Innholdsfortegnelse for 9/10/2018 i The Big Issue

This week’s Big Issue has a special Arctic Monkeys supplement taking a behind-the-scenes look at the recording of their latest album. I’ve been a fan from the beginning – they’re a proper indie-rock band, which is what I’m into. On page 23 a professor asks if the UK’s post-Brexit role could be as a promoter of world peace. Whatever works, really – after all, everything’s up in the air at the moment, things like trade and borders. I think it’s going to end up being an emergency Brexit. And there’s more from me on page 46.…

I have some sympathy with Karen Bradley, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. She admitted last week that she knew pretty much nothing about the place before she took the job. The tribal nature of voting was just one of the things that was news to her. While surprising, at least she was honest. The admission brought the standard level of opprobrium. How dare she take such a position! Why hadn’t she studied the mass of material that is out there, developing a key and learned understanding of this most complex puzzle?! I am from Northern Ireland. I grew up in it, steeped in it, informed by the dark mood music of the Troubles and the ever-present tinnitus of hatred. And I struggle with some of the layers. There…

Inside this edition we carry an exclusive eight-page supplement featuring never-before-seen photos of Arctic Monkeys. The band frontman and centre of gravity Alex Turner talks us through this incredible, exclusive collection. A special edition of this magazine will be on sale at Arctic Monkeys live shows in the UK throughout September. If you’re going along, look out for our vendors. If you can’t make it and you want to add the special edition to your Arctic Monkeys’ collection, see bigissueshop.com this week for details.…

Wonga’s collapse does not mean that debts do not need to be repaid. The firm has stopped accepting new customers, but administrators Grant Thornton have taken on the firm’s loan book. They will now look to sell that to a new creditor with the remit of attracting the highest bidder. However, the buyer will have to follow same rules as outlined by Wonga, meaning that borrowers should notice no difference if they keep their repayments on track. But anyone who does find themselves missing payments and struggling to repay could see their debts passed on to debt recovery firms and while they can’t increase interest rates or add charges that were not originally outlined in the credit agreement, they may bring bailiffs to your door.…

The Global Peace Index, produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace, analyses societal safety and security, the degree of militarisation and the extent of domestic and international conflict, ranking 163 states and territories according to the level of peacefulness. Their latest report found… The global level of peace has deteriorated by 0.27% in the last year This is the fourth successive year of deterioration In the last decade the world has become 2.38% less peaceful 92 countries became less peaceful, 71 became more peaceful Iceland is the most peaceful country in the world – and has been since 2008 Syria is the least peaceful country in the world – and has been since 2013 The UK is the 57th most peaceful country in the world The economic impact of…

The London district of Bankside is one of the oldest in the country. In the 16th century ‘Banksyde’ sat just outside the old city walls and became a natural landing place for outsiders, dissenters and free thinkers arriving in London. Five hundred years later, the legacy of this artistic, anarchic melting pot is still clear to see. Bankside is home to the world’s most popular museum – the Tate Modern – as well as Shakespeare’s Globe and Borough Market. For the London Design Festival, Bankside has challenged leading artists such as Morag Myerscough as well as a host of design studios to create flags that celebrate the area’s rebellious history and independent spirit. The full complement of 60 flags will hang at Borough Market’s Jubilee Place during London Design Festival,…

MULLIGAN STEW by Gilbert Sorrentino A rigorously hilarious handbook on writing and writers in the form of an acerbic, innovative comic novel. The intricately hewn novel-within-the-novel is a parodic masterclass of bad writing. An education in itself that outclasses most ‘how to’ writing guides. MY BACK PAGES by Steven Moore One of the finest American critics and a voraciously insatiable reader. In this collection of essays and reviews spanning several decades, Moore champions original and challenging literature – from William Gaddis and Alexander Theroux to neglected marginals Chandler Brossard and Brigid Brophy – with unstinting exuberance. A TEMPLE OF TEXTS by William H Gass A master of the melodic sentence, novelist and essayist Gass brings a swinging, sensuous style to illuminate the efforts of others. Gass stands up for attentive,…

Unhealthy decision The National Health Service began to go downhill when the cleaners and tea ladies work, instead of being employed directly but the hospitals, went out to tender. What the then newly formed trusts didn’t realise was that the domestic staff, far from being menial workers, were an essential component to any ward team. Regretfully, management saw money as, if not more, important than people – that was their great undoing. Richard Pett, Compton Tot men I’ve been buying the Issue for the last 10 years in Totnes. As I get ready to move to pastures new, I want to thank all the wonderful vendors who have not only sold us a great magazine, but added life and colour to Fore Street and kept the community aware of homelessness.…

In last week’s Big Issue, we reported that robotic arms could be filling fields after the number of seasonal EU workers heading to the UK took a Brexit-fuelled hit. The government has tried to circumvent the problem with the announcement of a nationwide pilot to allow 2,500 workers from outside the EU to head to the UK for six months in the two-year trial. Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s announcement opens the door for workers from India, Ukraine and north Africa, for example, to step in – but in nowhere near the numbers required to fill the void left by EU workers. Meeting the increased demand for strawberries and co means that an estimated 31,000 seasonal workers will be needed by 2020 to avoid unpicked fruit dying in the fields. The…

