Innholdsfortegnelse for 23-10-2017 i The Big Issue

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Big Issue. We’re looking at how much has changed since the release of the Ken Loach film I, Daniel Blake last year. And we also look at George Michael, almost one year on from the pop genius’s death. I’m a bit of a singer myself - I once recorded a single under the name Will Rap 4 Cash and I have a gig as a rapper coming up in the Anchor Inn on the Isle of Wight where I sell the magazine. I’m always singing when I sell - it’s important to keep customers happy. You can read more about my story on page 48. WIN!  TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT ON DVD & THE HOWLING ON BLU RAY™…

Sean Hughes, the comedian, died last week. The news came as a sad shock. Those who had known him over the years didn’t realise how deadly a grip the booze had got on him. And in the end it looks like it did for him. He was just 51. Last week there was a curious piece published in The Guardian that outlined Sean Hughes faults. But didn’t detail a lot of the good. I was friends with Sean several years ago. I was introduced by my wife and her oldest friend who had known him a good deal longer. This was a thrill as 10 years previously I had thought Sean Hughes was one of the coolest men alive. There he was on TV making it clear that skinny Irish…

We all know social enterprises are helping change the face of business in the UK by putting something back into communities. That’s something worth celebrating, and The Big Issue is teaming up with Social Enterprise UK to pick the winner of the Consumer Facing Social Enterprise of the Year at this year’s SEUK Awards. Pick between Alnwick Gardens, Belu, Café Direct, Change Please, Divine Chocolate, From Babies with Love, Stand4Socks, The Soap Co., Toast Ale and Valleys Gymnastics to see who walks away with the prize at London’s Royal Horticultural Hall. Just head to bigissue.com to cast your vote by midnight on Sunday November 5. Hand-in-hand with the public vote, businesses are also getting on board with The Big Issue Shop for SEUK’s annual Corporate Challenge: a huge initiative which…

The George Michael: Freedom documentary, made and voiced by the singer, was close to completion before his sudden death last Christmas. The tone is uncritical and the story was the version George wanted told. Here are five things we learnt from it... 1. His voice still blows minds  To take a moment to focus on his voice is to open our minds to be blown all over again. Tony Bennett, Mary J Blige, Liam Gallagher, Stevie Wonder, Elton John and Mark Ronson don’t just sing anyone’s praises. “Soulful, warm, sultry and urgent,” according to Blige. But Elton John nails it: “When he does up-tempo it is full of joy, when he does sorrow – which is the true mark of a great singer – you can hear the pain.” 2.…

Peaking at 287 million tonnes of coal produced in 1913, there’s no denying the national significance of mining in the 19th and 20th centuries. Now a gallery dedicated to its cultural influence has opened in the former colliery town of Bishop Auckland. It reveals how miners (such as Norman Cornish, whose work Pit Road is below right) explored their experiences through art, from the conditions they endured to the communities that rose around them. Their work sits alongside images from prominent artists, such as Ted Holloway, who created pieces influenced by the era. The Mining Art Gallery is at Auckland Castle aucklandcastle.org…

1. THE BRIDE OF TEXAS Josef Škvorecký (translator K Polačkova-Henley) The American Civil War as seen by Czech immigrants fighting for the Union. We discover the reasons they emigrated, running from disastrous love affairs, only to fall hopelessly in love in the New World. 2. SKYLARK Dezső Kosztolányi, (translator Richard Aczel) In a provincial town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the lives of a retired couple are ruled by their daughter, Skylark. When she finally goes away, her parents discover they’re better off without her. 3. FLESH-COLOURED DOMINOES Zigmunds Skujins (translator Kaija Straumanis) When Baroness von Bruegen’s officer husband is cut in two, she’s delighted to discover his lower half has been sewn on to the upper body of a humble local captain. She conceives a child, but then her husband…

With friends.... The reason why John Bird no longer hears wolf whistles echoing “from every scaffolding of every building site in the country, at passing women” [John Bird, October 9-15] is that this is a form of sexual harassment which has no place in the 21st century. Linda Campbell, Norwich Always take the magazine I am an occasional buyer of The Big Issue when I see a seller locally, and I like to read the paper. However on the last two occasions when I have approached two different sellers they have only held one copy of the paper and they asked me if I wanted the copy as if they were expecting the money without a sale. I felt rather mean asking for their last copy but I thought that…

