Innholdsfortegnelse for 20-01-20 i The Big Issue

Christmas is a busy time for The Big Issue. Don’t stop reading. I’ll stop saying Christmas shortly. Not yet, though. At Christmas, we welcome new readers who may not be with us at all other times of the year. We see an increase in vendor numbers. There is a greater likelihood of people buying The Big Issue. This Christmas was a belter. We don’t often talk about sales. It’s a curious thing to do, and, obviously, nobody is keen to do it when the figures are not great. But it’s worth noting for a few reasons. The first is the scale of the sales. In little over a week, we sold 335,603 copies of The Big Issue Big Christmas special. This is up eight per cent on the previous year.…

Apple committed £1.9 billion ($2.5bn) last year to combat California’s housing crisis. Sure, this is one per cent of the company’s yearly revenue, but it’s been thoughtfully siphoned into several projects, including a £38.3m ($50m) pledge to Silicon Valley’s sustainable housing and homeless prevention organisation, Destination: Home. Destination: Home’s board, most notably its CEO Jennifer Loving, have spent their lives working to end homelessness. They carry the clout needed to help Santa Clara County’s 7,394 homeless. Apple refers to the partnership as “working closely with leading experts” and Loving says Apple’s contribution allows her organisation to “scale two proven strategies”. Apple may have reinvented the phone, but they are leaving the wheel well alone here. No gimmicks, or Apple Watches for the homeless, just correctly channelled support. What’s more, companies…

In the manifesto published online before the murder of 51 people in two New Zealand mosques last year, the perpetrator of the Christchurch massacre included a strange FAQ about his ideas. “Are you a fascist?” he asked rhetorically. “Yes,” he answered himself. “For once, the person that will be called a fascist is an actual fascist. I am sure the journalists will love that.” As soon as I read that passage, I knew I wanted to write a book. For, in fact, most journalists didn’t “love” his confession. It was far more common to read media descriptions of the perpetrator as an ‘extremist’, ‘radical’ or ‘anti-Muslim activist’ than a ‘fascist’. In some ways, that was understandable. Immediately after the killings, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern pledged never to say…

Theatre has been doing ‘colour-blind casting’ for years, but until now film has had a ‘keep out’ sign on the door, barring actors of colour from appearing in bonnet and breeches dramas. Now, with his inclusive Dickens adaptation The Personal History of David Copperfield, Armando Iannucci cheerfully sticks two fingers up at the backward-looking tradition of all-white casting. The ethnicity of the actors in the film is completely irrelevant. Which gives us the heaven-sent casting of Dev Patel, a Londoner of Indian heritage, as Copperfield. I can’t think anyone better suited to Copperfield, an orphan making his way in the world and finding himself as a man, than Patel, an actor with a puppy dog-warm screen presence. Though he is very nearly eclipsed by pint-sized moppet Jairaj Varsani, who portrays…

Podcasts have changed the sort of recorded conversation we have access to. Radio requires a pacing and attitude to content, as well as a need to fit in a very specific time slot for listings magazines. This can lead to podcasts being woolly, unfocused and self- indulgent. Sometimes that self-indulgence can also lead to something rather wonderful. The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe is one of those podcasts where the chemistry and fascinations of the hosts comes together. It is a perfectly curated eavesdrop on science and scepticism. It is a family affair – Steven, Jay and Bob Novella are The Osmonds of evidence-based thinking, joined by Cara Santa Maria and Evan Bernstein. Steven Novella is a neurologist whose campaigning work has been particularly focused on the medical pseudoscience behind…

Leicester train station, every day except Wednesday and Sunday For the last 25 years, pretty much all my adult life, I’ve had problems with heroin addiction. A couple of years ago I went into rehab so I’m sort of in recovery at the minute. It started around 1994 but I was a functioning addict for quite a long time. I was holding down a job, driving seven-and-a-half-tonne lorries around London and living a semi-normal life. But when I took the chance in rehab to look at myself – properly look at myself – I realised that it was all a mess really. My recovery’s not 100 per cent because I lost my partner to addiction nearly two years ago and I had a relapse after that. So I’m on the…

The icing on the cake As a long-time Big Issue reader and now living in Redhill, I have struck up a friendship with Vanessa who has a pitch in the town centre. A few days before Christmas I happened to give her a Christmas card. I had not been feeling very Christmassy at all and I thought that giving a card to somebody who might not expect one might make and them feel a bit more festive. A few days later on Christmas Eve as I was rushing around buying a few bits when she called me over. “I wanted to see you today,” she said. She went over to her bag and pulled out a box containing...a chocolate cake! Which she then presented to me!!”Happy Christmas!” she said. I…

I found myself telling my daughter a story while we were stuck in a traffic jam recently. It was about the first time I ever got newspaper coverage. I was one of five teenage schoolboys who had told their mothers that we were going swimming in the River Thames by Wandsworth Bridge. The entry, a day after we went missing, was two lines in the London Evening News. That was 60 years ago and so much has changed. It is a great tragedy to have the threat of lost children. Increasingly I have noticed that I panic now over children more than anyone did in years past. I am more neurotic and more controlling, and more protective. I role-played for my daughter the BBC going down to Wandsworth Bridge today…

Music was my big passion at 16. I wore big green patch dungarees that I got from Afflecks Palace in Manchester and German paratrooper boots with red and white fly agaric mushrooms painted on the side – I was into all things psychedelic at that point. I went to X-Records in Bolton and got a couple of Gong albums. Anything psychedelic or trippy. I was trying to get dreads at the time. I was all over the place – fads would come and go and I’d jump around trying to find my tribe. I had just started a diploma in performing arts at Salford College of Technology when I was 16. Going from a smaller town to a city can be a culture shock. Manchester was the centre of everything…

