Innholdsfortegnelse for 6/4/2018 i The Big Issue

This week we focus on the women who will be taking to the streets on Sunday to march for equality, having made 100 centenary banners to mark the anniversary of women winning the vote. You can read about PROCESSIONS on page 20. I know what it’s like to be homeless, and some people who have suffered similar experiences will be reading from George Orwell’s first novel Down and Out in Paris and London, which was inspired by living rough. Find out more about that on page 25. Elsewhere, on page 26 grime star Big Narstie talks about the huge importance of having role models in your life. I tell my story on page 46.…

I feel obliged to comment on the letter by correspondent Martin Mather ‘Up in the air’ [May 28–June 3] who writes in reply to my article, ‘Easing the homelessness crisis with Airbnb’, since there appear to be elements of misunderstanding. Firstly, when proposing an Airbnb-type system to find accommodation for the homeless, this was never postulated as a permanent solution, rather as a very quick and expedient fix to get vulnerable people off the streets and into a caring home environment as quickly as possible. What is wrong with this? In the main we are talking about temporary hospitality offered to “guests” through the goodwill of the many kind-hearted citizens who really do exist. Being homeless is a great leveller, and people can arrive in this position through many different…

Hugh Grant may be more used to Notting Hill , but the Love Actually star made a difference in Airdrie when he sent an online order of food and toiletries to a foodbank. The gesture came on the back of the Twitter trend #foodbankchallenge, which tasks people to donate goods and snap a photo to share on social media. Highlands-based blogger Alex, who has drawn attention to the struggles of life on the breadline with his blog Life of a Universal Credit Sufferer, kicked off the challenge. On the back of the donation, the blogger posted: “So many people are learning about food poverty and what is causing it. Everyone should be so proud of themselves for making a difference. It is you and not me…

From Nineteen Eighty-Four to Coming Up For Air, Orwell’s work resonates loudly with my experience of modern Britain. His voice was direct and yet sensitive and, to me, encompasses a lot of what I enjoy about Britishness. He was big into fairness, which is clear in the themes of his work, and, I think, also present in his prose. His accessibility has a lot to do with it. In fact, it’s essential. How else are you going to get 13-year-olds talking about right vs left-wing politics, power structures and the failures of communism?…

On numerous occasions between the ages of 16 and 32 I was categorised as someone of no fixed abode. Whilst I had a family who could have homed me I was exiled by my sexuality, by my poverty and my determination to become an artist rather than a designer in the local slipperware factory. To my family’s confusion, I wanted to work in the poetry mines instead. I began carouselling strangers’ living rooms, each bed a different step in an endless dance toward food, safety and warmth. Even at university I was without a clear place to call my own, and relied heavily on the generosity of friends and my innate ability to find the smallest and least noticeable spaces on campus to secrete myself. I made myself invisible. Virginia…

We have a couple of books this week that show the depth and breadth that exist within the thriller genre at the moment, ranging from folk horror to courtroom drama, and both of them packing a real punch. First up is The Old Religion by Martyn Waites. Waites is a very experienced British crime and thriller author, having written a string of bestsellers both under his own name and using the pseudonym Tania Carver. The Old Religion sees him starting another series of books, this time featuring retired undercover police officer Tom Killgannon. The book is set in St Petroc, a fictional Cornish town, where Killgannon is hiding under a witness protection programme from some seriously bad people. St Petroc is not a busy tourist place, more like the anonymous…

Back on my feet It was just after my father died and I was in a difficult place but selling The Big Issue reinvigorated me. I am homed now and in a good job due to the help I have had from you. Big up Big Issue. Cathal Quinn, email Connect more I have a rival for John Bird’s ‘Ingredientism’ [May 21-27] – ‘Connectism’. Strolling into the local shop may seem banal but when we buy stuff we form a connection with the people and the environment from source (or multiple sources) and indeed all along the chain. And it doesn’t end there as the links continue if, sooner or later, we ditch what we bought. This all makes shopping more problematic but also much more interesting than we often…