UNTITLED BY ALEX  Alex is a Big Issue vendor, his pitch is at Pret A Manger on Caxton Street, London. “I focus on the combination of colours in my art,” he explains. “To me, light, shades and shadows are very important. I started painting when I was growing up back home, and now I usually share my art with those who have been kind to me when times were difficult, as a gift to show my appreciation.” HYDE PARK BY MANGO Mango submits his art via London homeless charity the 240 Project. He’s a London based graffiti artist who has been in the game for about 20 years. He describes his skills as including “crazy fades, wild-styles and cool characters”. He is also known for his gothic art and his…

“Asking a girl out was terrifying, far more frightening than going into space” At 16 I lived in a small rural village in West Sussex. All my thoughts were taken up with being in the cadets. I loved it. It had an army section and an Air Force section. I loved being in the army section, all the adventurous outdoor activities at weekends; camping, hillwalking, climbing. But I had a huge passion for flying. So I tried to sneak off with the Air Force at every opportunity and jump into a plane and go flying on a glider or a small tandem seat trainer. That burned up most of my time outside school. At various stages I suffered from the usual teenage angst. I worried about school work. I wasn’t…

7 MILLION Roll-out of the single-payment scheme, to replace six benefits is currently being expanded from five to 50 areas. By 2022, seven million families will be on Universal Credit. 6 WEEKS An in-built delay in universal credit means people must wait at least 42 days for their first payment – six weeks with no money. 11% Citizens Advice says more than 1 in 3 people have waited more than 6 WEEKS to receive ANY income. 11% are waiting over 10 weeks. 50% Over 50% of people helped by Citizens Advice who receive Universal Credit borrowed money waiting for their first payment. f2.800 The Resolution Foundation think tank has estimated that some families could lose up to £2,800 a year as a result of Universal Credit. 16.85% Foodbanks in areas…

“History is littered with apparently insignificant decisions and slip-ups that have had massive repercussions” Watch the news or read a newspaper and it’s all too easy to believe that everything that goes on in the world today has been the result of the varying whims of governments, petty tyrants and big businesses down through the ages. However, all is not as it might seem. History is littered with apparently insignificant actions, decisions and slip-ups that have gone on to have massive repercussions, for good or ill. They occur in virtually every area of our lives and have influenced everything from the wars we fight to the food we eat, from the technology around us to the music we listen to. And the more time I spent closeted in the Rare…

The first shot of a new documentary on Grace Jones sees the singer on stage, emerging from shadow into a spotlight, her features obscured by an imposing, gold-coloured mask. For anyone expecting great insight into Jones, I can’t say this is an auspicious start: here is the iconic performer in full on-stage battle-gear, donning a head dress that conceals far more than it reveals. But over the course of director Sophie Fiennes’ bold and fascinating documentary Bloodlight and Bami the mask slips. Jones generously submits to Fiennes’ quietly probing camera, and the result is an up-close, surprisingly unguarded portrait of a compelling artist. The singer is filmed performing some of her classics from her disco pomp (Slave to the Rhythm, Pull Up to the Bumper, etc) and new numbers to…

I enjoyed John Bird’s interesting article about the Royal Academy and its current exhibition on Matisse in the Studio [Oct 16-22]. I agree about the sharp contrast between affluent shops and people begging in the area near the RA. The article comments that “The world outside of art does not invade the art. It is a hermetically sealed life in there.” However, this is not always the case, eg the recent RA exhibition on Art of the Russian Revolution showed strong links between art and politics. Moreover, the RA holds a monthly Art Club as a community event, welcoming organisations such as St Mungo’s, The Passage, Arlington House and The Connection at St Martin-in-the-Fields. There is a free guided tour of an exhibition, followed by tea, coffee, biscuits and an…

Councils across the UK are being accused of passing the buck after giving rough sleepers one-way train tickets to go somewhere else. 10 local authorities told BBC News they had bought the tickets as part of a “reconnection” policy to get people to return to an area where they had previously established a connection. Some rough sleepers say they were asked to consider going to places where they had never been. Rick Henderson, chief executive of charity Homeless Link said the action was harmful: “Simply displacing rough sleepers without offering support is not solving the issue. At worst it can exacerbate their situation, leaving them more isolated and at risk of deteriorating physical and mental health.” If this isn’t simply an exercise in moving the problem around, and if property…

