Innholdsfortegnelse for 9/24/2018 i The Big Issue

I used to be a drinker but now I’ve swapped alcohol for the theatre. I go to a drama group and I can express myself there in a way I can’t on the streets. That little bit of encouragement can lead to bigger, better things. I’d love a part as a Dalek in the new Doctor Who! I’m excited to see Jodie Whittaker in the role, it’s about time they had a woman. Read our interview with her on page 20. And you can read more on my story on page 46.…

What’s that coming over the hill? That big thing that few people are talking about. That, oh that’s just hundreds and hundreds of millions more in council funding cuts, set to slam everybody, but particularly kids’ services and those who need help most. The £1bn in savings will come next year, said council chiefs last week. They announced this with a cheery ‘the worst is yet to come’ message. None of this is really a surprise, of course. We’ve seen the hollowing-out of local services for years now. However, the fact that it’s going to get worse is chilling. In normal times, there might be governmental action. But in our post-austerity Brexit-neverland this information passes by with barely a glance. Is the solution putting up council taxes to plug the…

The Big Issue’s Kev Collick – a much loved figure in Winchester – answered a public clamour to hear more of him when he acted as Town Crier last week. Dubbed a local legend, Kev, a vendor for seven years, spent the day greeting the public as part of the Heritage Open Days happenings. It follows Kev’s spot as guest of honour switching on the town’s Christmas lights last year. Big Issue vendors – the heart of local communities.... with bells on!…

The Other Art Fair returns to London for its 30th edition in October, and The Big Issue is delighted to be once again teaming up to offer our readers free entry to enjoy the public opening – and indulge in – unique artworks and a fun atmosphere. A selection of exciting works from artists has been handpicked by a selection committee including Cob Gallery co-founder and director Victoria Williams, arts broadcaster Kate Bryan, curator Emma Dean and artist Abigail Lane. Assembling 140 artists from across the globe including Hattie Stewart, Kristjana Williams, Samira Addo, Sarah Maple and Steve McPherson, this is the first time The Other Art Fair will have been staged at the historic Victoria House in Bloomsbury and The College, Old Central St Martins Building, just across the…

IN 1994 THE YEAR RUTH DAVIDSON TURNS 16… Jeff Bezos founds Amazon / Labour Party leader John Smith dies aged 55 / George Michael loses his legal battle against his label Sony Records At 16 I was at school in Buckhaven. Deputy head girl. I really enjoyed school and I got quite involved – I played for the tennis team, I was in a play, I got involved in charity stuff. I loved sport – squash and tennis. I feel immensely proud that I was the first girl to play for the local boys’ under-14s football club. Yes, I was a bit of a joiner. At 16 I’d just done my Highers and I’d been accepted into Edinburgh University. So the world was my oyster. In my spare time –…

ACE (SOPHIE ALDRED) We’re hard-pressed to choose favourites, but Christel has a soft spot for Ace, the cheeky tomboy who brewed up her own explosives, in the late 1980s. “Ace doesn’t scream and run away,” says Christel. “She runs into danger without thinking about the consequences. She single-handedly destroys a Dalek with a rocket launcher, and wallops another with a baseball bat. I also find her very relatable; she’s a teenager with a troubled past from (presumably) a council estate in London. She feels real, like someone you could know and be best friends with.” LADY JENNIFER BUCKINGHAM (JANE SHERWIN) “I really liked reading up on this character from a single 1969 story called The War Games,” says Simon. “She’s a posh young woman driving an ambulance in France in…

My name is Darach Ó Séaghdha. Don’t let the surname scare you– the gh is silent. So is the dh. However, the Sé has an invisible h tucked in there. It sounds like O’Shay, really. So how did this happen to me? Well, my parents were, like so many people in south Dublin in the 1970s, very interested in the Irish language and they blessed us all with Irish names. I didn’t care for it much as a child and even less as a teenager; I felt like I spent more time spelling my name out to people than participating in any enjoyable activity. Once I was no longer required to study it, I moved away from the language. This rejection was particularly hard for my father to bear: he…

