Innholdsfortegnelse for 12/17/2018 i The Big Issue

01 WATCH Springsteen on Broadway comes to Netflix If you aren’t one of the lucky Bruce Springsteen fans who managed to make it to New York City and bag a ticket to one of his solo shows as part of a residency on Broadway, then rest assured you’re not alone in your disappointment. Everyone else’s chance to share in an intimate encounter with The Boss arrives at last, courtesy of a new Netflix special and accompanying live album. netflix.com 02 COMMUNE Come together in the cold for Winter Solstice There are few rituals as shivery, eccentric, essentially pointless and thus quintessentially British as standing in a field in the freezing cold marking Winter Solstice. Stonehenge is the most iconic place to do so – thousands gather there each December to…

A quick-thinking Big Issue vendor has confronted a shoplifter outside the store where she sells the magazine. Mariana Cirpaciu, 22, spotted a man concealing stock under his clothes while shopping in M&S in Morningside, Edinburgh, on December 1 as she sold the magazine on her pitch. As the man went to leave the shop, the vendor attempted to block his path, became embroiled in a struggle and fell to the ground, injuring her hand. Mariana said: “I was looking right at the man when he was putting some chocolates or something like that under his jacket so when he was leaving I jumped in front of him and tried to stop him.” Following the incident, M&S section manager Joe O’Neil invited Mariana into the store’s staff area to recover while…

Everyone knows Good King Wenceslas but it is not the nation’s favourite Christmas carol by a long shot. Here are Classic FM’s Top 5 for 2018 01 O Holy Night Stirring French hymn 02 Silent Night Traditional German lament 03 In the Bleak Midwinter (Holst version) Based on a poem by Christina Rossetti 04 In the Bleak Midwinter (Darke version) Just like the time Hallelujah appeared twice in the Christmas top 5 in 2008 05 Hark! The Herald Angels Sing One of around 6,500 hymns written by Methodist minister Charles Wesley Good King Wenceslas appears in 27TH PLACE…

Each week in The Big Issue we invite a star to offer advice to their 16-year-old self. Some of the biggest names have shared their grown-up wisdom and their chats are touching, funny and sometimes shocking. Here’s some of the best of 2018 Timothy Spall Actor who said Auf Weidersehen to leukaemia The very first thing I would say to my younger self is: Dear Tim, when you are 39 you are going to get one of the biggest shocks of your life. You are going to be told that you have leukaemia. All I am going to tell you is this: It is going to be terrible. But listen to me: you ain’t going to die. I almost divide myself into before and after. I come back to the…

THE COST OF A SINGLE PERSON SLEEPING ROUGH IN THE UK FOR 12 MONTHS AT £20,128 Extreme poverty is extremely expensive. It is far cheaper to prevent people becoming homeless – or get them securely accommodated as quickly as possible. Research from At What Cost puts while successful intervention costs £1,426. To put this in context, it was revealed earlier this year that the average private school place in Britain costs £17,000 per year. Evidence shows that people who experience homelessness for three months or longer cost on average £4,298 per person to NHS services, £2,099 per person for mental health services and £11,991 per person in contact with the criminal justice system.…

“We’re seeing an influx of new vendors who need to sell The Big Issue to make it through the winter. Initial assessments and inductions bring up a host of immediate challenges. Today I emailed an embassy to help a vendor who made a mistake filling out a passport application, then supported a young vendor to make an appointment with a Young Parent Advisor so she can access childcare. I also accompanied a vendor to attend an appointment at Citizens Advice to help him with a fine that he couldn’t pay. “A little while later a vendor came in and asked us to help him with a doctor’s appointment because he can’t hear well. A group of vendors have expressed an interest in sewing. Learning to sew can help vendors save…

“I enjoy art, bright colours, putting pen to paper and seeing what comes, it’s good for your mood,” says this anonymous artist, who submits her work via London arts and activity centre for people a›fected by homelessness, the 240 Project. “Everyone’s an artist in some way or another – even if it’s just a squiggle, a line, two lines, it’s still art, art is what you see. I think my work is art – though some people say it’s not, but that’s okay, everyone’s idea of art is di›ferent.” Street Art is created by people who are marginalised. Contact street.lights@bigissue.com to see your art here. To see more and buy prints: bigissueshop.com At least half the profit goes to the artist.…

