Innholdsfortegnelse for 9/17/2018 i The Big Issue

We head to Australia to hear from two remarkable vendors of our sister paper down under. Kelly and Greg were recently given the heartbreaking news that their plans for a wedding next autumn needed to be brought forward urgently because of Kelly’s deteriorating health. So that’s exactly what they did, and we bring your their heartwarming story on page 46. Cover star Rod Stewart has had a few weddings himself, and has a life story and wardrobe worthy of a special extended Letter to My Younger Self. Read that on page 16. He’s quite a man.…

I met a man on his knees in the park one morning last week. He had a small dustpan and brush in his hands. He was collecting bits of shattered glass from the path and grass nearby. I threw a ball to make sure my dog ran well out of the way. “Little bastard,” he said. “I saw him last night. Little bastard. Just chucked it, smashed it. He was sitting wi’ a lassie. Who does that? All the wee dugs round here. Little bastard.” I stood around for a moment and thought about what I could say. “Well, that’s very good of you.” Then I shuffled off. This has been another week of confusion and ridicule. The government, which for so long claimed to be the party of business,…

Thousands of small business owners across England and Wales are facing an uncertain future after Network Rail made a shock announcement last week that their premises have been sold off. Despite government promises to look out for the SMEs and seek alternatives to a bulk sell-off of the 5,200 railway arches where they operate, Network Rail revealed it had sold them for £1.46bn to Blackstone Property Partners and Telereal Trillium. They will hold equal ownership stakes in the deal, with Network Rail aiming to use the funds for rail improvements. A spokesperson for the Guardians of the Arches campaign group said: “Throughout this process we have sought to ensure that small businesses are genuinely protected so that the arches can thrive. We continue to dispute whether selling off the whole…

Unlike homeowners with a mortgage, keeping up with rental payments has not allowed renters to build up a credit history. So The Big Issue Group has tested the inclusion of rental data in social housing with the Rental Exchange, alongside credit reference agency Experian, allowing tenants with a ‘thin’ credit file to build up their credit history by keeping up with payments. It’s hoped the Creditworthiness Assessment Bill will make this a mandatory consideration, via a new rule from the Financial Conduct Authority, for credit providers, whether it’s for credit services, insurance, white goods, utilities or mobile phones.…

Hamilton Academical, Stenhousemuir, Queen of the South, Motherwell, Cowdenbeath and Partick Thistle are all Scottish football club names that, for some reason, were read out on the radio in the orphanage I was in as a child. Such rhyming-like sounds were electric to me. Of course, I realised later that the football results were read out on the radio so that people could ‘do the pools’, a brilliant invention where you guessed the results of Saturday games before they were played. And if you actually managed to get enough right, you could win money. On rare occasions, you could win big time, turning into an instant millionaire. The pools simply involved pooling your few shillings with millions of others. This made multi-millionaires of the creators of such schemes. In the…

“If you build it… they will come.” That was my promise to big Kengo Kuma and Philip Long the first time we ‘met’. Truth be told, it was not a meeting as such, more a case of me knocking them on to their artistic bahookies, as I skated past them on Dundee’s waterfront. Result! When I yelled back, “Why the ‘Long’-face, dude?” at the mud-splattered museum director I reckoned I’d guaranteed that I was barred for life, before the first brick had even been laid. Bothered. Things like the V&A weren’t for me, or for Dundee for that matter. Or so I thought. When I said “they will come” I was only talking about The Bash Street Kids on a cheap school trip, so I was bugged when I heard…

Nicholas II, the last Russian Tsar, was by all accounts a bit of a tech geek. X-rays of his and his Empress’ hands – shown here – dating from 1898 are evidence of his interest in cutting-edge technology. Marking 100 years since the execution of the Romanovs, The Last Tsar: Blood and Revolution delves into one of the biggest mysteries of the last century, illustrating the role science played in their lives and deaths. The Last Tsar: Blood and Revolution is at the Science Museum, London until March 2019. sciencemuseum.org.uk…

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE by Robert Louis Stevenson The classic Scottish crime novel, with a strong dash of gothic and a twist that will never be bettered. A ‘shilling shocker’ with the style and economy of a lyric poem. The fons et origo of Tartan Noir. THE DRIVER’S SEAT by Muriel Spark A boldly inventive book, in which the murder takes place at the end and the victim spends the entire novel searching for her killer. Spark takes the all the conventions of the crime novel and stands them on their head. Still has the power to shock. A PLACE OF EXECUTION by Val McDermid The queen of crime’s masterpiece. Beautifully constructed, with a flawless sense of place. A big, meaty, multilayered novel about power…

