Innholdsfortegnelse for 27-03-2017 i The Big Issue

WE BELIEVE in a hand up, not a handout... Which is why our sellers BUY every copy of the magazine for £1.25 and sell it for £2.50. WE BELIEVE in 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. WE BELIEVE poverty is indiscriminate… Which is why we provide ANYONE whose life is blighted by poverty with the opportunity to earn a LEGITIMATE income. WE BELIEVE in the right to citizenship… Which is why The Big Issue Foundation, our charitable arm, helps sellers tackle social and financial exclusion. WE BELIEVE in prevention… Which is why Big Issue Invest offers backing and investments to social enterprises, charities and businesses which deliver social value to communities.…

A sign that appeared in a Lincolnshire library last week raises an interesting question. How’s that for an opening line! The sign, posted on social media by a library campaigner, said that from April 1 library fines across Lincolnshire County Council, above £20 and for more than 70 days, would be passed to a debt collection agency. There would be associated costs too, increasing the debt. Should we automatically be up in arms? After all, as our literacy campaign keeps illustrating, libraries need money. Huge numbers of people use them. If we want to keep them open, we all need to pay the bits we can – like for overdue books. Actually, who am I kidding? This is outrageous. The idea of throwing people to the mercy of debt collection…

Next week’s Big Issue will be a very special collectable Art Edition, guest-edited by top Brit artist Charming Baker. He has lined up a stellar cast of contributors including Jonathan Yeo, Sir Peter Blake, Rachel Howard, David Shrigley, Sir Paul Smith, street artist and friend of The Big Issue, Stik, and a host of our regular Street Art contributors, who Baker himself worked with. Don’t miss out on your copy – and a chance to win an exclusive limited-edition Charming Baker artwork in our ‘Golden Ticket’ surprise prize competition!…

“Let musicians give you memorable life-moments. Let them write your song. But pay them please” The headline is a quote from the legendary Mr Quincy Jones. The genius behind millions of record/CD/song sales and major music stars. He was referring to the collapse of traditional record companies and the explosion of download music sites that don’t pay musicians for their work. They offer a cut indirectly linked to ‘plays’. The YouTube video platform offers a similar deal dependant on ‘monetisation’ or carrying adverts. I have another quote for you: “They killed the professional working musician.” That’s from me. Simply put, it is virtually impossible to make a genuine living from being a live musician any more. A few months back a young musician I know asked if I wanted to…

“When did I finally come to peace with myself? About a week ago!” In 2007 on the Outer Hebridean Isle of Lewis, I was given an extraordinary document. It was entitled Some Lewis Moorland Terms: A Peat Glossary, and it listed Gaelic words for aspects of the moorland that fills Lewis’s interior. Reading the glossary, I was amazed by its glittering particularities: èit refers to ‘the practice of placing quartz stones in moorland streams so that they would sparkle in moonlight and thereby attract salmon to them in the late summer and autumn’, while rionnach maoim means the ‘shadows cast by clouds on moorland on a sunny, windy day’. Reading that Peat Glossary set my head a-whirr with wonder-words. But it seemed to me an anomaly. For our available language…

There’s little that leaves much to the imagination about Zara Larsson’s not exactly self-deprecatingly-titled album, So Good. The young dance-pop Swede’s lyrical candour is nothing if not ear-pricking: “No one’s ever touched me like I touch myself,” she sings in the chorus of Only You, one of six tracks from the album that have been released as singles over the last two years. The half-a-billion times Spotify streamed Lush Life was the sound of not just last summer but the summer before that. So Good was only ever going to feel a bit so-so, then, if for no other reason than because it has already long since given up most of its best goods. But this package still does justice to comfortably one of the more interesting pop stars of…

Battle of the books Our group, Friends of Market Drayton Library, was excited to read about your campaign to keep libraries open. For months we have been on tenterhooks regarding the future of the local library in our small market town. So far, the losses have been limited to shorter opening hours but we know that current services may survive intact for only a year Among many initiatives by library staff is the outreach to local people who can no longer visit the library in person. Recently we’ve marked the 40th anniversary of Market Drayton’s Home Library Service, where volunteers deliver books to readers’ homes. “It’s about keeping communities together and libraries open.” That was the vital sentence in The Big Issue [February 13-19]. The library is the one inclusive…