READ MORE FROM... EDWARD LAWRENSON VISIT BIGISSUE.COM In The September Issue, the 2009 documentary about American Vogue, André Leon Talley took a notable cameo. In a workplace notable for its lack of diversity, here was an African-American man in late middle age, his tall, broad frame wrapped in an array of extravagant capes, passing voluble pronouncements on the coming fashion trends. Well, now André – no longer Vogue’s editor at large – has his own documentary, The Gospel According to André. The film isn’t perfect – its loose structure means that things drag despite the clipped 93-minute running time. But I don’t think it’s director Kate Novack’s fault that by the point the final credits roll I still wasn’t sure how to describe Talley’s job. Journalist…

READ MORE FROM... MALCOLM JACK VISIT BIGISSUE.COM I can vividly recall the first time I logged in to Spotify a few months after its launch exactly 10 years ago this October, finding endless quantities of my favourite music available to listen to instantaneously at a few clicks entirely for free, and wondering – what’s the catch? Sure, Napster and all that had long since inured us to the guilty pleasure of no longer paying for music in any meaningful sense. But this was something new. None of the fiddly finding and waiting and fluctuating audio quality that came with extralegal downloading. None of the risk of accidentally inviting some horrible virus onto your hard drive, or even worse, a homemade video of a hairy overweight naked…

Bright spark Continuing the discussion ensuing from the letter titled Building Unsafe [Correspondence, September 3-9] reminded me of the days when buying electrical appliances with no plug, when doing this my mum, who passed away in 2006, used to argue with the shopkeeper why should she have to ‘buy’ a plug as well as she couldn’t use the appliance without one?!! She inevitably came away with a free plug and she also could always wire it herself! She was in the Wrens during the war... Daughter of Mrs M Phillips Cleaning up The letter entitled Unhealthy Decision [Correspondence, September 10-16] certainly struck chords on two fronts. My wife worked on a children’s ward in the days before privatisation was started (in its very sly way). Whenever she visits anyone in…

Many people think of someone charged with a serious offence as being a thoroughly disreputable individual, perhaps a professional criminal or a habitually violent criminal. In fact the kind of person who is charged with murder or manslaughter is often very ordinary. I have known cases where a mother living in very trying circumstances with a difficult child has finally snapped, or a partner hurt by a betrayal has flown into a jealous rage. And others where someone who was totally innocent but who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time — and who resembled a suspect in a police photofit — was accused of a grisly crime. Someone like you, perhaps? And here is where the reality of the changes that have diminished our justice…

I have always been blessed with incredible canniness and cleverness. A combination of natural low cunning and something superior; perhaps a gift from the gods. Hence, when I look at Brexit, I know exactly what to do. Tell the EU to get stuffed, whilst arranging a second referendum; accepting that the 2016 referendum was damaged, while (at the same time) agitating to accept it completely. Crystal clear. But unfortunately, people are just not getting it right. They cannot carry the idea that we should be agitating to accept the 2016 referendum result, while (at the same time) denying it as a reality. That we should also be agitating for a very clear and deeply thoughtful second referendum that will take soundings of the UK electorate and reach, once again, two…

READ MORE FROM... JANE GRAHAM VISIT BIGISSUE.COM Since his highly lauded debut Ablutions, Canadian novelist Patrick deWitt has stacked up admirers with a series of admired follow-ups. French Exit is his fourth novel, published just before the release of the Jake Gyllenhaal/Riz Ahmed-starring film adaptation of his second, award-winning book The Sisters Brothers. His previous work has seen him praised for his masterful balance of bright, sparky dialogue and humour with an atmosphere Shipping Forecast fans might describe as melancholy, becoming tragic. The excellent French Exit should further boost his blossoming reputation. The story centres around über lady-who-lunches, Frances, and her dependent grown-up son Malcolm. Frances has long enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle thanks to her litigator husband Franklin’s career defending a stream of “repugnant” corporate clients…