Your new album is called Monsters Exist – but who are the monsters? Everyone’s got their own version of who the monsters are but my personal monsters are all human ones. At the moment they’re all politicians; Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un, anyone in the British government who is aiming for Brexit. They’re complete idiots and don’t know what they’re doing, passing the buck by saying it’s the will of the people. Does the political atmosphere now feel similar to when you first started making music? I didn’t like Margaret Thatcher but I do think she had the courage of her convictions and she believed wholeheartedly and vocationally in what should be done. She wasn’t so much a career politician, but someone who genuinely believed what she…

Multi-million bestselling author Joe Wicks is back with his sixth book Joe’s 30 Minute Meals – and we have five signed copies of the book to give away with bonus spatula to help you prep like a boss. Wicks has been teaching the world how to cook simple and tasty food ever since his debut book Lean in 15 shot straight to Number One in 2016, becoming one of the best selling cookbooks of all time. 30 Minute Meals still keeps it simple with minimal prep time, and introduces 100 new, quick and healthy recipes including goats cheese and chorizo morning muffins, kofta-stuffed romano peppers, chicken and mushroom risotto and baked maple apples. The meals in the book are designed to inspire everyone – from busy parents looking to liven…

Get in there early Reading the Education Special [September 3-9], I was disappointed to find no mention of the Early Years. There is a raft of research which shows that children benefit enormously from attending high-quality nurseries. Poorer and more deprived children have the most to gain. However, while policymakers proclaim this loudly they continue to under-invest and make insufficient effort to make the changes necessary to ensure that more disadvantaged children have access to the best in class nurseries. A society is judged by how well it treats its children and our school report for Early Years education is definitely a “could do better”. June O’Sullivan MBE, chief executive London Early Years Foundation (LEYF) Top of the class The Education Special [September 3-9] was one of your best. I…

John Bird is standing next to a bench in Victoria Tower Gardens, flanked by the Thames and with the Houses of Parliament dominating the backdrop. He points at a bench, “I used to sleep here back in 1961”, and tells stories of how he used an old RAF overcoat to keep him warm. Later he would go on to wash pots in the kitchens in parliament long before he launched The Big Issue. Now he has made the transition to standing in the House of Lords himself as a crossbench peer. And for the last year he has taken his Creditworthiness Assessment Bill through the House of Lords without any amendments. The legislation would ensure that credit providers are forced to take into account rental and council tax payment history,…

The government has said it will shortly be launching its consultation on the results of the high-cost credit review by the FCA. Action in this area is badly needed. We all need to have access to credit as part of our lives, whether it’s getting a mobile phone, a car, or, at some point, a mortgage for a home. But that access should be affordable and as things stand, it’s young people and those who are the least well-off, with the smallest financial track record, who end up paying the most for credit. It’s a catch-22 situation that locks them out of the sort of access to low-cost, affordable credit that most other people take for granted. Therefore the Creditworthiness Assessment Bill, the brainchild of Lord Bird, makes sure that…

There are lots of books of speeches out but they all seem to be ‘100 speeches that changed the course of history’. It’s not often you see speeches that have been scribbled on a piece of paper and never read, or speeches that changed just one person’s life. When I was doing this book I was thinking, if a speech was never delivered is it still a speech? I never found an answer and I think that’s the wrong question to be asking. I think it’s important to be appreciating as many of these documents as possible. I do think about all the speeches that aren’t allowed to be made that we’ll never know about. President Nixon : In event of Moon Disaster Shaun Usher : This was the speech…

READ MORE FROM... EDWARD LAWRENSON VISIT BIGISSUE.COM “Why are you a problematic pop star?” The question is spoken by filmmaker Steve Loveridge, and it’s directed towards the subject of this enthralling new documentary: the British-Tamil performer MIA. Problematic seems quite a loaded, even sexist term to me – would you apply that adjective to a politically outspoken male recording artist? Besides, what’s so striking about this fascinating feature-length portrait of the singer is how hard it is to reduce her to a single label. Even the title advertises the many sides of this performer: Matangi/Maya/MIA. Three names by which the performer is known, each a different variant on how she has defined herself. Matangi evokes her Tamil background, Maya her London upbringing and MIA her stage…

