, the safety net of…

Gary Lightbody’s moment came two years ago in a gym in Santa Monica. The Snow Patrol frontman has long had a reputation for indulging his appetites. But even he was going at it on a bigger scale, with a fierce, Valhallan vigour. The band’s last tour had finished in late 2012. And then: “I started drinking,” he says, “with a gusto that a professional boxer might train for a prize fight. It’d be mostly beer. I was quite a happy drunk. There was a hell of a lot of fun. Until it wasn’t. “I’d get to 2am sitting on my own, have a cry, and then a glass of something [stronger]. I didn’t have any relationships and I wasn’t having sex either. I was very hermetic. Around 2015/2016 I was…

BATTLE SCARS One hundred years on from the end of World War 1 is a time to look back and reflect on the horror and futility. A new exhibition at Tate Britain explores the immediate impact of the conflict on art, collecting together more than 150 works showing how artists documented and dealt with the deep physical and psychological scars, across divides. This picture, titled Prostitute and Disabled War Veteran. Two Victims of Capitalism is by the German artist Otto Dix, while English landscapist Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson captured Ypres After the First Bombardment, painted in 1916. Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One , Tate Britain, June 5–September 20…

THE LACUNA  by Barbara Kingsolver This gorgeous book is narrated by the cook to the gloriously complex and vibrant Frida Kahlo. So naturally you get a fair bit of Diego Rivera, and a nice Trotsky cameo too (well, not so nice for Trotsky, if you know your history). JUST KIDS  by Patti Smith Obligatory bio time: Smith recounts her wild years in Sixties New York City and her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe with beauty, honesty and power. A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS  by Marlon James A wide-ranging novel that covers among other things the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976 in Jamaica. James won the Booker for this, in a unanimous decision by the judges. See for yourself why. FEMINIST RYAN GOSLING  by Danielle Henderson Sometimes a…