Innholdsfortegnelse for 8/6/2018 i The Big Issue

There’s a report on the reluctance of Brits to be fruit pickers on page eight. I can understand why at the moment because of the heatwave – it could be an additional reason to put them off. EU workers might also draw the line, even though they’re keen to graft. I know how strenous doing stuff like that can be. I didn’t know about the Hurricane Girls who flew planes in the Second World War, which you can read about on page 20.I’m looking forward to reading the piece, they sound like typical unsung heroes. You can read about me and my musical ambitions on page 46.…

@stickytoffeejazz Always a joy to see Jim. He’s one of the happiest people I know and today he danced to my entire 2.5 hour set in this heat. He’s the star in this week’s #bigissue. I was so sorry to read elements of his story yet he just seems to make light of his misfortune of being on the streets. It’s his journey and he’s embracing every second of living… @SalisburyLife Even our @BigIssue sellers have star quality in #Salisbury. Meet Jim, who sells @ CrossKeysCentre and is also in the current #BigIssue mag talking about #salisbury. Good work Jim! @cynthiavanzella Chatting with my @BigIssue vendor Tony at #VictoriaStation, he asks about my holidays and I mention I’ll go camping – for which he replies “Camping is great, I do…

• What paperback is nestled in your hand luggage as you jet off on holiday? If you’re stuck, we’ve enlisted some celebrity pals to help with our Big Summer Reads Guide • For years the plug had been pulled on lidos, but now it’s time to dive in and revitalise a “whole way of life” • Arsenal legend Tony Adams is ready for the big kick-off – he tells us how his first addiction was to football before he battled the booze • Former neo-Nazi Nigel Bromage spent two decades embracing hate and violence as part of the far-right. Now he is helping people turn their back on it…

Heathers, the 1988 high-school black comedy, got turned into a musical a few years back, and this summer it travelled to London’s West End. A good time then to revisit the original film – which is exactly what one smart distributor is doing, releasing the movie into UK cinemas this week. The film suffered bad box-office karma back the in late 1980s – it wasn’t a hit (though it did acquire cult status on video) – so perhaps the publicity around the musical will nudge people back to the original source. Which would be a good thing because Heathers jumps off the screen: this is a savage, witty, impeccably stylish act of subversion against some of the rosier clichés of the teen pic. Set in an Ohio high school, the…

Have faith Even ‘godless minds’ can appreciate Thought for the Day. Like Robin Ince, I love A Point of View [Radio, July 2-8] but the variety of voices and experiences on TFTD is also worth listening to. Just ignore any ‘preachiness’ and take the opportunity to hear the thoughts of a pacifist, bishop, Buddhist, Church of Scotland minister, Jewish rabbi, Hindu convert, Muslim teacher, catholic nun, Sikh leader, journalist, scientist, author etc. Maggie, email Flood of goodwill It was good to read of Saltburn’s Big Issue vendor Gary getting star treatment in the paper [My Pitch, July 30-August 5]. He is helping to keep a small flooding problem at bay in our town centre – silt blocks up a grid in our shopping precinct. He unblocks it when there is…

It is, said Damian Hinds, a scandal. It matters, he added. Damian Hinds is Education Secretary. He was talking about a new report that warned a growing number of children were arriving at school unable to adequately read and write. The Department of Education’s found over a quarter of four and five-year-olds couldn’t communicate in full sentences. And Hinds is going to do something about it. He has kicked off a plan to halve the figures in 10 years. He’s making the right noises, showing the link between early positive intervention and success later in life. He’s saying things about life chances and social mobility. Which is all very nice. At The Big Issue we’ve been asking different governments for years to take the prevention message seriously. To get in…

While we look to the government to tackle the housing crisis and holiday hunger, it is also the responsibility of us all to deal with the issues head-on. Discount supermarket Lidl has embraced that by announcing plans to build 3,000 homes as well as a 5kg ‘Too Good to Waste’ fruit and veg box for just £1.50. The homes will be built in London over the next three years and aim to maximise urban space by working on a multi-use basis alongside new Lidl stores. It’s not all selflessness, of course, the project is a boost when applying for planning permission – but above one of their new stores it will offer a new home to Richmond’s Deer Park Primary School after a two- year search for a location. It…

Mary studied art and design for five years in college and has been working as an artist in London for 10 years, selling and exhibiting work through Café Art and Crisis. “Art helps with my depression,” she says. “I have a history of homelessness and use day centres to access art materials. Without these I would be unable to create my work. I love using colour; it helps my mood. The sadder I am the more colour comes out. The pain becomes beautiful.” 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 ART! You can buy prints of some artworks featured in Street Art through bigissueshop.com At least…

I grew up wedged between two sets of brothers – two older than me, two younger. Five of us born in six years. So by the time I was 16 I was a tomboy, and I had a strong sense of equality and justice. My brothers always claimed I was the favourite. My parents made it clear that they wanted me to have the same opportunities as my brothers, but the wider Irish society in Mayo didn’t give me that same sense. I had very few options. I was expected to marry very young – which I had no interest in doing – or become a nun. I was quite religious in those days, my family were very religious. And we had nuns in the family who had lived very…

Pauline Gower Daughter of MP Sir Robert Gower, Pauline was the ATA’s first female recruit in 1939. She previously ran joyride flights for the public and was only the third woman in the world to hold a commercial ‘B’ pilot licence, flying 30,000 passengers. It was Gower who convinced ATA chiefs to recruit female ferry pilots. She died aged just 36 giving birth to twins in 1947. Both of her sons survived. Mary Ellis Her death on July 24 at the age of 101 threw fresh light on the heroism of the ATA Girls. Born in Oxfordshire in 1917, Ellis was a year older than the RAF itself. After joining the ATA in 1941, she was tasked with delivering Spitfires and bombers to the frontline and ultimately spent 1,100 hours…

