Innholdsfortegnelse for 16-11-20 i The Big Issue

ART Now is the winter of our Cold War Steve From the political fallout from Covid-19 to the chaos of the US election, friend of The Big Issue and Britain’s best new satirist Christopher Spencer AKA Cold War Steve is on hand to etch it all into history via chaotic cut’n’paste collages. His Christmas cards are on sale now, with profits going to food waste charity FareShare. On November 24, a documentary film Cold War Steve Meets the Outside World will premiere on Sky Arts. coldwarsteve.bigcartel.com TV Heavy is the head: the return of Netflix’s The Crown Olivia Colman is back as Queen Elizabeth II, as Netflix’s hit drama about the monarch’s life and times moves into one of its most eventful and tumultuous periods, from 1977 through to 1990.…

VENDORS New lockdown measures in England have meant The Big Issue has asked more than half its 2,000 vendors to temporarily stop selling the magazine. Elsewhere our staff are working closely with vendors to make sure it is safe for them to be selling, and safe for customers to buy. We are providing masks and hand gel, and encouraging vendors to follow government guidelines. If you can, please support your local vendor by buying The Big Issue from them. PITCHES Towns and cities across the country are quieter than normal so our teams are moving vendors to pitches where they have the best chance of selling magazines, depending on local safety measures and circumstances. An ever-increasing number of vendors are offering contactless payments so they are not losing out as…

We’ve put Big Issue vendors on the map while they are off the street due to England’s national Covid-19 lockdown. Our new vendor map is now live at bigissue.com, allowing readers to put money directly in the pocket of their regular vendor by buying a subscription for themselves or as a giǽt. Fiǽty per cent of net proceeds from all subscriptions bought this way will go direct to the person nominated. And it’s a big hit with vendors. Seller Anthony Okoyedi, 60, who sells the magazine in South Kensington, West London, said: “I think it is a very good idea to let customers subscribe to help individual vendors, I know I have been having conversations with my customers about it.” And Rebeca Marin, 23, who sells The Big Issue at…

My mother was born 100 years ago last week. Born in a farmhouse in County Cork in southern Ireland at a time when there was much distress. Ireland was fighting for its independence from the British Empire and war came to the countryside as well as the city. Her mother had a farm that she had inherited from her dead husband. The widow married again, and out of that second marriage came my mother and her younger brother; what you might call the poor part of the family, who as teenagers moved to London and joined the labouring classes there. My mother arrived aged 18 to become a barmaid in a pub in Notting Hill’s Portobello Road, at a time when it was one of the worst slums in the…

The Covid crisis continues to place untold stress and pressure on people across the UK. The second wave of the virus has led to various tiered levels of lockdown across the nations of Britain, sparking extended furlough periods and renewed fears about jobs and homes. When the first lockdown hit in March stark warnings from various agencies said up to 400,000 households could become homeless as incomes were struck and previously secure work was lost. We at The Big Issue could not sit by and watch this horror unfold. We had to act. We resolved to build an alliance, bringing in expert minds and experienced partners to fight. This is the RIDE OUT RECESSION ALLIANCE, RORA Our aims remain • To keep people in their homes • To keep people in jobs…

Lionheart By Mary Vallely Long-time regular Street Art contributor Mary’s colourful, aquatic paintings are her way of helping to deal with a history of depression and homelessness. This latest work is, she says, “based on my daughter Susan, who died recently. I think I did this very soon after she died. “I miss her so much,” Mary adds. “Doing this reminds me that with time I will mend.” 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.…

Owen Hatherley 01 Nairn’s London by Ian Nairn  For walking around London, this, written in 1966, is my favourite. A vivid, strange and surprising architectural guide that covers everything from churches to council estates to pubs to suburban semis – my copy is in five pieces. 02 England’s Dreaming by Jon Savage The book that actually made me move to the capital as a teenager. An apocalyptic account of the post-1968 West London milieu that created punk rock, run alongside the late ’70s collapse of the post-war consensus. 03 A Journey Through Ruins by Patrick Wright Among the best accounts of the experience of actually living here, this is a sad and angry account of a defeated city after the crushing of the Greater London Council, told via daily life…

The Big Issue: Christmas is coming! When it comes to buying other people presents, are you a Big Spender ? Dame Shirley Bassey: I like to gift my friends and family something I know they will use or something that will be useful for them and their future. Christmas shopping is fun and I’ve always enjoyed doing it. Unfortunately, this year, due to Covid, I haven’t been able to travel to the UK and enjoy the festivities of London. Nor can I be with my family, which is a shame. One gift everybody should buy friends and family is your album, I Owe It All To You. Who do you owe it all to? Well, the album is dedicated to my fans, none of this would be possible without them.…

In her 2018 memoir Becoming, Michelle Obama imagines heaven as “a place full of jazz” – a projection brought to life by Kamasi Washington when he created the soundtrack to her documentary of the same name earlier this year. Now, as Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, stepmum to Cole and Ella, (named after John Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald), prepares to make history in her new role I have to say it’s a relief to have a jazz fan back in the White House. And even before that transition begins, there’s plenty to look forward to. Firstly, celebrated heritage label Verve’s Acoustic Sounds series continues to deliver, having remastered and reissued some essentials throughout the year such as Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. This month sees…

