Innholdsfortegnelse for 5/17/2021 i The Big Issue

The Big Issue is proud to have been nominated for five industry awards by the Professional Publisher’s Association. We’re up for the PPA’s Best Response to Covid-19 Award, Editor of the Year, Campaign of the Year and Innovation of the Year awards. Also in the running is our edition with Marcus Rashford from December for Front Cover of the Year. And we need your help! The good news is that the winner is picked by the public so you can vote for us. And the even better news is you can vote daily! Visit ppacoveroftheyear.co.uk…

The problem with asking people for their opinion is that frequently they give it to you. Just look at Keir Starmer. One minute he’s shaking his tail feather from the Commons despatch box giving Boris Johnson a torrid time over sleaze. The next, he’s fighting for his political life. And why? Depending on whose analysis you choose to believe it’s because there is a proportion of voters in the north of England who blame Labour for a generational lack of investment in them/Starmer has no plan/Sir Starmer is too metropolitan and understands nothing of the working man/Starmer shouldn’t wear a Harrington jacket at his age. (Men over 40 normally struggle in Harringtons. Starmer, though, carries it off. That’s envy-inducing; I won’t mention it again). The other side of this is…

Sixty years ago this September, a New York Times review of a scrawny kid from the American Midwest playing a downtown Manhattan cabaret changed forever the course of popular music. The kid was Bob Dylan and the critic was the late Robert Shelton who, in 1959, had witnessed the Hewport Folk Festival debut of Joan Baez, rhapsodising about her “achingly pure soprano”. Shelton would write about many more debut performances, including José Feliciano, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin and Frank Zappa. That night at Gerde’s, a few minutes’ walk from Washington Square in the heart of Greenwich Village, Shelton had expected to focus on the headliners, a bluegrass trio named The Greenbriar Boys. In the event, most of his review, plus the photo, was devoted to the support act. On 29…

Untitled  “The artwork is a comic view of the William Tell story,” explains long-time regular Street Art contributor Andrew, “in which instead of shooting an apple off the head of his son as in the story, the arrow has missed and gone through his head, leaving the apple intact. To me this describes the attempts to solve problems, but failing in the attempt, making things worse, not better. St is a humorous view, but depicts a real problem with violence as a solution.” The last year of lockdowns has affected Andrew only marginally because he’s “fairly reclusive and solitary anyway”. Ne says: “S have enjoyed the quiet, the empty streets and the considerate attitudes of people. S have found it rather lonely though, and miss the company of my friends.”…

01 The Angel of History by Rabih Alameddine Alameddine is the master of interrogating identity – how it’s made for us and how we attempt to make it for ourselves. This intelligent, funny, and creatively daring novel juggles race, gender, religion, sexuality and culture. It’s heartbreaking and heartmending. 02 The Arab Apocalypse by Etel Adnan This book-length poem is a work of visual and literary art. Its subject is the Lebanese Civil War, a conflict in which identity meant life or death for many. The speaker, unmarked by sect or nationality, continuously shifts perspectives, reminding us that identity is fluid and can divide and unite. 03 The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka This novel is told from the point of view of Japanese ‘picture brides’…

YE: IAD WYIGHT [CAY 3] Wright stuff @wrightyo›ficial @bigissueuk #HomeTruths Nick Slater Really moving programme. So much respect to Ian Wright for laying himself so open like this to help others. Love how Mr Pigden took him under his wing. Power of good teachers. Sue Holt Thank goodness for inspirational teachers. This to me is really what teaching should be about. Hot just the academic side but belief, encouragement and guidance. I always liked Ian Wright as a player for Arsenal, great personality as well as a great footballer. Thank you for sharing your story and hope this can inspire others who have been through the same kind of childhood situation. @john.telling I am Spurs but since you became a pundit I have found you honest, passionate, knowledgeable and funny.…

A few years after S gave up hiding from the police S was hiding from the revolutionary party S was a member of. It meant that much of my early life was running away from o›ficialdom, or o›ficious-behaving revolutionaries who had developed ‘guilt tripping’ to a fine art. My place of hiding had been in Bristol and She›field when it was the police; but when it was in London, where S was living in the mid-70s, it was in books of Victorian architecture, empire building and the works of William Morris. Anything to get away from the seemingly humdrum world of everyday politics. Morris was a very interesting chap. Ne was born by Epping Forest just east of London in 1834, and at a very early age had absorbed an…