When we launched our Fill ’Em Up campaign last year The Big Issue called for empty buildings to be deployed as shelter for homeless people, to stem the rising tide of rough sleeper deaths in the UK. Last week, the horrifying cost of failing to use the ample resources of vacant shops became all too apparent when 28-year-old Matthew Bloomer, a young father who was sleeping rough in Glasgow, apparently froze to death overnight in a main shopping street. It is the latest in a shocking spate of deaths of people sleeping on the streets across Britain this winter. After Matthew’s death a vigil and protest were organised, and calls were issued that the city’s many unused properties be opened up as temporary accommodation. The next day, this graffiti scrawled…

1. SOLARIS Stanislaw Lem Lem combines language of science and philosophy with a constant sense of dread and psychological terror. This novel about humans exploring a planet covered in an ocean with possible neural capabilities is unlike any other literary experience out there. 2. THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS Ursula Le Guin Along with an intricate plot of intergalactic politics, Le Guin explores Gethen, a planet of “ambisexual” society. Gripping science-fiction epic and a brilliant exploration of themes very relevant today. 3. WAR WITH THE NEWS Karel Čapek A newly discovered breed of intelligent newts revolt against humans, using them as slaves. A study of the dangers of the political movements during Čapek’s lifetime, the book is satirical, unsettling and entertaining. 4. BLOODCHILD Octavia Butler In this brilliant short story,…

I always took libraries for granted because I feel that I almost grew up within the world of libraries. Whenever I have travelled abroad I have sought out a public library – just to see and compare. Nothing has ever compared to the libraries that I once knew, which are now under serious threat of closure. I did not have a good time at school and so, slowly but surely, I became a product of further education and, to cut a long story short, I now teach English to speakers of other languages (Esol). I have found that access to English, through reading English, opens a whole new world to Esol learners. Reading is a direct line to citizenship and active participation in UK culture. My job satisfaction comes through…

The Big Issue is mourning the loss of much-loved sales and outreach worker Danny Derby after his sudden death at the beginning of March. Danny was hugely popular with vendors at The Big Issue’s Nottingham office, where he had worked for more than seven years. His colleague Holly O’Connor said he was a calming presence who treated everyone with fairness and respect. “Danny was one of the most kind and thoughtful people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. In the eight years of knowing him I never once heard him raise his voice or show anger towards anyone.” The Big Issue sends its condolences to all Danny’s family and friends. Donations in his memory are being accepted at Linden Lodge Neuro Rehabilitation Unit at Nottingham City Hospital.…

“I joined Keith at parliament a year ago. I was one of the people he was trying to keep safe” At strange times I miss my father, although he has not been with us for 34 years. Especially when at Westminster Bridge and Parliament last week murder struck. He had this habit of describing even grown men as children. When someone died he would always say something like ‘poor child’. I found myself thinking of PC Keith Palmer as a poor child who had been struck down in his prime. A father and husband, and a mate of many. And the injuries and deaths of the innocent strolling people who were simply crossing a bridge. And when you look at the casualty list you can’t help feeling that the world…

From Rembrandt and Van Gogh to this Celebes crested macaque, artists have often found inspiration in themselves. A new exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery explores the history of the selfie, which has truly come of age in an era when everyone carries a camera around with them on their phone and people seem more self-obsessed than ever. To return a little artistic integrity to the selfie, a competition is being run for people to submit their own creative self-portrait, which will go on display alongside the old masters in the exhibition.…

Are you having a laugh? After this particularly grim winter, we wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t. But don’t worry – HBO are here to banish those blues once and for all. The cable and satellite network is known for its top-quality comedy shows, and this spring it’s releasing a cacklesome cache of both brand-new and much-loved shows on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download. Fresh this year is the first series of Insecure, co-written by and starring Issa Rae (below), best known for her web series, Awkward Black Girl. Also making its debut is teachers-at-war comedy Vice Principals (above), from the outrageous minds behind Eastbound & Down. Ballers is back, with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson this time flexing his comedy muscles as a retired American football star now immersed in…