Despite global pressure, it’s not impossible to have sympathy for Michael Rotondo. Rotondo scored fame over a week ago when his parents took him to court and won an order to evict him from the family home. Rotondo is 30, and for the last eight years has been living with his parents in New York state. There is nothing odd in that. Except his parents were at their wits’ end. Their son refused, they said, to find a job, to do any work around the home, to contribute. They were paying for everything. The relationship had broken down to the extent that they decided they needed to go to court to get him out. In the hearing, which became a global cause célèbre, he was presented as a feckless layabout.…

Big Issue-backed Change Please have attracted a lot of attention with their concept of giving homeless people the chance to become baristas – not least will.i.am. The Black Eyed Peas singer raised a glass to the social enterprise when he judged them winners at the $1m (£751,000) Chivas Venture Fund finals in Amsterdam. Change Please scooped a $350,000 (£263,000) prize and inspired our pal Will to gush praise in a video posted to his 13.5 million Twitter followers, saying: “The idea is very energetic, it’s humane, he’s giving homeless people in transition the chance to stand up and take a step forward to change their lives.” Established with The Big Issue’s backing in 2015, Change Please trains homeless people to work on coffee carts around London, offering a living wage.…

I was an earnest, booky little 16-year-old, reading Chaucer and Shakespeare for fun. Jilly Cooper too though! I wasn’t at all cool, I was too enthusiastic. I’m still like that. But I was strong-minded and opinionated. I was at an all-girls school which was very academic, and didn’t take art seriously. They said I was too academic to do art A-level, so I left that school and went to one which did take art seriously. I met Lauren Child [creator of Charlie and Lola], my best friend, there. I was often in trouble at school, I was very dreamy and disorganised and usually late. Teachers don’t realise that if you’re disorganised, you spend the whole day being told off. It’s not very nice. I had a very split childhood. Most…

In the late 1920s, George Orwell descended into destitution while living hand-to-mouth on a plongeur’s wages in Paris and tramping from one hostel to another in London. This experience led to his first published book, Down and Out in Paris and London, and this week it is being performed by readers including Peter Hitchens, David Schneider, Bonnie Greer and Jack Monroe alongside others who have been – or are – homeless. Three speakers taking part share their thoughts on Orwell and why his voice still matters…

Books The bots got you TV A scam for the 21st century Music Football’s bad beats EXHIBITION HOLD THE FRONT PAGE! The first edition of The Big Issue, published in September 1991, signalled a historic moment in the British media landscape. It features in a new exhibition tracing the story of independent magazines from the early 20th century until the 1990s. Print! Tearing It Up explores how new titles gave alternative voices an outlet. It shows how art, social activism and dissent can come together, with organiser Claire Catterall saying: “Magazines such as The Big Issue have been the blueprint for today’s generation of independent publishers.” Print! Tearing It Up runs from June 8 to August  22, Aldwych, London; somersethouse.org.uk…

A GIRL IS A HALF-FORMED THING by Eimear McBride This multi award-winning novel revitalises the form; situating the reader inside a young woman’s mind as she navigates a world bereaved of her brother. It’s a challenging read, but your vision quickly adjusts to the shuddering, devouring dark, and you see something new. THE SEA, THE SEA by Iris Murdoch A retired actor moves to the coast to read, eat, write a memoir and be with the sea. This contemplative, detailed, brainy Booker-winner—at times absurd, indulgent, moving, comedic—is about who we think we are versus who we become; how the ego gets shaken. WOMAN AND SCARECROW by Marina Carr This extraordinary play presents a woman confronting death after giving birth eight times. Raging with questions metaphysical, moral and cultural – about…

“Theranos didn’t work. At all. It was a load of old bollocks” There’s a 1983 documentary you can watch on YouTube called The Knockers’ Tale that a follows a group of young jack-the-lads from East London who go round posh houses with crates full of ironing board covers, chamois leathers and J Cloths, pretending to raise money for fictitious charities. Apart from the fact that it’s highly entertaining I also found it very educational. To be honest, I always thought those lads who knocked on the door selling tat for charity were completely legit. The amount of money I’ve blown on substandard chamois leathers over the years doesn’t bear thinking about. Anyway, on the subject of scams, I just read a book about one so colossal that it would even…