I’m the director of Lost in America , a documentary about homeless youth, premiering at Raindance Film Festival on October 6. I am also a former homeless youth. It took me a very long time to be able to say those words. It’s a lot easier to make up stories about your childhood and life than to admit that your mother fought a losing battle with depression and alcoholism, which ended up with her dying of cancer and you on the streets. But that’s exactly what happened to me and it’s the one experience that has affected me throughout my life. Being homeless is not some kind of adventure, especially at such a young age. Life on the streets is mundane and lonely. One of the…

John Bird’s article about the challenges of growing local, social economies, and his passing remark about Northamptonshire County Council being declared bankrupt [September 17-23], made me think of the developing ‘shadow side’ of technology. What today’s technologies allow people to do is wonderful, but the increasing trends of using technology for working at home using laptops etc, and buying online threatens the future of offices and retail outlets. And, if more stores and local offices close, how will the various towns and cities retain the revenue to pay for the increasing service demands? The threatening way they’ll opt for will be to raise the council tax on residents – making it increasingly costly for residents in their homes; and p’raps many will opt for homelessness rather than pay the horrendous…

Theresa May has been told to “employ more brickies and less bureaucrats” after announcing a £2bn funding plan for affordable housing in England. Lord Porter, Local Government Association chairman, blasted the PM for investment which “does not go far enough”. May, who said the government hopes to remove the “stigma” of social housing, announced plans which will allow councils and housing associations to bid for the cash from 2022. That just happens to be the year when the next general election is due. Critics have been lukewarm about the scheme, part of the ongoing attempt to solve the UK’s housing crisis. “This is a step in the right direction for housing associations who, for the first time, might benefit from long-term commitments of funding, so long as future governments honour…

Coal mining used to be a family affair. Men would hew the coal, their wives and children would haul it to the surface. In 1838 however, 26 children were killed at the Huskar Pit at Moorend and an inquiry into working conditions was ordered. The findings shocked Victorian society, which didn’t approve of women wearing trousers (and sometimes working topless) and they were branded “unsuitable for marriage and unfit to be mothers”. As a result, the Mines and Collieries Act of 1842 prohibited all women (and children under 10) from working underground. As surface workers, the ‘Pit Brow Lasses’ have been largely overlooked in the history of mining. An exhibition, Breaking Ground – Women of the Northern Coalfields – rediscovers the role they played. The exhibition is at the Mining…

THE HOBBIT by JRR Tolkien My favourite book. Everyone needs to take a step away from the stresses of the modern world from time to time, and there are few better characters to hang out with (and to learn from) than Bilbo Baggins. 1984 by George Orwell The Ministry of Truth, the thought police, Big Brother is watching you! Orwell has been warning us for years about the few having too much power over the masses. A relevant book for our times. An absolute corker in fact. MOON SHOT by Dan Parry One of the best books I’ve read in the past five years. It follows the quest to put men on the moon. The actual landing is so tense. Armstrong and Adrin were able to plonk that Eagle down…

READ MORE FROM... ROBIN INCE VISIT BIGISSUE.COM Nick Revell was one of the first MCs I saw at London’s Comedy Store when I was an exceptionally spotty and poorly dressed teenager obsessed by alternative comedy. That night he would introduce Julian Clary, who was clad in a rubber vest and shorts and accompanied by Fanny the Wonderdog, and activist prankster Mark Thomas among others. After an eponymous TV pilot and a long-running radio series, The Million Pound Radio Show, co-written with Andy Hamilton, Revell spent most of the Nineties offstage. Now, he has taken to performing one-man shows that mix absurdity, physics, artificial intelligence and whatever else has taken his fancy. I saw the live version of his frenetic, densely plotted and exuberant story of his…