Innholdsfortegnelse for 29-05-2017 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.…

After the horrific news about Manchester I couldn’t settle to work and went out. A Big Issue seller was standing on the corner of Seven Dials in Covent Garden with the latest edition. I bought a copy, and the man and I got chatting. He did most of the talking. C has been sleeping rough for several months after losing his job and home in the Wirral. “There are seven of us who’ve lost our homes, we sleep together in such-and-such street and we look out for each other,” he told me. “It’s surprising what you get used to if you have to. There are business people around – we call them the Blue Suits – who insult us for being homeless but I say to them, ‘You’re only two…

On the morning of May 23 my 10-year-old son had some problems with his bike. The pedal crank had worked itself a little loose and it kept missing as he moved. It wasn’t serious but he was annoyed, increasingly. He had his cycling proficiency test in the afternoon and was determined nothing would stop him. He was also a touch confused as I alternately kept welling up and then dolefully smiling as I tightened the mechanism. I told him to keep going on the road to school. It would be all right. I couldn’t tell him how happy and lucky I felt in that moment that this was his only concern. I hadn’t told him about the massacre in Manchester the night before. I decided not to. He’d learn soon…

“The tragedy of Manchester is that the innocent once again suffer from the poor political leadership in the world” Social media has now become the greatest force for doing the right thing and the wrong thing in the world. Jihadism in its modern form owes an enormous debt to those men and women who in Silicon Valley developed their social media platforms. The Arab Spring utilised the tools of the smartphone and social media to spread their message across the whole of the Arab world. And helped undo the Western-blessed oppressive regimes that had ruled for much of the previous 45 years. Technology always creates opportunity. A hundred years ago if British engineers had not developed the railway half a century earlier then how could the German High Command have…

1. THE BIG ONE Four Kings George Kimball Hearns, Hagler, Duran and Leonard, and their fights. Kimball makes this essential reading. Big George was there for every fight, a witness from six feet away to the legends and their epic fights. 2. THE KO ARTIST A Man’s World Donald McRae This is the story of brilliant world champion Emile Griffith and his wars on both sides of the ropes. Griffith was one of the finest world champions in the 1960s, and gay. It’s a savage read. 3. THE SECRET Ringside with the Amateurs David Prior It’s not all about Las Vegas glitz, and this book takes me back to hard days and nights in tiny, filthy venues watching tomorrow’s champions. This is my guilty pleasure, the book that makes me…

Pop music has Glastonbury, rock has Reading and Leeds, world music has Womad and opera has Glyndebourne. The biggest summer opera festival in the country began last weekend in its Sussex stately home, and many a champagne cork will already have been popped on its lawn. If images of dinner jackets, ball gowns and smoked salmon canapés spring to mind, you wouldn’t be far wrong – but these are a mere sideshow. Glyndebourne is about opera, and the best opera at that. This year’s programme may only boast one of the truly huge hits of the genre – Verdi’s La Traviata – but it is all the richer for it. This is not to say that the other operas on the festival bill are obscurities, far from it – Strauss’…

Welcome to the latest edition of The Big Issue. This week we look at how vendors play a big role in their community, bringing people together. You can read about that on page 6. The attack last week in Manchester was really shocking. It’s awful that it happened at a gig, targeting so many innocent children just out enjoying themselves. I’m a big music fan and Manchester is one of the great music cities. I’m sure the spirit of the people there will get them through it. There’s more about my own story on page 46. Can’t find a regular vendor? Subscribe to The Big Issue for £130. See bigissue.com for all offers. contact@selectps.com / 01202 586 848…

In reaction to the Manchester attack, there was confusion, anger and sorrow. How do we move beyond impotent fury? The people of the great city of Manchester led the way. They came together. They chose togetherness, to react as one and to do what they could, to look ahead. In that spirit, here (with more than a nod to the celebratory iconography of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album, which has marked half a century since its release) we bring stories of communities who unite and find how to be stronger because they are together. This is not a rose-tinted Pollyanna view of an unjust and cruel world. But because you tell us frequently how The Big Issue vendors are part of your communities, how they can frequently be the glue…