USUAL PITCH: Tesco Metro, New George Street, Plymouth I didn’t know what to think when I first heard about this new lockdown. I didn’t expect that it would be a month, but now people are saying it might be even longer. Obviously at Christmas time we get extra sales and good tips, people like to give us little presents, so hopefully it won’t be the case that this goes on longer than a month. I want to be back on my pitch by Christmas. After the last time I spoke to The Big Issue I’ve had a few more customers come to me because they read my story and they’ve realised who I am and what I’m about. I hope I can keep in touch with them now that I’m…

A hand up... Our sellers BUY the magazine for £1.50 and sell it for £3, keeping the difference. Not a handout… Vendors earn a legitimate income, and gain valuable social and employability skills. With your support now, we can continue to do so now and in the future. The right to citizenship… The Big Issue Foundation, our charitable arm, helps sellers to 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.…

Back in March, a remarkable thing happened. Not that thing. Related to that, but not exactly that. Out of the first lockdown came our call. We asked that you got behind The Big Issue as we removed vendors from the streets. We called on you to help us to help our vendors as their income dried to zero. And you did. With no hesitation, so many of you got on board with our push for subscriptions and also donated to our vendor support fund. Within just a few weeks we were able to hand money to vendors. More than £600,000 in cash, or shopping vouchers or whatever useful things we could get to them over the lockdown period. It was an incredible thing. One moment stands out. On a particular…

The news that pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech may have won the global race to provide a Covid-19 vaccine is welcome – but now attentions turn to who will be first in the queue to receive it. People who are homeless are not considered a priority for the 40 million doses reportedly ordered by the UK under government plans. Ministers understood the need to protect rough sleepers from the virus earlier this year when they acted quickly to move them into hotels with the Everyone In scheme. It was a vital step to protect a section of society who oǽten have underlying medical conditions that can make them susceptible to coronavirus. But that priority treatment does not figure in preliminary vaccination plans. Current provisional advice from independent experts The Joint…

There are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 (43 quintillion, 252 quadrillion, 3 trillion, 274 billion, 489 million, 856 thousand) possible positions for the Cube to be in Any position can become any other in 20 moves. That means no matter how mixed up it looks, or however many years you’ve been trying, you’re only ever 20 moves from the solution More than 350 million Cubes have been sold After inventing the Cube, Professor Rubik took about a month to solve it (he now takes about a minute) The world record for solving the Cube is 3.47 seconds by Yusheng Du…

The late French writer Hubert Mingarelli was a master of the laconic. Languid, cajoling and yet silently emotional; all these characteristics flow through his tender style. Having focused much on war and its effects in his later works, this serenity is interspersed with the cruelties of violence and the darker realms of human reactions in his final novel The Invisible Land. The novel creates a scene of humble victory after the end of the fighting in 1945. The anonymous narrator, caught up in increasingly delirious military camps, persuades his colonel to let him travel around a defeated Germany as a photographer, intending to capture the “people of this damned country” who have survived the war “in front of their homes”. The motive for such a mission is never explained beyond…

As a man who earned his stripes covering football for ITV over the course of around a quarter of a century, reporter Gabriel Clarke is no stranger to the sporting world. But in recent years, he’s also followed in his father’s footsteps (Alan Clarke, the director of the likes of Scum and Made in Britain) as a film director, in his case documentaries. Notably, he’s co-helmed Steve McQueen: The Man and Le Mans and the excellent Bobby Robson: More Than A Manager. Now though we have his latest project – co-directed with Pete Thomas – and it’s something around the same area, but perhaps even more emotive. Finding Jack Charlton was originally set to debut in cinemas earlier this month, but now arrives on DVD. With the consent and involvement…

My BBC Radio 4 companion Professor Brian Cox was once a science adviser to the actor Cillian Murphy. I have often mocked him for this role on the film Sunshine as, despite its excellence, the central premise is the reasonably unscientific idea that you can restart the sun by sticking a bomb in it. Brian’s excuse was that he was mainly advising on looking, walking and writing equations like a scientist. Listening to Cillian Murphy’s Limited Edition from BBC 6 Music he has clearly not had a DJ adviser, at least not from the mainstream, as it is a magnificent selection from the Peaky Blinders star, at times arcane, frequently haunting and often surprising. His latest show opened with the beautifully ethereal Enchantment by The Melody Mates, a song created…

NEED HELP? Why not get together with other Big Issue readers on Twitter - @BigIssue Get the answers in next week's mag! Good luck 1. In a game of bingo, which number is represented by the phrase “two little ducks”? 2. What was Sean Connery’s second film as James Bond? 3. Which Beatle released a solo album called Cloud Nine ? 4. In what year did Nike unveil the Air Jordan shoe? 5. Which soap opera ran on ITV from 1964 to 1988? 6. What do you call a doctor who specialises in treating the heart? 7. Who wrote the 1962 novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest ? 8. What is the capital of Syria? 9. How long is a half in game of both rugby union and rugby…

Before Covid-19 existed, before there was any notion of what was heading our way, I sat in a darkened room and wrote a novel of a very extreme case of social distancing. I wrote the journal of how I thought Geppetto, Pinocchio’s unfortunate father, might explain his experience of living two years inside the belly of a great sea beast. I’ve always been fascinated by the story of Pinocchio, of the object that longs to be a person. The puppet is a force of life, a creature of persistent disobedience and delinquency. He is not the sweet, innocent in a Tyrolean hat that Disney reveals in his film, nor is Geppetto the creator a gentle, bespectacled Swiss. Rather Geppetto is a foul-tempered bully of a father, who made his wooden…