The accumulated pain and suffering of those caught within the benefit system is so constant that you can only conclude that it is failing. That modernisation of the system that brings aid and help to those in need is often baloney. Manchester, Leicester, Lincoln, Edinburgh, Glasgow, wherever I have travelled since the summer you run into desperate stories. If you read the liberal-inclined papers you’ll get even more. Universal Credit (UC) is the name of the game, yet even outside the zones where UC is being tried out in, there is a malaise over the benefit. Iain Duncan Smith, often shortened to IDS, the driving force behind UC, should be calling on the abandonment of it. He should be saying that his experiment that was meant to give people needing…

It’s been almost a year since George Michael’s shock death in the early hours of Christmas Day – an impossibly tragic end to the story of a star synonymous with the festive season. The singer had been a loyal friend to The Big Issue over the years, breaking a six-year media silence in an exclusive 1996 interview with us as a publication he trusted, and returning to speak to the magazine a few years later. As Big Issue Editor-in-Chief John Bird said in our George Michael tribute edition in January: “He was a man who could understand what we are trying to do in our work among the homeless, the defeated and broken struggling to get back on their feet.” Among the millions of fans who mourned him was fellow…

With 21 of the 30 fastest-ever 100-metre times being run by drugs cheats – and Usain Bolt (clean) responsible for the rest – here is a look back at the history of doping in the sporting world Both East Germany and Russia have been embroiled in state-sponsored doping scandals. An estimated 10,000 EAST GERMAN ATHLETES USED STEROIDS leading to long-term health problems while up to 1,000 RUSSIAN ATHLETES BENEFITTED FROM DOPING between 2011 and 2015, according to a report by lawyer Richard McLaren. • Athletes ate sheep testicles and hearts for a hit of testosterone in 776 BC’s original ancient Olympics, according to historians. • In the 1904 Olympics, a mixture of brandy and strychnine nearly killed marathon runner Thomas Hicks (right) while other athletes used cocaine and heroin before the IAAF…

Just as childhood ghost stories began with a drip, drip, drip, Elsie Bainbridge’s personal horrors are signalled by a hiss, hiss. The Silent Companions opens with its protagonist in an institution, badly burnt, mute, and suppressing memories of decades of traumatic events – the most recent of which have placed her under suspicion of murder. Diarising her past for a psychoanalyst, Elsie transports us to The Bridge, her late husband’s country estate. Pregnant and newly widowed with only the company of an awkward cousin-in-law, Sarah, all is not well at their ancestral home. A hiss leads Elsie to open the garret and unwittingly unleash a dark force which takes its form in a set of “silent companions”: uncannily human-like wooden figurines. Their mysterious provenance and ever-changing appearance set off a…

As Morrissey returns to remind us of his almost self-parodic ridiculousness these days with recent single Spent the Day in Bed – includes one line rhyming “emasculation” with “castration” and I say no more – it’s hard to decide whether or not Warner are trying to console us or troll us with a brand new multi-disc deluxe reissue of The Smiths’ arguably best-ever album. Come to think of it, “console or troll” would make for a good latter-day Morrissey lyric, wouldn’t it? Ah, The Queen Is Dead. What a brilliant and strange and ridiculous and inconsistent and funny and bleak and beautiful but mostly plain brilliant album. Its inherent dichotomy is captured in the first few seconds of the regicide-advocating opener and title track, as a creepy sample of Cicely…

Humans and Transformers are at war, Optimus Prime is gone. The key to saving our future lies buried in the secrets of the past, in the hidden history of Transformers on Earth. Saving our world falls upon the shoulders of an unlikely alliance: Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg); Bumblebee; an English Lord (Sir Anthony Hopkins); and an Oxford Professor (Laura Haddock). There comes a moment in everyone’s life when we are called upon to make a difference. In Transformers: The Last Knight, the hunted will become heroes. Heroes will become villains. Transformers: The Last Knight is out now on digital download and is available on DVD, Blu-ray™ and 4K Ultra HD™ on October 30. To be in with a chance of winning one of eight DVDs simply answer the question below:…

Darkly comic horror classic The Howling – the film which changed the look and feel of werewolf movies for years to come when it was first released back in 1981 – gnaws its way on to newly restored edition DVD, Digital Download and, for the first time in the UK, Blu-ray™. Directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins) with a screenplay by John Sayles (Lone Star) and groundbreaking special effects by Rob Bottin (The Thing, The Fog, Total Recall), The Howling follows news anchor Karen White (Dee Wallace) left traumatised after an intense confrontation with a serial killer. In need of recovery, she takes refuge within “The Colony”, a country retreat organised by her psychiatrist Dr Waggner (Patrick Macnee). But things at “The Colony” aren’t as idyllic as they originally seem. To…