Val McDermid Queen of crime I love discovering writers when they’ve got a bit of a backlist that I can explore. My autumn find this year has been Lou Berney. The Long and Faraway Gone is a tense, psychologically complex narrative that explores the tricks memory plays on us. Berney writes with real empathy about violence and its reverberations down the years. The story works so well because we care so much about the characters; the fact that there are some great plot twists and turns along the way feels like a bonus. Oh, and it’s beautifully written. I gulped it down in a oner and went straight on to The November Road, which made me cry. Broken Ground by Val McDermid is out now (Little, Brown, £18.99)…

If you think that making yourself gluttonously sick on Quality Street in front of EastEnders , dystopian scenes of work-night-out drunken bedlam up the town centre and two strangers battering each other in Tesco over the last discounted telly on Boxing Day all somehow undermine the traditional spiritual origins of the festive season, just take a look at the recent history of the Christmas Number One. Between various X Factor desperadoes, creepy novelty stars and for what felt like about 17 years the unmovable object that was the Spice Girls, you have to go all the way back to 1988 and Cliff Richard’s Mistletoe and Wine to find a festive chart-topper about nice wholesome stuff like faith, forgiveness and singing Christian rhymes in front of the fire. Before anyone asks,…

Alice Harding O’Shea’s Fish and Chip Cafe, Barry Island I asked the owner of the shop if I can open Christmas Day to make free meals for people and he said yes. I decided to set up a Just Giving page. All I wanted to do was raise £200, to pay for things for the day. Within 10 hours I got to £90 and I was buzzing. When it got to £200 I was literally in tears. I’ve got about £800 now which is crazy. As soon as the story got out, our suppliers started ringing up – the people who deliver our potatoes, the co›fee roasters, the people who deliver our milk. Everyone wants to donate or help in their own way. I had two older women get in…

A hand up, not a handout... At Christmas our sellers BUY every copy of the magazine for £1.50 and sell it for £3. Trade, not aid… Which is why we ask you to ALWAYS take your copy of the magazine. Our sellers are working and need your custom. Poverty is indiscriminate… That is why we provide ANYONE whose life is blighted by poverty with the opportunity to earn a LEGITIMATE income. The right to citizenship… The Big Issue Foundation, our charitable arm, helps sellers tackle social and financial exclusion. Prevention… Big Issue Invest offers backing and investments to social enterprises, charities and businesses which deliver social value to communities.…

Banking on help I have struggled to find consistent employment since August, and being on Universal Credit my main problem is financial – as my landlord takes away rent arrears I am left with too little to even survive on, so mid-month I starve, I suffer weight loss and muscle fatigue. My lifestyle is healthy. It has to be. I left my home town to move to London with the aim of getting into university, and I qualified last year. I find that going cap in hand to food banks is happening more frequently and is a concern. I find them approachable and friendly, they are helpful and I would be in a very bad way without it. Glen, email Go now In response to the letter from Rob Curtis…

By the time you read this, anything could have happened. Boris Johnson could have led an Anglo branch of the gilets jaunes on to Parliament Square to complain about the lack of Latin signs in petrol stations. Harry Redknapp could be Britain’s supreme ruler after a bloodless coup driven by minor celebs surrounding Parliament wielding kangaroo penises. The Brexit negotiations could make sense and be resolved! Maybe not THAT ridiculous… After the growing mania of 2017 it looked for a time that 2018 was starting to settle. But it became clear as we got to the fag-end of the year that settled actually meant not acknowledging reality. And so now everything returns to flux. Like before all the Earth’s continents were properly formed, except with gossipy WhatsApp groups. Quietly, out…

Big Issue founder Lord John Bird is calling for a Welsh idea for forward-thinking prevention to be introduced throughout the UK. He underlined his intention to launch an all-party campaign at Westminster next year when he delivered a lecture in Cardiff on December 6. The Well-being of Future Generations Act came into force in Wales in 2016 and it states that all public bodies must take into account the impact of their decisions on future generations – encouraging preventative thinking over a sticking plaster approach. Lord Bird has already started the process of drumming up support for a UK version of the act. He was joined by Future Generations Commissioner Sophie Howe as they spoke to a 40-strong group of peers and MPs at the House of Lords on November…

This year I didn’t participate in the fiction of seasonal concern for the homeless. I was asked to go on TV and radio, but I chose to ignore the pleas from anxious-sounding producers who talked about the terrible regime of homelessness that hits them whenever Christmas approaches. And then an interviewer who pulls sorrowful faces, until the next item, the largest chocolate Santa in the world perhaps. I’ve spent so many Christmases doing this gig, and when you raise the question that this is all a farce, “try talking about homelessness in the cold winds of January”, they smile in incomprehension. Homelessness is not just a Christmas phenomenon, yet for centuries, certainly since Dickens’ time, we have seen it as the backdrop to Christmas joy. I assure you, I am…

