Innholdsfortegnelse for 10-06-19 i The Big Issue

Countries like Britain, where the inequality between top earners and the bottom earners is much greater than in more equal, cohesive and happier countries like Finland and Sweden, score higher on social problems like physical and mental ill-health, violence, teenage pregnancies, homelessness and imprisonment. Is our Brexit muddle going to allow us to remedy this any time soon? If you don’t think Brexit will help us concentrate on remedying our problems and you are one of the roughly 13 million who didn’t vote in the 2016 referendum please do so next time if you get the chance. Tony Rowe, Sudbury @bigissue @ewinkler Heartbreaking article in @BigIssue about poverty and food, and UN report on Extreme Poverty. Heartbreaking because it does not need to be this way. UK is fifth largest…

The Chapter Catcher had its soft launch at the Hay Festival two weeks ago, and this week it has its proper launch, with Stephen Fry in attendance, at the House of St. Barnabas in London’s Soho Square. A quarterly magazine full of chapters, its purpose is to get people to ‘test drive’ their reading with a magazine that’s crammed full of chapters. We capture chapters from contemporary times, from lost times, from forgotten books, and from authors old and new. The publicity and press we’ve had has led to a very large amount of traffic on social channels and articles in the media. And it’s been great fun talking about how we all need to read deeper, wider and without prejudice. For the complex world that’s getting more complex needs…

The glitzy, bitchy sub-culture of the black and Latino vogue balls, with their fiercely contested “walks” and caricature of glamour, frequently lends a touch of exoticism to the mainstream, most recently in the TV series Pose. But Niven Govinden’s challenging novel This Brutal House turns the camera away from the costumes and the catwalk, focusing instead on loving-yet-sometimes-oppressive family realness in the culture’s mainstream-apeing ‘Houses’, led and controlled by ‘mothers’. On the steps of New York’s City Hall, five ageing ‘mothers’ mount a silent protest against the authorities’ lack of action over the disappearance of many of their ‘children’ – queer waifs and strays they have rescued from unaccepting homes. Gripped by a religious fervour, the gay male elders gather their remaining children – now grown-up – like Jesus on…

A hand up, not a handout... Our sellers BUY every copy of the magazine for £1.25 and sell it for £2.50. 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.…

The meal thing Years ago there wasn’t so many fast-food outlets so eating habits have changed, and in some aspects they do provide a meal of sorts for people who are unable to eat a proper one at regular times. And there are many of these because of the changing nature of society. I was surprised to read the criticism of American food, especially chlorinated chicken [May 27-June 2], as America is the most legislative country in the world. Maybe food has come into the Brexit debate. A debate that should already have been decided, whether you are a leaver or a remainer, at the ballot box in June 2016. In a democracy all other arguments are really superfluous. And if in doubt about any product from America or elsewhere,…

It is the casual dismissal that startles. When the Chancellor Philip Hammond was challenged by Emily Maitlis on Newsnight about the levels of poverty faced by people in Britain, he dismissed the idea out of hand. “I reject the idea,” he said. Not much room for misinterpretation there. But, just in case that was not hammered hard enough, Phil hammered more. When it was suggested that the UN report into the state we’re in said that 14 million people in Britain face dire poverty, he said: “I don’t accept the UN rapporteur’s report at all.” Still not clear? It’s “a nonsense”, added Hammer Hammond. And just for good luck, the kicker – “look around you, that is not what we see in this country”. If you wanted to show the…

Being 16 was one of the roughest times in my life because my dad was very ill. He came back from Vietnam with Agent Orange poisoning. We could only afford a nurse while I was in school – so from 14 I took care of him and my sister after school because my mom was working during the day and studying at night. When you are that young, you never think anything is going to change. So I thought I would be trapped forever, looking after my dad. It is not that I didn’t want to do it, but it is a lot of responsibility for a young girl. Music was my escape. I would lock myself up in my room with my guitar and just play. It was the…

“This image is a self-portrait made with brush and ink,” says Andrew. “I produced it fairly rapidly, probably during a time when I was unsure of what to do and feeling uninspired. I recall being told that self-portraits are good to fall back on at such times, since your own face is always accessible and of interest. The picture was produced about two weeks ago, just before I got my beard shaved off at the barbers. The image is not a bad likeness of me, and seems to me to express many of my dilemmas, anguish and annoyance, all bundled up and precariously balanced.” Andrew is from London and has featured in Street Art many times over the last several years, working across a range of media from painting to…