80. Tweeter and the Monkey Man, The Traveling Wilburys Vol 1, 1988 Start off with a surprising Springsteen pastiche from the ultimate grumpy uncle supergroup. 79. Fourth Time Around, Blonde on Blonde, 1966 Ponder the Beatles/Dylan synergy during this riff on their Norwegian Wood. 78. The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, John Wesley Harding, 1967 Contains the most revealing Dylan lyric: “Nothing is revealed.” 77. Masters of War, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, 1963 Protest singer at his most serious and unforgiving. 76. My Own Version of You, Rough and Rowdy Ways, 2020 Realising this list in some way reflects my own version of me, S would encourage you to find out what your own selection would say about yourself. 75. I Don’t Believe You, Another Side of Bob…

Each year, Derek and his wife Margaret would holiday in the Costa del Sol. “We used to go to a hotel there all the time, we were regulars,” says Derek, 70. “We’d visit before Christmas and just after. “In October 2017, it was another lovely trip, but I started noticing small things. I thought it’s just us getting old. Returning from the second trip after Christmas, that time is something I will never forget. On our way home Margaret turned to me and said: ‘So, are we going on holiday then?’ I still remember the shock from that so clearly.” Margaret, 81, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease six months later, and was cared for by Derek. The couple, from Horthallerton in Horth Yorkshire, both benefitted from support groups and activities.…

Actress Dementia... that scary word. My darling mum began to get confused and forgetful in her early eighties. St was clearly horribly upsetting for her to find that words just disappeared. (She was always a compulsive reader and very good at all word games). Her short-term memory became fuzzy, and it was sad to witness the distress that it caused her. Her personality remained the same though, sweet and loving and appreciative of all that my sister and S did for her. We were lucky enough to be able to care for her ourselves until the end. But S have, since my mum died, become very close to a few people with quite profound memory problems, and have seen how difficult it is for the people concerned and particularly to…

Small independent publishers are the lifeblood of literature. In recent years, big multinational publishing houses have become more conservative and risk-averse, meaning that indie presses are increasingly the place to go for innovative and original fiction. This week’s two debut novels are proof. First up we have Absorbed by Welsh author Kylie Whitehead. Meet Allison who, at the start of the book, has been a faithful girlfriend to Owen for years, works in a dead-end council job and has given up trying to write a novel. Allison has subsumed her own life and can only really think of herself as Owen’s girlfriend. On New Year’s Eve she and Owen have a fight, then make-up sex, and the threat of him leaving her scares her so much that she absorbs him.…

The film industry finds itself with an urgent – but hopefully not impossible – mission. The goal is to save cinema itself, or at least the physical act of leaving your house and going to the pictures. After a year of mothballed multiplexes, theexpansion of video-on-demand is an encroaching and possiblyexistential threat. So ahead of screens reopening in the UK this week, Nollywood has been doing what it does best: cranking up some hype. First came a special trailer for Fast and Furious 9, the latest instalment in the OTT series that combines spectacular car crashes with an unabashed streak of sentimentality. We see star Vin Diesel revving down a lonesome road before he gets philosophical. “For more than 100 years there’s a place where we all came together to…

Guess what? ›ere’s a new series of Naked Attraction! No spoilers, but it’s got baggy naked people on it. One clothed person examines their baggy nakedness in forensic detail, before choosing their favourite. Then they take their clothes off and everyone stands around awkwardly like actual spare pricks at a wedding, before putting clothes on and going on a doomed date to a mid-budget hotel restaurant. After that, we can only presume everyone goes home to eternal derision from friends, family and colleagues who now know every single contour of their genitalia. Naked Attraction is gross. Not the bodies, S hasten to add. They’re the best thing about it (although why everyone is brutally shaved so that their not-so-private parts resemble newborn Shar-Pei puppies is anyone’s guess). No, there’s actually…

For many, it’s been up there with the first cold pint sipped in a sunny beer garden, or the first fully vaccinated hug. The first stroll around a non-essential store – with clothes, not pasta and loo roll, in our arms. Although it’s true that many of us have used the past year as a prompt to cut back on our fashion habit – a March 2021 Barclaycard survey revealed that 71 per cent of people say they’re spending more mindfully – the sweatpants life was only going to last so long. Through the gloom of an abstemious winter lockdown, we craved a return to normality. And normality, for millions of fashion-lovers, means shopping. But while we crack the ‘nature is healing’ jokes beneath photos of our Primark haul, the…