I just bought The Big Issue, as I do almost every week and read the story of a vendor called Tom Cash, selling the magazine in Oxford. He mentioned people saying to him: “Get a f***ing job!” It made me think. I am an EU national and I get a dodgy look from 99 per cent of people at the moment. I know a black Caribbean chef once adopted by a family and brought up near Cambridge – bloke speaks with a beautiful English accent and himself is English through and through – hints about colour of his skin have never stopped... I know a Northern Irish man who spent in England last 52 years – they call him “Paddy” and his Irishness is still very often highlighted by people.…

The lives of elderly people and those with disabilities could be improved drastically by new Wallace and Gromit-esque robotic trousers. University of Bristol experts have been developing wearable robotics to come up with smart muscles that help people with mobility problems go about day-to-day tasks with more independence. But rather than the clunky design Aardman Animations pioneered in The Wrong Trousers, the new technology resembles running tights and uses air-filled bags to move legs from a seated to a standing position. Project lead Professor Jonathan Rossiter said the researchers hoped to “replicate human muscle in an artificial form, so that you can sew them into your trousers and you’ve got your power trousers” while unveiling the tech at last week’s British Science Festival in Hull.…

2010 Big Issue Invest and Experian unveil the Rental Exchange, allowing registered social housing providers to incorporate tenants’ rent payment history into their credit file June 28 2017 Big Issue founder Lord Bird launches the Creditworthiness Assessment Bill with its first reading in the House of Lords, saying: “Generation Rent has been hit hard and they deserve fair access to credit” October 24 2017 The bill is hailed as “genius” by the SNP’s Kirsty Blackman at a House of Commons petitions committee debate November 24 2017 The second reading progresses through the Lords with no amendments just a day after the government announces a £2m FinTech competition in the Autumn Budget December 8 2017 Treasury committee chair Nicky Morgan gives her backing to the bill, saying: “The more that can…

AAAARGH!! I’m Still Here is an exhibition of art, writing and music created by prisoners, secure patients and other detainees across the UK. Produced by prison arts charity the Koestler Trust and following on from last year’s Inside exhibition curated by Antony Gormley, it has been put together by the families of prisoners from Leeds, Huntingdon, Birmingham and Brighton. Artists remain anonymous but this image comes from the Bolton Probation Office. The exhibition runs from September 19 to November 4, and entry is free. Find out more at southbankcentre.co.uk 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.…

READ MORE FROM... DOUG JOHNSTONE VISIT BIGISSUE.COM I’ve always felt that being able to properly depict bleakness in fiction is underrated. I’m all for action, drama, intrigue, anger and passion but sometimes, when the writer is good enough, the existential loneliness of life can be just as thrilling. But don’t let the bleakness scare you off, because this week’s books are terrific reads full of nuance and insight. First up is Strike Your Heart by Amélie Nothomb. Nothomb is Belgian by birth and lives in Paris, and is a very highly regarded author in Europe, with 26 novels under her belt. I confess this is the first of her books I’ve read, but it won’t be the last. Strike Your Heart is short, sharp and profound,…

“All the characters unapologetically love their jobs and their colleagues” READ MORE FROM... SAM DELANEY VISIT BIGISSUE.COM Brooklyn Nine-Nine has been going since 2013 and is bloody great. Andy Samberg plays a juvenile but strangely effective detective and a bunch of other people play his friends and colleagues. There’s a strict, overly serious police chief, a prissy and rule-obsessed partner, a sarcastic, extrovert secretary and a scary and dangerous female detective. Then of course there are a couple of fat, white cops who muck everything up. It’s a classic ensemble piece. Every character pops from the screen. The jokes flow with the speed and quality of a vintage Simpsons episode. It is mostly daft, in the best possible sense, although it is unafraid to do serious…

READ MORE FROM... CLAIRE JACKSON VISIT BIGISSUE.COM The conductor raised his baton and the ensemble responded, filling the Royal Albert Hall (RAH) with the goosebump-inducing second movement from Alexander Campkin’s new works Trembling and Hoping, “lingering, flying – hoping”, a musical representation of the composer’s experience of multiple sclerosis. The title of the piece recalls the poem by Alexander Pope and those words, along with the music, encourage quiet retrospection among some while others call out and move to the music. At other concerts the more visceral responses may have raised eyebrows among other attendees. But this is the BBC Relaxed Prom and concert-goers are encouraged to listen, think, feel and dance in whichever form they like. The baton deftly flicked; a bow moved across cello…