Innholdsfortegnelse for 26-08-19 i The Big Issue

pamelaanderson @stylefairtrade Thank you for using your platform to discuss this important issue! You are absolutely correct! Homelessness is NOT a choice and it’s a political determinant of health too! And child homelessness is an epidemic with the largest prevalence in London. @laurahhhhunter We shouldn’t have idols because to hold someone on a level of height is to belittle yourself (Hashtag my opinion!!) BUT what miss Vivienne talks about is as clear as clear can be to me regardless of the particular subject matter. She’s a wise woman. @thediaryofmarc Inspiring, genuine, great woman, real lady, absolute milestone in Brit social culture. @CarolMatlock1 Fab. What a better place the world would be if someone as dynamic and sensible was in charge of this planet and its people. @lucia_cowan Read this and…

This time last year, Rory Stewart vowed to quit his role as prisons minister if the 10 Prisons Project failed to curb violence and drug use. Last week the results of the £10m project with 10 of England’s most challenging prisons were released with eight out of 10 prisons reporting a fall in assaults. But Stewart is no longer prisons minister – in fact the ministerial merry-go-round means he is not even in government. Latest incumbent Lucy Frazer called the results “encouraging”. The Big Issue contacted Stewart to ask if the results were a success and whether he would have resigned or stayed on – but we were told that he is “not doing interviews during the parliamentary recess”. Chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform Frances Crook…

The rise in holiday hunger is a stain that should shame Britain. It’s an indictment of years of policies that punish those most in need. Over the summer we at The Big Issue have been doing all we can to fight it. We have been providing a platform for the wonderful, selfless groups and individuals offering a hand up. But we also want to hear your stories, so tell us at editorial@bigissue.com . We will be the signpost for those in need, a way to celebrate good people. Then we will do our bit to make sure the groups are not needed in the future, by dealing with the core causes of holiday hunger. You can read more at bigissue.com…

Picking Pathenaeum’s stable of titles was a labour of love. Here are some of Crosher’s favourites: • Izzy Gizmo by Pip Jones and Sara Ogilvie: This book for five to seven-year-olds tells the tale of inventor Izzy’s relationship with her grandpa and how she hopes to remake the wings of a wounded crow. • Mr Gum by Andy Staton: A truly despicable man who hates children and animals and fun. Mr Gum is joined by an angry fairy and a little girl called Polly in this bestselling book. • A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle: First published in 1962, L’Engle’s young adult tale tells the adventure of Meg Murry, Charles Wallace Murry and Calvin O’Keefe who embark on a journey through space and time to save the Murrys’ father…

01 Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels  We follow the life of orphaned Jewish boy, Jakob, living in the shadow of the Holocaust. Stunningly written, it’s about love and loss, the power of memory and the overwhelming responsibility of survival. 02 Between Shades of Gray (Ashes in the Snow) by Ruta Sepetys  An unknown story of Lithuanian prisoners of Stalin’s Gulag. Told with pace, horror, truth and extraordinary hope, through the eyes of 15-year-old artist Lina, we see what it takes to survive. 03 Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan  This book tells the untold story of the black population under Nazi rule. At its heart, it is the story of friendship, love, jazz and about what it takes to forgive another, but – and inevitably harder – what it takes…

You know that bit in the movie Independence Day, when the giant alien spacecraft slowly hovers into view above New York City, casting its ominous shadow as yellow taxis screech to fender-bending halts, hobos and children gawp skywards in awe and Jeff Goldblum runs heroically up some stairs? Well it’s nothing compared to the epic shade Madame Tussauds just threw on Cheryl. The London attraction has reportedly taken her waxwork down because – look away now, Cheryl – she “may no longer be relevant”. Her tiara-sporting molded manikin has gone into storage in the London archives – a not “uncommon” thing, the museum offers in charitable mitigation, “as from time to time we do change who we have [on display]”. It will be stashed presumably somewhere among a hidden hall…

Forget fairies, let’s deal in facts Derek Bennett in his aptly titled letter Away with the Fairies [Platform August 19-25] clearly rejects the advice of experts in every field of public life who warn us of the damage of a No-Deal Brexit. If you reject the evidence of all the professionals you are left with nothing but magical thinking to guide you. Belief may have saved Tinker Bell, but it won’t be enough to save the UK economy, farming or the Good Friday Agreement. Yes, the UK collaborated with others to defeat Napoleon, and Germany in two world wars, but we couldn’t have done it alone. We are too small a nation to survive by ourselves, we need to work with others. The UK is actually only just over 300…