@drwilding #buyastrangerabook has been a fine thing on Twitter in the last few weeks. Great write up of it here in @BigIssue. to@Biggreenbooks. @dovester100 @BigIssue @BigIssueUK excellent issue and interview with @garysnowpatrol although it makes u sad knowing the troubles that he has felt ! Brilliant article @reallycorrine Amazing & thank you. At 60, I lost Mom & still, 2 years later, I think “wait till I tell her”, or “OMG wait till she hears this”. You are never, ever too old to miss your Mum. I am sorry for your loss and at such a young age in your life... my condolences. @Scernow @BigIssue just met a seller called Earl John Charlton at Newcastle who has just blown my mind with the most incredible spoken word. If you see…

Street art legend Stik’s 125ft work Big Mother, the UK’s tallest street mural, is set for demolition – but a part of it is being saved and auctioned off to boost a local arts charity. It was an insurmountably tall order to save Big Mother, which graces empty 1960s tower block Charles Hocking House in London’s South Acton. So developers of the new 2,500-home Acton Gardens, which is being built on the site, are instead saving a two-metre by two-metre artwork, Family Group, which Stik painted at the foot of the building. It is expected to raise £150,000 when it goes under the hammer at Christie’s, who recently sold a small wooden version of it for £42,000 at auction. The proceeds will go to ARTification, a charity transforming communities through…

I loved going to school and being given milk and cod liver oil pills. And all of those exercises that the Ministry of Health issued involving hoops in the playground. I did not love having my childhood nuts squeezed to check for ruptures, a check-up known as the ‘cough and ballock’ test. Nor the big, venomous needles that pierced the skin and made you cry. Nor, if it came to that, the dentist with his drilling contraptions that cut holes into your decay or pulled out what was rotten with pliers – and all without any anaesthetic. Or the nurses with their fine-tooth combs, smelling of disinfectant and looking for “crawlers” in your slummy, matted hair. It was awful, but at least we had the milk and the cod liver…

Homelessness is a taboo. Most people only see what they want to see; unless you have experienced it you can’t relate to it. At the age of 19 I was just left to live on the streets. It’s frustrating because I’ve been to see lots of charities and people trying to help – but most people overall don’t listen. As a realist, I don’t know if this performance will change anything, but anything that can help might be worthwhile because one person might change their mind. If you change a person’s mind perhaps that’s something that will change things in their social circle and the way they influence other people. Written by a teenager staying with the YMCA in Stoke-upon-Trent who wants to remain anonymous…

“As smart gets smarter, we will trust AIs to fill our fridges, plan our holidays” Decisions, decisions... in a world of unending choice we are faced with between 2,500 and 10,000 decisions to make every day. It’s a tremendous mental burden, and we’ve all been stung by not getting it right – by picking the wrong dish from the menu, the wrong person to date. But imagine if a computer could know your complete history, all your likes, dislikes, fears, foibles, hopes and dreams, and feed this to an artificial intelligence with more brainpower than you could ever dream of, so smart that it would always make the right decision. How much of your life would you be willing to let it control? This is the bargain at the heart…

A documentary is released this week about the designer Alexander McQueen. It’s the latest in what is fast becoming a mini-genre of films about fashion grandees. Vivienne Westwood and Christian Dior, to name a prominent couple, have recently been measured and fitted for their own filmed portraits, and if you add to this list Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread you get the impression that haute couture movies are rolling off the production line like T-shirts in a Primark sweatshop. That’s actually a little unfair because most of these films have their own distinctive merits – in an age of Primark and the rest, we perhaps long for the culture of unique craftsmanship that these figures of high fashion embody, hence the prevalence of such documents. In any event, McQueen is…

On a cassette tape in a box in a storage room in the back of a recording studio somewhere, there quite possibly exists this: a Chris Waddle rap. Despite John Barnes’ already well-proven pedigree as a rubbish rapper (see the Anfield Rap of two years prior), it was apparently never a given that he would perform the rap on World In Motion, England’s official song for the 1990 World Cup in Italy as written and performed by New Order. Instead, heavily under the influence of alcohol, what took place was a “rap-off” for the privilege between the six players who had bothered to turn up that day: John Barnes, Paul Gascoigne, Des Walker, Steve McMahon, Peter Beardsley and Waddle. Barnes’ cack rapping experience of course won out and ensured that…