01 The White Guns by Douglas Reeman The author was my soulmate for more than 30 years, and this is one of his most autobiographical novels, set in immediate post-war Germany. Unflinching and compassionate, like the man who wrote it. 02 The War Diaries of Weary Dunlop by Sir Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop The detailed, harrowing, heartbreaking diaries of the great Australian surgeon, kept secretly during his time as a prisoner of the Japanese from 1942 to 1945. Surely one of the greatest testaments to man’s love for his fellow man. Even, or perhaps especially, in the midst of hell. 03 The Persian Boy by Mary Renault Written in the first person by the young Persian eunuch Bagoas, lover of Alexander the Great. Hauntingly beautiful. 04 Gone with the Wind by…

Nope. They are vehicles to grab your email and pound you with donation asks. Money money money. Haven't signed one in years. Janet Rossi , Facebook I don’t think they change much but what they do is remove the government’s ability to say they didn’t know, unless they lie of course. Take the warmonger Blair, he cannot say the nation supported his illegal war, he cannot say he didn’t know there were no weapons of mass distraction, he cannot say he was right – unless of course he’s prone to lying... Sarah Banks, Facebook Not really but what else can people do? Protesting can lead to prison, or for those who are ill or disabled it can cost them their benefits. If a government wishes to ignore the people it…

It might sound far fetched but yes, it’s true. All the stories came from a study carried out by London’s Queen Mary University (QMU) and the British Heart Foundation. Researchers tested 8,412 people split up into three groups: those who drink less than one cup per day, between one and three cups per day and those who down more than three cups a day. Anybody who drank more than 25 cups per day was excluded from the study – but academics did discover that there was no arterial stiffening for people who drank up to the high limit when compared to those drinking one cup per day. In previous studies, coffee had been associated with arterial stiffness that increases the chances of stroke or heart attack. However, before you flick…

NAME: Rob Paul PROJECT: Read with Audrey “Reading together is consoling and uplifting. It’s invigorating” Paul has developed a love for short stories since the launch of Audrey. To read aloud, he recommends: The Race of the Patient Motorcyclists by Lydia Davis. “It’s a blend of thought-provoking humour and tragedy. It looks at the importance of patience, and why it can be valuable to stick at something for the long haul.” Guava by Etgar Keret. “This is a 600-word story which addresses, life, death and peace on earth. It’s a perplexing parable-like story about a man who becomes a piece of fruit. It makes you laugh, it makes you sad, it’s a bit absurd and a bit dark.”…

They look perfectly ordinary from the outside: terraced Victorian houses with bay windows and chequerboard paths. I walked past them many times in my childhood with no idea that a cult of women lived inside them. A cult convinced their leader, Octavia, was the daughter of God. By then only a few members of the Edwardian Panacea Society [in Bedford] were still alive, custodians of the dozens of houses that had been sealed up every time one of their number had died. Each room remained just as they had left it: each wardrobe still full of clothes, each dressing table covered with perfume bottles and photographs. It was only when the last believer, Ruth Klein, died in 2012 that the secrets of the Panacea Society became known and the site…

A unique mix of experiment and entertainment, Seven Up! broke new ground when it launched on ITV in 1964. As Hannah Westwater discovers, latest instalment 63 Up continues to document the nation’s social change, while the channel’s summer smash Love Island is just the latest in reality TV’s distinguished lineage In May 1964, Brits huddled round television sets to be introduced to 14 “normal and ordinary” seven-year-olds. Seven Up! was a first-of-its-kind series designed to follow the children through adolescence and adulthood, catching up with them every seven years. Last week the latest instalment – we are now at 63 Up – aired over three consecutive nights. Coincidentally, it arrived in the same week Love Island hit our screens: a summer-long demonstration of front and machismo. Shows like Love Island…

Picture the scene – you’re cruising down the road, a sharing bag of slightly melted M&Ms scattered messily across the dashboard, a several-months-long accumulation of parking vouchers, crisp packets and at least one mouldy old cereal bowl gathered in the passenger-side footwell. And upon spotting a grizzly handsome and expensively tanned-looking man of indeterminate age coming into view stood on the verge with his thumb out, you think to yourself, “Yeah sure, why not?” And he hops in, and you move off without taking much of a sidewards glance, and then in the most unmistakably Bruce Springsteen of freshly raked gravel voices he suddenly politely booms, “I’m just travellin’ up the road.” Tyres screech! Panic! Clean, tidy! Such is the scene suggested by Western Stars’ opening track Hitch Hikin’. Well,…

The Ivy Brasserie, Milsom Street, Bath Monday-Saturday 10-5pm Originally I started selling The Big Issue after I broke up with my ex while I was living with her in a backpacker’s hostel and working for an agency. I wasn’t getting enough work at the time and I was going into more and more debt so I went out and gave The Big Issue a try one day. I was sofa-surfing with a friend, staying in her son’s old room for a bit of cash-in-hand and she was selling the magazine at the time. I then settled back where my family is from in Gillingham – though I’ve been in Bath since I was three so feel like a local – and stopped selling but then a few years ago I…