This week we have two novels in which the sense of time and place are brilliantly evoked to add a deeper level of reader engagement above and beyond expert plotting and character. First up we have The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry. Parry is the pseudonym of husband and wife team Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman, and this is their first novel written together. Brookmyre brings over 20 years of writing experience to the table, while Haetzman brings her expertise as a clinical anaesthetist to this engrossing historical novel set in 19th-century Edinburgh, centred around the growing medical profession of that time. The idea for the book came from Haetzman’s research into the history of anaesthesia and it includes real-life physician James Young Simpson, who was the first…

“Many people find the hubbub of festivals challenging” Most of us are acutely aware of the ever-increasing cost of living. Earlier this year, the headline inflation rate was revealed to be three per cent, almost double last year’s figure. The way we spend money on non-essentials is constantly in flux, changing to reflect wider societal trends. Our flirtation with economic fashions is reflected in the Office for National Statistics’ collection of goods, a grim acknowledgement of mainstream consumer spending, seen as the UK’s official shopping basket. This year sees children’s soft-play sessions enter the list for the first time, as well as active wear and GoPro cameras. (A stage show involving all the featured items surely beckons?) The underlying themes to the list are wellbeing, active leisure and experience. Fresh…

The Big Issue backed-Hey Girls organisation this week take a giant leap forward in their battle against period poverty as they see their products stocked in supermarket giants ASDA and Waitrose. Founded just eight months ago by Celia Hodson with the help of her two daughters, Kate and Becky, Hey Girls sells sanitary towels on a ‘buy one give one’ model – meaning for every pack purchased another is donated to a woman in need. “It all started with a heated discussion between myself and my two daughters that results in a big hairy audacious goal,” Hodson told The Big Issue. “We simply wanted to work out if we could fix period poverty and what that would look like.” A £50,000 investment and mentorship from Big Issue Invest’s Power Up…

Last week we told you about life-saving vendor Garry Buchan’s herculean 1,650-mile challenge to walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats – and now you can keep tabs on his progress. Bristol seller Garry, 43, who hit the headlines when he saved the life of a stricken moped rider in April, left his starting point at the UK’s most westerly point on July 31 and is working his way north. And you can track his progress as he battles the elements to walk and camp his way up the country, thanks to a phone and GPS tracker donated by Simpleweb. The generous software developer has been a big supporter of Garry ever since he sold the magazine outside their own headquarters on Park Street in the city and even invited…

I travelled back from Arromanches last week, a small beach town in Normandy in Northern France that celebrates June 6, 1944 as if it were still a living event. That is the day of the largest seaborne invasion in history, in which around 156,000 soldiers arrived early morning on the beaches surrounding Arromanches. Museums, gift shops, tourist centres and restaurants celebrate the event; the place heaves with holidaymakers. The beaches where hundreds died trying to get on land under the German defences is now strewn with bikini-wearing sun seekers. I went because from the late 1970s I have visited the D-Day landings site with an almost spiritual reverence. Uncles of mine scurried up these beaches on that fateful day. Many of the milkmen, council workers and steel erectors of my…

Having trouble entertaining the kids during the long hot summer? Prise them away from Fortnite and discover what kids once called fun. A collection of board games from the V&A Museum of Childhood are on display at New Lanark Visitor Centre. Game Plan celebrates the joy (and frustration) of table-top gaming, letting visitors get hands-on with games from around the world. Classics like Snakes and Ladders and old-school family favourites Monopoly and Cluedo join a new breed of games like Pandemic. The exhibition also sheds light on once-popular games such as Game of the Golden Goose, which was the earliest commercially produced board game, dating back to 15th century Italy. First to 63 wins! Game Plan: Board Games Rediscovered runs until November 4; newlanark.org…

THE SWORD IN THE STONE by TH White This delightful retelling of the legend of King Arthur includes a plucky orphan named Wart, a hapless Merlin, a forest outlaw named Robin Wood (Wood, mind you; not Hood)… a delicious platter of medieval treats. ORDINARY JACK by Helen Cresswell The first book in The Bagthorpe Saga, Ordinary Jack features a family of eccentric geniuses with one ordinary brother. When Jack sets out to raise the morale of a dog named Zero, his plans go up in smoke. And flames. One of my favorite books from childhood. WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams Another fave. Adams writes an epic of Homeric scale about rabbits seeking a place to call home. The final battle is as gripping as any story ever told. LARKLIGHT by…

“It’s always been clever and cool – now it’s exciting and explosive too” I’ve written about glorious French spy drama The Bureau before. When it first started I observed on these pages that it was a bit less action packed and altogether more enigmatic than the average spy drama. No neck-breaking, no explosions, no shoes with knives in them or watches that help undo women’s dresses. The Bureau was a bit more intelligent and nuanced and slow-burning. And that’s what made me feel so smug about watching it. I mean, of course, I feel smug about watching any foreign subtitled drama. But The Bureau was so particularly complex and ponderous that I felt extra-specially self-satisfied about watching it and then telling people that I was watching it. If you are…

Your bags are packed, you’ve stuffed them into the car or made the unnecessarily frantic two-hour early rush to the airport. Your summer holiday is in full swing. But what about that all-important poolside read? We’ve got your back! And even if you’re not heading off to warmer climates, our bumper box of books is just the ticket to help you chill out at home. We’re giving one lucky reader the chance to win a box full of summer reads. From bestsellers to the perfect beach read, there’s bound to be a book for you. The bundle includes Ronnie O’Sullivan’s Double Kiss, the latest new Thorne thriller from Mark Billingham, Love Like Blood, and Sympathy, the debut novel from Olivia Sudjic. Plus many, many more books – fiction and non-fiction…