Innholdsfortegnelse for 8/27/2018 i The Big Issue

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Big Issue. The Great British Bake Off is returning to our screens, so we’re looking at our long history as a nation of bread lovers. I’ve never made my own bread but I do love my toast in the morning and a cheese sandwich for lunch, so it’s certainly a staple in my diet. You can read the feature on page 18. Then on page 22 the actor Ralf Little tells us why he had to take on Jeremy Hunt over the state of the health service. I’m lucky that I’m in good health but I go in for blood pressure checks and I’m so grateful for the service I get from the NHS. You can read my story on page 46.…

I spent time at the International Network Of Street Papers conference last week. It’s the annual get together of a global collection of over 100 street papers in 34 countries. The INSP was established 24 years ago by The Big Issue and the majority of these member titles are modelled to a greater or lesser extent on The Big Issue. The conference is an opportunity to meet and share ideas. Some of the magazines are doing incredible things. I look to Mi Valedor, for example, a title started by a determined few right in the heart of the toughest part of Mexico City and I want to stand up and applaud. They are making a difference by doing, by offering those right at the bottom of that huge metropolis an…

Summer’s not over and The Big Issue has yet another festival partnership coming up, as we take centre stage at The Downs Festival in Bristol on September 1. We teamed up with the festival to produce a very special exclusive programme for the event, including a map, all the essential info for festival-goers and features on headliners and stars including Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller, Orbital and The Heavy. Look out for our vendors on-site, say hello and pick up your copy. thedownsbristol.com…

“My work is about healing, forgiveness and reconciliation,” says Robyn, who is in her late 50s and lives in Brighton. “I come from the school of hard knocks. A recent diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis on top of my bipolar is difficult. However art has rescued me – the artistic process gives me relief from the difficulties of managing my health issues.” You can buy prints of some artworks featured in Street Art through bigissueshop.com At least half of the profit from each sale goes to the artist. 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.…

IN 1997 THE YEAR JOSH GROBAN TURNS 16…  Tony Blair leads Labour to its biggest ever election win / Princess Diana dies in a car crash in Paris / Russian carmaker Lada ends imports to the UK after 23 years As I look back now, I just can’t believe how many stars were aligning for me when I was 16. I kind of knew I could sing, but it took mentors and teachers to tell me ‘I think you can do this’ to put me out there. It was really at 16 that that started to happen. A producer named David Foster was looking for a singer for an event and he said to a voice teacher I was working with, ‘Who have you got who’s young and can sing…

This might look like a pile of rocks – but it is in fact a tool to exclude the most marginalised people in society. Forming an artificial stream under a bridge in Hamburg, at first glance it appears a picturesque way of managing rainfall as they fill up in a deluge. But in reality it’s aimed to prevent rough sleepers bedding down for the night. It has been highlighted by German photographer Julius-Christian Schreiner as part of his Silent Agents series, a mission to document Europe’s worst examples of hostile architecture. He has turned his lens on examples from these stones to covered ventilation shafts in cities including Innsbruck, London and Hamburg, where his photos were exhibited in August at the Barlach Halle K gallery. Later this year he plans…

REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier The seminal novel about jealousy. Mrs de Winter struggles to cope with living in the shadow of her husband’s deceased first wife, Rebecca. It has everything you could wish for: atmospheric writing, a compelling plot, fascinating characters and lots of twists. THE END OF THE AFFAIR by Graham Greene Maurice Bendrix never recovered from his affair with married Sarah Miles. When they meet again by chance, his jealousy and obsession move to a new level, but Maurice’s rival is not who he thinks it is. A thought-provoking and moving book, covering profound themes. OUR KIND OF CRUELTY by Araminta Hall The story of a toxic obsession, told solely from the viewpoint of Mike, who refuses to accept his ex has moved on and is happy…

Distant Voices, Still Lives is the debut feature from Terence Davies, his poetic, visually breathtaking account of a working-class Liverpool family in the years after the war. There’s a brutal father figure, communal singing, and long, painterly shots of domestic interiors – the film has the intensity and poignancy of a childhood memory. Davies is one of Britain’s finest filmmakers, and this might be his best. It’s on welcome re-release from the British Film Institute. See it!…

Don’t be a plonker Albert Gladstone Trotter was the brother of Grandad in the series Only Fools and Horses. He joined the series after attending his brother’s funeral. Uncle Albert moved in with Del Boy and Rodney when he was abandoned by Stan and Jean who he was living with. At the end of Argyle Street, London, is Brian, Big Issue seller. He is there with his dog Misty, a Jack Russell. Every time I see Brian he is friendly and polite. This week Brian tells me that being 60, and due to his age, he may get a place in Pimlico, subject to passing an interview. Del Boy did not question why Uncle Albert was homeless and put him through an interview. He took him in and looked after…