There has been a renewed focus on homelessness this year. People are talking about it, taking part in charity fundraisers and moving it up the political agenda – and it is no surprise. As common a sight as Christmas shoppers on our high streets are rough sleepers huddled in doorways across the country. However, this is NOT just a Christmas issue. The widening net of poverty and the breakdown of mental health provision means numbers are growing. Between 4,000 and 5,000 people bed down on the streets on any given night, a figure that has almost doubled since 2010. Rough sleepers are just the visible tip of the iceberg when it comes to registering and understanding the homelessness crisis. At the end of December last year 78,930 households were in…

Vendors run their own micro-business – they buy and manage their stock just like any other retailer. (Over the Christmas period it’s £1.50/£3) Around 1,500 vendors across Britain are getting a hand up from selling The Big Issue each week. Since the first edition in 1991, around 100,000 people have sold The Big Issue to earn a legitimate income. In 27 years we have sold more than 208 million magazines. If all 208 million copies were piled on top of each other they’d be 252 miles high – tall enough to bump against the International Space Station in orbit. Vendors up and down the UK sell more than 11,000 magazines every day – more than 80,000 each week. That means £100,000 is going into the pockets of those who need…

It would be an o’er-leaping vault of Shakespearean proportions to call the new wave of brilliant black American writers the silver lining of Trump’s dark rise. But the global success of Paul Beatty’s hilarious and scathing satire The Sellout turned out to be a headline-grabbing kick-starter for a series of profound and spirited essays and fictions. The Big Issue revelled in the work of Hilton Als, Jacqueline Woodson, Jesmyn Ward, Darnell L Moore, Angie Thomas, Hanif Abdurraqib, David Chariandy... we really could go on and on, so plentiful has been the flow. But in 2018 one intoxicating short story collection cried out for special attention among its lauded peers, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Friday Black has haunted our dreams and plagued our nightmares ever since. When we first reviewed the…

My four most recent books all have to do with coming to grips with the catastrophic election of our current ‘president’, who by the way, got nearly three million less votes than his opponent. 01 The Plot To Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election by Malcolm Nance, a decorated intelligence and foreign policy expert. Released during the election, this is the earliest and by definition, most prescient, of them all. Riveting from start to finish. 02 Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America & the Election of Donald Trump by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. Two excellent investigative reporters, they detail the history of this sordid story and provide overwhelming evidence of Trump’s relationship with Russia beginning with his first…

01 Why I like living in Trondheim Norwegians can seem a little bit distant but generally we are very hospitable people. We have lots of nature around Trondheim. If you walk along the shore there are nature paths through mountains and forests. We have forest almost right up to the city limits. Sometimes moose get a little lost and suddenly they are in the middle of the city. Last year one was almost in the centre. The police had to come and chase it away because they are 600-700kg and can be dangerous. 02 Where to eat There is lots of good local food here. A lot of Norwegians have salmon and caribou dishes. Our national dish is meat cakes with potatoes, pea mash and brown sauce – that’s excellent!…

We do homemade Christmas, all presents are homemade, it’s great! Jacob0jc, Instagram Die Hard – all four – followed by Hogfather followed by The Snowman, followed by The Muppet Christmas Carol.... And during all of this we’ll be chasing the tinsel-covered cats out of the tree, except for Theo, who thinks the tree is very poor taste and will sit in the one outside. Helen Kemp, Facebook Music and food while trimming the tree Joolibooli6316, Instagram We like to be a bit OTT with our Christmas tree Esther_l_s, Instagram Always, always watch Elf and the Tim Allen Santa Clause films Little_strings_music, Instagram Usually the cinema on Christmas Eve EvolveBN, Twitter…

When much-loved Big Issue vendor Kevin Headley died in May, his friends wanted to do something to keep his memory alive. At the time of Kevin’s death, his idea of a hot water bottle combined with a backpack was still in its early stages. A simple innovation, it’s designed to bring heat to those on the street. Kevin had worn the makeshift device on his Hackney Wick pitch in East London to keep the cold at bay before he died. Now, in a welcome Christmas announcement, pals have said they are developing the idea to aid homeless people everywhere. Close friend Jamie Naish initially led a group of campaigners aiming to make more for homeless people in London out of hot water bottles, ladder locks, straps and Velcro. But now…