I am hugely impressed by people who can speak more than one language. If you’re up at three or more, I’m at your feet. I would have kept Roy Hodgson as England’s football manager for as long as he wanted purely because he once gave a post-match press conference moving easily from English to Italian to Swedish. He also has some Norwegian and Finnish. There was a strange mixture of support and sniffiness when Boris Johnson spoke French last week during his meeting with Emmanuel Macron. On the one side, his supporters said, well he can’t be a non-European bigot because he speaks French. On the other, the argument was, well he still is. Neither stack up. And both miss the point. Given the hugely expensive private education that Boris…

The sister of a late Big Issue vendor is keeping his memory alive by housing 14 homeless people in renovated accommodation. Jen Roberts set up charity Homeless Worldwide eight months ago following ex-Bournemouth seller Darren James Ledger’s death at Christmas 2017. Last week she enlisted the help of M People singer and charity director Heather Small to unveil accommodation in South Shields to help people get off the streets. The charity is refurbishing two more buildings by the end of the year to make room for 50 residents. Jen said: “I was so traumatised when I learned about my brother’s death, and the only way I could deal with my grief was to do something positive like this. “We’ve renovated everything to a very high standard. Anybody could live there…

Leicester PlayFair is the umbrella body for Leicester’s nine full-time adventure playgrounds – and has spent the summer serving up healthy food alongside play. PlayFair secretary Stephen Ashley told The Big Issue that the group missed out on funding from central government after the city council’s bid was unsuccessful, but Leicestershire County Council did receive some of the £9m pot. Despite that setback, PlayFair have been working with FareShare to take supermarket surplus and turn it into food for Leicester’s kids over the summer. Ashley said: “Whatever situation people are in, being hungry is always the last thing that they admit to, it seems to have the worst stigma. “It’s not what the playgrounds were set up for, but all nine playgrounds are in quite deprived areas and have seen…

Love it or loathe it (surely not?) Poldark is set to gallop off our screens for good this week, having cemented its place in the national consciousness for years – or even decades – to come. But why? What has made it so popular? What about this particular iteration of Winston Graham’s novels has so captured the public’s imagination? As an actor in the show, it’s a question I’ve been asked an awful lot over the last five years, and I’ve often trotted out the most obvious, crowd-pleasing answer: that a certain young man’s torso has been impossible to resist (not mine, obviously). But I think the truth – for many of us, at least – is somewhat less superficial. Of course it helps that the show is beautiful: the…

On a Sunday afternoon in the fall of 2012, I was sitting at home with my infant son, idly thumbing through Twitter, when – seemingly all of a sudden – every meteorologist went into a tizzy. The latest run of something called ‘the European model’ had just arrived, and its news was dire, especially for those of us in New York City: in eight days a storm would come. This was odd, I thought. The sky outside was clear, and it would be for a week. But the sky on the screen was filled with a storm that didn’t yet exist. How did the meteorologists know? It seemed to me that an eight-day prediction was different not only in degree but in kind. The meteorologists were not merely watching this…

I‘ve always been intrigued by the depth in Lowry’s paintings. Not just the pictorial depiction of a dying industrial world – that in itself is fascinating – but also the bleak beauty and isolation within them. I’ve always, always had this love of the juxtaposition of industrial brutality in connection to landscape. When I was old enough in the late Fifties, early Sixties, I used to love wandering through London and because England was still scarred by the Second World War there were still lots of bombsites left. I always found that mixture of old industry still being around yet decrepit fantastic. Since mechanisation, a lot less people work in factories. But when you think of it, these places were centres for humanity, where man became part of a machine.…

Can you make social realism about posh people? Is it possible to carve the kitchen sink out of marble? Director Joanna Hogg’s body of work is a hard sell. With her three previous films – Unrelated, Archipelago and Exhibition – she pinned down the rich and privileged like squirming frogs for dissection, wielding a scalpel to expose every anxiety and inadequacy with clinical precision. Her fourth and most autobiographical film yet The Souvenir reconstructs her own life in her twenties living as a film student in 1980s London. Hogg invites us to care about Julie, a 24-year-old living rent-free in her parents’ Kensington flat. Julie wants to be a filmmaker but the whereabouts of her artistic voice is currently unknown. Her creative crisis may have you reaching for a tiny…

I moved to London in the late Eighties when I was 17. An exciting opportunity had cropped up and I was free at last. Up until then I’d been working in my parents’ Chinese takeaway since the age of 11. I’d come home from school, prep food, clean floors and serve customers, effectively missing out on a whole chunk of my youth. At college I studied hard and partied hard. During my last year I met a fella while out clubbing (let’s call him Jez) and we started seeing each other. Things were ticking along nicely when one day something unexpected happened, which unbeknown to me at the time, would be the start of a future that was way off my game plan. A blaze had started in the shared…