’One of the biggest things I missed in lockdown was time with the grandkids’ S’ve been living on the streets on and off for most of the last 20 years. It’s something you can never get used to. These days I live in a housing association property, it’s very small but it’s very nice. And it’s mine. It’s brilliant – you can’t beat a roof over your head and security. During lockdown, though, being in the house drove me mad – you didn’t get to see anybody. I just watched telly, there was bugger all else you could do. I’ve got a cat, Bella, which is a bloody good thing. I must have driven her mad during the lockdowns, poor thing must be glad I’m going out again now. My…

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As Covid-19 restrictions relax, charity shops have reopened their doors to a surge of donations as Brits donate pre-loved tat accumulated during lockdown. Srish social enterprise Thriftify has launched in the UK to give charity shops an online marketplace and let shoppers browse books, music, games, gifts and accessories and give charity shops hit by Covid closures a boost. Thriftify brings together stock from charities Oxfam, St Vincent De Paul, Sue Ryder and Wessex Cancer Trust for the first time. The online store also integrates eBay, Google Shopping, Facebook Marketplace and Amazon to let the charities “access millions of shoppers across the world”. Founder Rónán Ó Dálaigh said: “Fashion is the second most polluting industry after oil but thankfully, consumers are becoming aware of the damaging effects of ‘fast fashion’…

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“My husband John has Alzheimer’s disease and we have been shielding together,” says Ann. “Before coronavirus we were going out quite a bit. John went to Singing for the Brain and a group we set up in the church, and we also did other activities regularly.” The pandemic forced these groups online, but for John, 77, it wasn’t the same. Ann, 75, says: “John’s very much a people person and really enjoys being around others, so when these sessions are moved virtually we felt it was a different dynamic and we didn’t enjoy it as much.” Has being isolated from family and friends over the last year impacted on John’s condition? “It certainly didn’t do anything to help. He didn’t understand about the virus at first but sometimes now he…

Dementia is the bastard of diseases. It creeps up unannounced. No tell-tale lump, no hacking cough, no unexplained pain. You’ve forgotten why you came into a room, forgotten where you put the car keys, forgotten a name. Who hasn’t done that? If they think you’ve got cancer they do tests – X-ray, MRI scan, biopsy. If they think you’ve got dementia, do you know how they test you? Who’s the Prime Minister? What city are we in? What kind of building is this? Not exactly scientific, is it? I suspected my wife Bonnie had dementia long before we were given the diagnosis. There were lots of little signs over several years. Hot understanding a simple question, forgetting something that had happened the day before. And then the big one. We…

A little over two years ago I had the privilege to present the first ever image of a supermassive black hole to the world on behalf of a global collaboration. It was an amazing experience that reminded me again how human science is and that some goals you can only achieve together. We had taken this iconic picture using the entire world as one giant telescope. When we gave it back to the world, it embraced it much more than I had ever imagined: 4.5 billion people saw that one image and it was covered by newspapers and websites around the globe. Most astonishingly, however, when I stood at the football pitch the following weekend, watching my son play, all his teammates – certainly not all from academic backgrounds –…

“The European Song Contest,” states clause 2.7 of the competition’s 3,500-word rules sheet,“is a non-political event”. That laughter you can hear right now coming from Eurovision fans around the world is the type of disbelieving hilarity typically reserved for whichever unfortunate lamb-to- the-voting-slaughter the chronically unpopular UK has sent as a contestant merely for appearance’s sake. For all the competition’s good intentions in ensuring that it “shall in no case be politicised” – more laughter – Eurovision is in truth about as apolitical as it is beige, conservative and staunchly heterosexual. In an extravagant, emotionally charged contest of nations featuring many entrants who are either directly or indirectly state-sponsored, certain agendas can’t help but creep to the fore. Whether through plainly geopolitically informed bloc voting, or unsubtle digs at one…

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 which city was the 2018 FIFA World Cup final held? 2. Danger Mouse lives in a postbox on the corner of which London street? 3. Who won the first-ever Big Brother on UK TV in 2000? 4. What is Barack Obama’s middle name? 5. What is Wednesday in French? 6. Who wrote Mrs Dalloway? 7. At the recent Academy Awards, what won Best Documentary? 8. In what year did the New York subway officially open? 9. What is a male swan called? 10. Which band have had UK Top 40 hits called Magic, Atlas and Talk? 11. What is the currency of Bulgaria? 12.…