It is now 36 years since William Gibson unleashed Neuromancer upon the world. That glorious, seminal work, astonishingly his debut novel, birthed the cultural movement that would become known as cyberpunk – Gibson is credited with inventing the term “cyberspace” – and instantly placed its author at the pinnacle of speculative fiction. Twelve novels on, Gibson, now in his 70s, remains essential – each new work is a big deal for readers like me, who adore his coupling of super-intelligent science fiction and literary smarts. Gibson is in essence a superior thriller writer and a science geek who sets his books in a wholly plausible near-future. His dystopian cyberworlds, with their augmented humans, powerful AIs and droolingly tantalising tech-kit are brilliantly worked through, recognisably evolved extensions of today’s emerging digital…

Many of us have daydreamed about our own launch parties, where groundbreaking new tech or an era-defining book is unveiled as the champagne flows. The truth is, few projects today can justify such a fanfare. That is particularly true for classical music albums, which are increasingly self-funded and crowd-sourced. Patrons deserve reassurance that their contributions will be spent on studio time, rather than over-priced snacks for journalists. Most classical recordings are therefore released digitally or alongside a scheduled concert. But Sheku Kanneh-Mason isn’t your average classical musician. To trail the cellist’s latest album – a collection of works curated around Elgar’s cello concerto, performed with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle – record label Decca Classics arranged for a photograph of Kanneh-Mason to be projected on to…

A hand up, not a handout... Our sellers BUY 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.…

@NealCassady64 A big raspberry. @auradanks @Jen53038 We can all cheer and save money for the emergency services. Iain Ross Wallace, Facebook The sound of Johnson and Gove’s heads banging together. Cos empty vessels make the most sound! Simon Hill, Facebook The boing that Zebedee makes, or Reeves & Mortimer frying pan sound.…

A social enterprise has bowled us over by vowing to name a soup after The Big issue. Jonny Wright and Stu Trewhella are in the process of setting up Soupahero – a start-up that will see homeless people employed to sell soup from a specially made bike. The duo, who both work in TV, cheekily suggested to potential donors “think The Big Issue, but tastier” in an online fundraiser that raised £3,000 in just 14 days before the new year. Wright and Trewhella are now in the process of buying their first bike and experimenting with flavours for their vegetable soups, and even plan to acknowledge their inspiration by naming one after The Big Issue. “The support that we have received has kind of blown us away a little bit,”…

What happens when you invite the world of clinical psychology into London boxing gyms? It looks something like In Your Corner, a social enterprise created by Dr Kathy Adcock. Picking up where child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) struggle to intervene, In Your Corner gives vulnerable young people the chance to work through their difficulties in the ring while in the care of both psychologists and local boxers. After completing a doctorate with the University of Plymouth in 2009, Adcock went on to work as a clinical psychologist with the NHS, specialising in the mental health of young people who had experienced trauma or were care experienced. “We used to have a lot of conversations about them – they’ve often got a large professional network and we all sit…

In a project organised by visual arts charity Project Ability and supported by The Heritage Lottery Group, for the last year a group of “outsider” artists including Richard Anderson, Sian Mather, Morag Macgilchrist and Stuart Lo have been researching Glasgow’s art galleries. On display now until February 22 at Trongate 103 in Glasgow, Extraordinary Responses is an exhibition of work inspired by their visits – from pottery to sculptures and large-scale paintings. project-ability.co.uk/exhibitions/ extraordinary-responses The work on this page 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 of the profit goes to the artist. CULTURE BOOKS Why we need to keep tabs on the new web of fascism Jeff Sparrow FILM Armando Iannucci takes…

01 On Becoming a Person by Carl R Rogers “What is most personal is most universal,” says Rogers. We’re all unique, yet we share our uniqueness. When we take the trouble to articulate the specificity of our story, readers can feel their own specific story come alive. 02 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig The best self-help books are accidental self-help books. Pirsig illustrates this point in the way he grapples with a personal inquiry into fatherhood, sanity and education; culturally resonant in the Seventies and still prismatic for life as a whole. 03 The Case for Working with your Hands by Matthew Crawford The best unconventional self-help books often feature a particular personal crisis overcome that is symptomatic of a societal opportunity more broadly.…

Guz Khan is in demand. The creator and star of Man Like Mobeen has been busy between series two and three of the comedy hit. He’s been around the world, starring with Idris Elba in Netflix sitcom Turn Up Charlie, Sean Bean and Billy Zane in high-octane Sky drama Curfew and Mindy Kalling in the US TV version of Four Weddings and a Funeral, as well as joining the Spice Girls in an advert for a well-known crisp manufacturer popular with fellow Midlander Gary Lineker. But home is where the heart is for Khan, who grew up in the Hillfields area of Coventry, which he has described as a “melting pot of ethnicities, bounded by poverty”. And when we meet at the BBC in Central London, he explains that he…

Finding Harmony by The King’s Singers explores vocal music that has shaped identity, often through shared suffering. The American civil rights movement is represented through This Little Light of Mine, while S’Dremlen feygl (Birds Are Snoozing in the Branches) is dedicated to Lithuanian Jews who were murdered in the holocaust. The album – released on January 31 – also features arrangements of Ariana Grande’s One Last Time to commemorate those lost in the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, and to mark the subsequent unity across the city.…