Able-bodied readers might think nothing of opening a can, removing a cardigan or moving a chair. For some people, however, they’re tasks that present unique challenges. But despite advanced and constantly evolving technology, disabled people don’t necessarily have access to the aids they need. It’s symptomatic of a society that treats those with disabilities as a homogenous group and, in the words of Jessica Ryan-Ndegwa: “They’re just thought of as add-ons. People with disabilities are thought of as second class.” That’s how Jessica, 25, landed on a course in product and furniture design at Kingston University. She was born with cerebral palsy, which affects her fine motor skills and short-term memory. Physiotherapy and an adolescent interest in art translated into a determination to tackle the injustice she felt so personally…

If you see a rough sleeper send details of where and when you see them, as well as a brief description of the person, to StreetLink using their website, app or phoneline. StreetLink is operated in partnership by Homeless Link and St Mungo’s. Scotland has no centralised service so you should check for contact details of your local council. Alerts are monitored by volunteers at St Mungo’s who check information and forward them on to outreach teams. Every day hundreds of alerts are received by StreetLink, which has seen a record number of referrals this year – with over 3,600 messages in a 24-hour period when the ‘Beast from the East’ hit in March. Outreach teams go out to engage with rough sleepers, but it’s not as simple as taxiing…

JANUARY c) The bones were full of mercury, a one-time cure for syphilis, so there’s a strong suspicion that she suffered from the disease. FEBRUARY b) The grocery store graciously accepted an error had been made on Google Translate, and allowed Norway to return the eggs. MARCH c) Amazon fixed the glitch, explaining it was caused by Echo devices mistakenly misinterpreting words it overheard as the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh’. APRIL a) To mark the year, Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong –un sat exactly 2,018 millimetres apart, even though according to the North Korean calendar it’s only the year 107. MAY b) The deepest plastic bag ever found was caught on camera 11,000 metres under the surface of the Pacific Ocean. JUNE a) Naz Shah discharged herself from hospital to vote…

“This is amazing and I am extremely grateful. Thank you so much! It is truly an honor to be recognized by a publication and organization like The Big Issue. Those that do the work of seeing the often unseen, helping the unhelped, amplifying the unheard, those are the people and institutions I look up to. That is who I aspire to be. So, to be recognized by The Big Issue is confirming and beautiful for me. “Also, housing instability specifically has long been a concern of mine and I love deeply and honestly everyone that works to make sure each of us has a place to call home. Thank you for the incredible gift you are to the world and thank you for this honor.”…

01 Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead Olga Tokarczuk; translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Fitzcarraldo) Polish Man Booker winner Tokarczuk presents a magical murder mystery tour led by a cosmic detective clued up on the chatter of angels, devils and ghosts. 02 They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us Hanif Abdurraqib (Melville House) Intelligence, sincerity, compassion and wit mark out this brilliant collection of essays, written by the Ohio-born poet Greil Marcus says changed his view of US pop culture. 03 Factfulness Hans Rosling (Sceptre) This clever, entertaining book, which operates on the crazy idea that facts have superiority over/ offer more optimism than fake news, counts Bill Gates, Barack Obama and Steven Pinker among its grateful fans. 04 West Carys Davies (Granta) A beautifully told modern…

We all know there is benefit in taking time out to reflect. At Radio 3 we like to take our time over things. Whether it’s broadcasting a live piece that takes all night (such as Max Richter’s Sleep) or just an everyday Mahler Symphony in full – we’re into long form. Recently we’ve been giving audiences a wide range of ‘slow radio’ experiences. We want listeners to have a place to listen to the world as it is and to hear new things. We’ve taken ambient sounds of nature or of places and presented the sound in a way that allows the listener to slow down. ›is has ranged from a contemplative week in a monastery, a night listening to nightingales, a netherworld of clocks at Upton House, the sound…

WHSmith, Cheltenham High Street Monday-Friday, 9am until 4pm I’m lucky enough to have my own place but for Christmas the church have a three or four-day event which I might go along to. I popped in last year and I might see if I can help or just say hello. My flat's here in Cheltenham and I live there with my cat Honey and my Staffie/collie-cross Luna. I’m finally starting to trust again and, crikey, my customers help. Selling The Big Issue allows me to communicate with people. They’re from all walks of life but they really do care and that’s why I love selling The Big Issue so much. I sold the magazine on and off for a few years when I was part of the travelling community. Then…