LUCAS GREEN LIGHTS BIG ISSUE CAMPAIGN Last week, minds were elsewhere as political parties suspended campaigning for a number of days following the tragedy in Manchester. As some level normality returned, so did interest in The Big Issue’s poverty prevention movement – and what it could mean for a brighter future for many across Britain. Right now, more than £17bn is spent annually in England and Wales on short-run late intervention. And in Scotland, 40 per cent of public spending is targeted at problems that could have been avoided. Our campaign is anchored in the knowledge that money spent now, giving opportunities to the poorest, saves welfare costs in subsequent years. Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas (below) was the latest senior politician to back our prevention call. “The Big Issue…

“You can’t build a future on bitterness, and it’s a toxic basis for politics” Labour losing Glasgow City Council is like the Wombles losing Wimbledon. The morning after the local elections the Telegraph crowed: “Tories win seats in Scotland’s poorest areas and even former site of Ravenscraig British Steel plant.” I, son of one of the thousands of steelworkers thrown on the scrapheap by the Tories when they closed the Craig in 1992, actually despaired: the furnaces went out again and the cooling towers came crashing down once more. But then I began to feel glad. Because the final stage of grief is acceptance. Critically, accepting is not the same as approving. It remains true that Thatcher, then Major lied to the workers and their families, making promises they knew…

LOCAL HISTORY THE MILKMAN COMETH Paperboy, telegram deliverer, milkman... Few knew the 20th-century streets of Bristol better than Garth England (below). Living in a care home in 2005, he began to draw the houses and streets he used to know. His work captures a poignant time of social and architectural change in post-war Britain, and goes on display for the first time this week. Murdered with Straight Lines: Drawings of Bristol by Garth England runs May 31–September 10, The Architecture Centre, Bristol; architecturecentre.org.uk…

It was 50 years ago on June 1 when The Beatles ushered in the Summer of Love with the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which became one of the most universally acclaimed albums of all time. To salute the occasion, a lavishly presented remastered ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Anniversary Edition is out now (Apple Corps Ltd./Universal Music). The album is newly mixed by Giles Martin and Sam Okell in stereo and 5.1 surround audio, and expanded with early takes from the studio sessions, including no fewer than 34 previously unreleased recordings. We have one full box-set and five vinyl copies of the album to give away. How many years is it since The Beatles first released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? Send your answers with BEATLES as the…

Own goal Wayne Rooney may or may not flounce out if offered £225,000 rather than £250,000 per week [Editorial, May 22-28]. However, the fact is that many of these overpaid prima donnas and their minders do seek more wherever they can get it, regardless of any claim of loyalty or humanity. That is but one facet of the overall problem of a sports industry that has lost contact with the number of noughts on the end of its finances. Where personal morality and integrity fail to lay down clear markers, or external moderating controls are rendered powerless, money runs out of control and greed takes over, be it in sport, banking or anywhere else. And greed dictates that enough is never enough. Have we really failed to learn even this…

Colin Cornerhouse and Home We’ve just got to try and keep going at the moment. I’m planning to go down with some flowers and put them with the others. I’ve also got a card and I’ve written the message: “Love, hope and peace. Always remembered, never forgot. Always in our hearts. God bless to all.” We’ve just got to be vigilant and look out for each other. Tommy, King Street These people aren’t going to scare us away. We’re Mancunians. Stefan Victoria train station I am very sad. Very sad. I sell the magazine at Victoria train station and I was there on Monday evening until about seven o’clock. I saw people arriving for the concert.…

ARTWORK BY CHRIS BIRD “I was homeless before and suffer from mental health issues,” says Chris, a frequent contributor to Street Art. “I attend a charity art group where I did these ‘city life’ drawings. My art is a haphazard attempt to show collective street culture and multicultural unity for progress and peace, for respect for all people.” FOETUS BY MARY VALLELY Mary studied art and design for five years in college and has been working as an artist in London for 10 years, selling and exhibiting work through Café Art and Crisis. “Art helps with my depression,” she says. “I have a history of homelessness and use day centres to access art materials. Without these I would be unable to create my work. I love to experiment and my…