I was touring with my sisters when I was 16. It was probably the height of our career. Touring the world; Japan, Russia, Australia, everywhere. It was a very full-on time. But I’d been performing with my family since I was two so it wasn’t an unusual way of life for me. And I was with my family so it felt very safe. I was – I am – a real homebody and I spent a lot of time just wishing I was back home. I probably appreciate that time now more than I did when I was going through it. I look back now and think wow, that was actually an amazing time in my life. The hits started drying up in my mid-20s. We were still working but…

The Big Issue has played a pivotal role in kicking off the social revolution in the UK since the magazine launched in 1991. Just as we led the charge for the street papers movement, we have also become one of the most prominent social enterprises in the UK. And that has paved the way for events like the Social Enterprise World Forum as the number of businesses for good swelled to around 70,000 in recent years. As the British Council put it in a 2015 assessment of the sector: “Overall social enterprise has flourished in the UK in recent years, despite the country’s economic downturn.” The Big Issue chose to become social enterprise because it is the business framework that best fits our motto of a “hand up not a…

A slow-burning psychedelic sci-fi chanson masterpiece inspired by Serge Gainsbourg, The Beach Boys, 1970s movie soundtracks and outer space, Arctic Monkeys’ Mercury Prize-nominated sixth album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is one of the finest albums of 2018, and the Sheffield band’s boldest and most ambitious artistic statement to date. As they embark on the UK leg of their world tour, they came to The Big Issue to offer an exclusive, never-before-seen set of behind-the-scenes photographs taken by their friend Zackery Michael – on the road, during video shoots and in-and-around the studio in France where the record came together. The Big Issue is the only place you can see these images, although more visual content from these sessions will feature in exhibitions staged in Sheffield and London to coincide…

MY PASSIONS I love reading – I like adventure stories and crime novels. My favourite authors are Wilbur Smith, Chris Ryan, Andy McNab, Clive Cussler and Jack Higgins. It’s really broadened my knowledge and vocabulary. I also love doing crosswords and logic puzzles. I’M VERY SPORTY I’m 6ft 3in, and I’m looking around to join a volleyball club. I used to play at county level. At snooker I used to play semi-professional, I got top breaks of 80s and 90s, so I did play to quite a high standard. But it’s an expensive hobby now.…

As a retired property manager with over 40 years of experience in the leasehold sector I take issue with the comment made by Keith Billinghurst regarding terrorism insurance [Correspondence, August 27-September 2]. Whilst terrorism is a risk, the chance of a leasehold residential property being subject to damage is infinitesimally low, especially those dwellings in non-urban areas or remote from city centres. The vast majority of incidents have involved offices and shops – the Baltic Exchange, Canary Wharf and Manchester bombings for instance. The problem I find is that the premium is excessive compared to the risk. Why is this? It is because agents and landlords of leasehold residential property take huge commissions on these types of insurance, sometimes 100 per cent of the annual premium. If you then add…

We are sad to report that popular Barnstaple Big Issue seller Dianne Cumper has died aged 45. Known to her friends as Di, the former NHS nurse had fallen into difficulty after returning to the UK following a period working in South Africa. She started selling The Big Issue and was rapidly building up sales on her pitch at Green Lanes Shopping Centre. Kizzy Angell, who runs the Big Issue franchise in North Devon, had known Di since she arrived in Barnstaple. “Many people had commented on how much better she was looking. She came to me to buy her magazines with her make up on, her hair lovely and a smile of hope on her face,” said Kizzy. “She even encouraged another resident in the place she lived to…

“It was just me, a mirror and the great beauty of hills, water and low clouds” I was wrestling with fairies in the most incredible scenery I had stayed in for many years. It was on a Scottish peninsula that stuck out between two lochs off the Firth of Clyde in Argyll and Bute. I had been given the chance to stay in a hut at the Cove Park art centre, a kind of retreat where artists can go and work. My wrestling was with my latest book, which in spite of its silly title – The Fairy that Came in From the Cold – is a very serious book about how we understand history. How ingredients make up events, and it’s not worth sticking with one cause to explain…

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is the finest indie film of the year so far, already attracting Oscar buzz for its star Chloë Grace Moretz and writer-director Desiree Akhavan. The film highlights the insidious prevalence of gay conversion therapy, and it turns out that the idea of “praying the gay away” is not, as we might imagine, a historical anomaly. As if to confirm this, Pope Francis, only last week, spoke to journalists and advised parents to pray and seek psychiatric help for their children should they “appear to be gay”. Teenager Cameron Post (Moretz) is sent to the God’s Promise camp after being caught with her secret girlfriend outside the school prom. At the camp, alongside a ragtag group of gay and gender fluid misfits, she is ‘treated’…

Osama bin Laden gave Simon Reeve his big break. In 1998, while working as an investigative reporter, Reeve published The New Jackals, a book about ‘the future of terrorism’. It went largely unnoticed until 2001, when Reeve suddenly found himself in demand as the world’s foremost Al-Qaeda expert. The BBC contacted him about working on a documentary. They wanted Reeve to infiltrate the terrorist network; instead he wrote and presented Meet the Stans, in which he travelled from Kazakhstan to Afghanistan. Over 20 series exploring lesser-trod parts of the globe followed, making unflappable Reeve, as fearlessly adventurous as he is engaging, one of the BBC’s most prolific presenters. But his career did not take a traditional path. “I didn’t go to university; I left school and went on the dole,”…