About this issue: Overview
This week’s Big Issue North is the first of our bumper £3 issues which will run throughout the festive period. There’s lots of extra content and the temporary price rise gives our vendors a much-needed boost in income over Christmas.
You’ll find some of our vendors selling the magazine outside Leeds arena on Saturday as our cover stars Bring Me The Horizon begin their UK tour. It’s part of their fundraising effort for us and more details can be found inside the magazine. We have an in-depth interview with them in which Antonia Charlesworth finds out about the band’s rise to international rock stardom, and what they’ve been up to outside of the band too – fatherhood, marriage and divorce and the small matter of renovating a former steelworks in their hometown.
It’s protests rather than live music that brings Saskia Murphy to Leeds however. Four years since it became the first legal red light district in England, she heads visits Holbeck and finds that while safety has improved for sex workers, residents feel like guinea pigs in a social experiment gone wrong.
In a consumer culture where we’re quick to dispose of goods and most of what sustains us comes from sources unknown, crafts dating back to medieval times are making a comeback. Dickie Felton heads north to Cumbria to meet a lengthsman, a dry stone waller and a swiller.
Matthew Holness gained cult status with his spoof horror series but now he is determined to scare audiences for real. He tells Dan Whitehead about his creepy entrance to the genre with new film Possum.
In news and opinion we find out why the maintained nursery sector is at risk of collapse, how gentrification is isolating the elderly, and why our buses should be brought into public control.
There’s our usual TV, games, albums and cinema reviews plus we preview a major new exhibition in Liverpool and interview bestselling author of the Book Thief, Markus Zusak.
Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits writes a letter to his younger self and of course there’s our competition, crossword and Sudoku.