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.…

@philipfowler Having a referendum about leaving Europe or not ranks up there. @Lazyeyeguy There are so many. Badger culling, changing exams for 16-year- olds, tw0-child policy for benefits, universal credit, all shockers. @seb_sullivan It’s not about ideas. This is a long-term plan to asset strip ordinary citizens. The rise of mass affluence in the late 1990s frightened the Establishment. So irrespective of who is in power, government policy is simply about theft. @J4M35M0N7317H Do you think each of the ‘authors’ just try to outdo the last? For sheer cost HS2 has to be up there as well... From the Window Tax to Brexit, a history of terrible political decisions. @jjdubit Criminal Justice Bill, Poll Tax, Right to Buy, Health and Social care act 2012, Introduction of Student Fees, Removal of…

Last week Prime Minister Boris Johnson reassured the public that all was going to plan as the government prepares for a no-deal Brexit – just days after a leaked warning that major food shortages could be on the cards after October 31. But the UK imports nearly 30 per cent of its food from the EU. And for families who rely on free school meals during term time – those who struggle to keep everyone fed during the holidays – Brexit threatens to take away even the basic safeguard of good school dinners. In council Brexit planning papers leaked to the BBC, authorities across the UK said they could be forced to abandon their nutritional standards for school meals because getting hold of certain foods might be too difficult. Some…

Volunteer group Norwich FoodHub saves supermarket food heading for the bin and instead uses it to fight hunger. They have teamed up with the Unite union to serve up free meals over the last five school holidays, with the group expecting to serve 1,900 meals by the start of term, taking their overall total beyond 3,000 meals. Norwich FoodHub fundraising director Jacob Briggs insists that both the demand and the operation has been growing year-on-year. “I certainly know that the amount of people requiring help with holiday hunger in Norwich has exceeded even Unite’s expectations,” he told The Big Issue. “There is no shortage of supermarkets wanting to help with this issue and there has been no shortage of groups looking to make use of the food. I think we’ve…

How empty would life be without books? For Dee-Dee Crosher, founder of free reading subscription company Pathenaeum, the idea does not bear thinking about. That is why the former talent agent launched an initiative that offers free book parcels to children in poverty. She hopes to make a “profound” difference in the lives of disadvantaged youngsters. Crosher had been working for renowned showbusiness talent agent Kenneth Earle, supporting stars from projects like Billy Elliot, Game of Thrones and Bridget Jones’ Baby. But in 2017 Crosher’s life was tipped upside down when “mentor, friend and father figure” Earle died only weeks after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Suddenly Crosher found herself at the helm. “I was a 27-year-old managing an international business, with people depending on me for their careers and…

Of all the cheddar imported to the UK, 82 per cent comes from Ireland – a total of 78,000 tonnes per year. The supply chain in Ireland criss-crosses the border (one third of Northern Irish milk goes south of the border for processing). To take one example, the Kerry Group supplies sliced cheese to McDonald’s. Raw cheese from the Republic is transported to Coleraine in the North, before being distributed to restaurants across the UK and other EU countries. This is one item that passes through the UK, even if not meant for our market, but would nonetheless be subject to tariffs. For UK cheddar exports to the EU with No Deal, the tariff is €1,671 per tonne (from €0 just now). For EU cheddar imports to the UK it…

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Historical crime fiction is having a resurgence at the moment, and this week we have two novels that amply demonstrate all the strengths that combination of genres can bring to the reading experience. First up is the wonderful and expansive Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman. I’ve long been a fan of the American author, and her last few books have really stretched the boundaries of the crime genre. This novel, set in 1960s in her hometown of Baltimore, feels like a labour of love and a love letter to the city rolled into one. The focus of the book is Maddie Schwartz, who walks away from her safe but mundane married life at the start of the book in order to find meaning. On a search party for…

In Hanna, the barmy action drama series from Amazon, a young girl is raised in the woods by her father. The pair of them are hiding from the CIA, so they go into a big Polish forest and set up home inside a cave. As Hanna turns from baby to child to adolescent, her father teaches her forestry skills like setting traps for rabbits and making shoes out of leaves and so on. It’s a very appealing lifestyle. As city living becomes ever more expensive, polluted and stressful, I often wonder what life might be like living out in the wilderness. Could I handle it? Perhaps I will find out once Brexit finally arrives, the bank repossesses my house and forest life becomes the only sensible option for my family…

Co-op, Westbury-on-Trym every day except Sundays  My brother-in-law told me about The Big Issue. So five years ago he took me to the office in Bristol, and I became a seller. My first day was exciting and I remember I sold 10 magazines on my first pitch, which was outside the White Hart pub in the centre of Bristol. Roma people have big families and we take care of each other. Altogether I have nine children – eight sons and one daughter – and 21 grandchildren. Two of my sons came to the UK around a year before me. I still live with them, alongside my wife and my grandchildren. My sons work hard in construction and they rent a flat for the whole family. For us family is very…