Intrepid Big Issue vendor Garry Buchan is notching up the miles on his epic trek from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Already he has passed St Michael’s Mount and put his best foot forward along the Cornish coast via St Austell, Fowey Harbour, Looe and Plymouth. He headed inland via Barnstaple and past his home-turf in Bristol where his Big Issue colleagues came out to support him. Now Garry has passed through Wiltshire, stopping off at Newbury and Reading, and last week he navigated the banks of the Thames up through Buckinghamshire. Next up on his epic trek – a challenging 1,650-mile voyage – is a stretch of 260 miles on the Pennine Way. Garry said: “The real challenge begins in two to three weeks with the climbs!” Raising funds…

The revolution beckons. But it may not look like the French, Russian or Industrial revolutions. Rather, it may be a revolution of thought; an incredible leap in our understanding which will allow us to start solving problems across different societies and countries. Such a revolution may allow us to use childhood education as a tool for bettering the lives of all children – without leaving 37 per cent behind as we currently do. A revolution in thinking may enable us to tackle drug problems, drunkenness, obesity and crime – as well as the problem of the deep-seated need of expressing ourselves through competitive purchasing: consumerism. Perhaps this revolution in thought will enable governments and political leaders to realise that if the box is not thinking correctly then ‘thinking outside the…

I agree that the challenges we face to end homelessness are huge and for me it stems back to the classroom. I hate being in low-paid work, it is especially hard when you have a disability as you feel you have no way to move forward. This can last for decades. You feel you can’t be the person who you know underneath your limitations you potentially could be. I have serious concerns about how we can support people who need it most when the able world is struggling so much. Britain has never really solved the disability employment in the years I have been an adult (I’m 42 years old this year) and technology will continue to change our society and how our economy is run. Christopher Burns, Torpoint…

Last week as Homebase announced the closure of more stores a hot debate hit The Big Issue office: can you wire a plug? With responses ranging from “Of course I can!” to “Why would I need to?”, a familiar whipping boy took a hammering for the collapse of DIY culture: it’s down to millennials. Turns out they’re just not that keen on DIY, with nearly a quarter hiring a tradesman every time instead of attempting jobs themselves. And with 43 per cent saying they didn’t know that the live brown cow eats the green and yellow grass from the earth under a neutral blue sky, we took to social media to ask if you were more Do-It-Yourself or Don’t-It-Yourself.…

DANIEL MAYS is one of the finest British actors working today. He’s known for bringing humanity, as well as realness, depth and integrity, to any character, whether playing gay rights campaigner Peter Wildeblood in Against The Law, Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs in ITV’s Mrs Biggs, the devil in the form of a police complaints officer in BBC One’s Ashes to Ashes or Vera Drake’s son in Mike Leigh’s Oscar-nominated 2004 classic. But the latest role in a long and increasingly impressive catalogue has made more impact on him than most. In Mother’s Day, a new BBC Two factual drama based on the aftermath of the IRA Warrington bombings, Mays plays Colin Parry. Parry was the father of 12-year-old Tim, who died along with three-year-old Johnathan Ball following the attack…

Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War revolves around a tumultuous love affair drawn from the experience of his parents (to whom the film is dedicated). The focus is, as you’d expect, personal and intimate. But the epochal sweep of the title promises more. Set in Poland, Berlin and Paris from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, the film has ambitions to say something about Europe’s divided history, especially in Pawlikowski’s native land – much like his Oscar-winning 2013 movie Ida . It’s a tricky balance: capturing the whims and impulses of a love affair between two temperamental people on the one hand, and accounting for the tectonic shifts of European politics on the other. Pawlikowski doesn’t quite pull it off but the effort is remarkable to behold. Cold War begins,…

Just as I might respond to anyone who objects to my appreciation of a nice hand cream or an attractive tote bag as an unashamed modern man of the 21st century, he or she who fancies telling me that I also can’t enjoy an occasional cathartic cry to a sad song written by a girl can fuck right off. Especially as pickings are so rich at the moment, with a whole wave of fantastic young female songwriters coming especially out of the US, whose ways with an exquisitely dismal lyric are such that you’ve got to wonder if they haven’t secretly got shares in Kleenex. Take Virginian indie-rock force of nature Lucy Dacus, for instance, and her recent second album for Matador Records Historian, specifically the blistering track Night Shift.…