Innholdsfortegnelse for 10/8/2018 i The Big Issue

This week’s Big Issue is a Money Special. Everyone could do with a better understanding of finance – companies can offer you money so easily and it’s no wonder people go into debt. Find out more about how the system works on page 18. The cost of accommodation is another thing that makes me angry. We look at how builders stockpile land on page 31. I needed a £600 deposit for my flat which I wouldn’t have had without the help of a great friend. Read more about that on page 54.…

@BigIssue Could veganism save the planet? @ChrisGPackham on why he’s going vegan @Wildlife_Jason Was so thrilled to read this @BigIssue article by @ChrisGPackham on why he’s going #Vegan Love the way he’s spelled out why there’s a need for acceptance during howsoever long it takes any one of us to make the transition. #GoVegan Chris is ace! @GreenCityCoop Interesting article by @ChrisGPackham in the @BigIssue about his journey to veganism. A massive change in eating habits which is something being embraced by many, especially younger people. #WednesdayWisdom @Hairyloon I cannot see any sense in the vegan position. Clearly there are solid arguments against animal exploitation, but where is the exploitation in the common backyard chicken? Granted there is the practical difficulty in that for many, but vegans avoid eggs on…

For The Big Issue’s Finance Special it is only right that we put social enterprises front and centre. The Big Issue is one of the biggest social enterprises in the UK, with the sector growing to contribute a whopping £60bn to the economy. It’s not all about the money, of course. The 100,000 social enterprises in the UK give two million people a job and every pound they make is poured back into making the world a better place. Rather than going into a shareholder’s back pocket, the proceeds go towards training, employment, housing or health, education, clean water and more. It’s an achievement worth shouting about and that’s why Social Saturday will be championing the best and brightest that the sector has to offer with events across the country…

SORROW, TEARS AND JOY BY ANTHONY OKUYEDI Anthony is a Big Issue vendor with a pitch at the Thurloe Street entrance to South Kensington tube station in West London. Selling the Big Issue has helped him to broaden his contacts and clients as an artist. “I have had a few paintings exhibited at local galleries and I am the official UK artist for Mama Biashara, a charity for Kenya,” he says. “I’ve sent paintings as far as Scotland, Taiwan and America and I am trying to open a website for my art and African jewellery.” The inspiration for this artwork came from African masks from the ancient Benin empire. Street Art is created by people who are marginalised by issues like homelessness, disability and mental health conditions. Contact…

As a kid I was very overweight and very lazy. All my school reports said I wasn’t meeting my potential, which my parents found frustrating because my mum was desperate for me to be a doctor, those traditional Asian expectations. There was no youthful rebellion because I didn’t have anything in me to be anything other than lazy. Hip-hop and comedy were the two things I got into really young. A mate of mine left the Public Enemy album, It Takes a Nation Of Millions to Hold Us Back at my house when I was about 12. I couldn’t believe this music. It blew me away. It didn’t sound like anything I had heard before and the lyrics… on that album, there is a lot of black empowerment. I am…

In 2016, the British government set up an independent taskforce – of which Kershaw is a member – to consider how to encourage more impact investment, and how to make it easier for people to support the causes they believe in through their savings and investment choices. In a report published in November 2017, the advisory group made a number of recommendations, such as developing better reporting of non-financial outcomes and making it easier for people to invest. The group’s report called on the financial industry to commit “to work with government, the social sector and regulators on identifying investment approaches that can be used to deploy capital to tackle entrenched social and economic problems”. Earlier this year, British prime minister Theresa May established another taskforce to work on progressing…

Do you break out in a sweat when you have to check your bank balance? Do your eyes glaze over when you hear the word ‘pension’? You are not alone. A quarter of adults have little or no confidence in managing their money, according to the Financial Conduct Authority, the financial services industry regulator, and nearly half say their knowledge of financial matters is “low”. Separate research found that more than half of adults surveyed had overpaid for something because they didn’t understand the jargon in a contract they had signed. Meanwhile, the Institute of Education at UCL says a woeful lack of maths ability in the UK is impacting on our finances. A quarter of adults struggle to work out how much change they should get in a shop,…

READ MORE FROM... JANE GRAHAM VISIT BIGISSUE.COM RED BIRDS by Mohammed Hanif, out on October 18 (Bloomsbury, £16.99) The more you read of Pakistani novelist Mohammed Hanif’s exuberant, spirited prose, the more you fall in love with him. And want to have dinner with him, party with him, have a bit of a dance. He’s a maverick; he won’t mind if you don’t know all the steps. There’s a touch of Catch-22-style absurdism in the story of fretful crashlanded American pilot Major Ellie and resourceful, exasperated Muslim teenager Momo, who lives in the desert refugee camp Ellie was supposed to bomb (having been informed by his colonel it was a squalid hideout for “goat fuckers”). It’s a wry, brutal satire, with many laugh-out-loud moments, and the…

READ MORE FROM... EDWARD LAWRENSON VISIT BIGISSUE.COM The Apollo moon landing had many beneficial side effects. The almighty effort required in a successful lunar mission provided a growth spurt to existing technology, making for everything from better computers to non-stick frying pans. Those images of the earth stood as a galvanising symbol for the emerging environmentalist movement. But this week comes a less-welcome consequence of that heroic space voyage almost 50 years ago: First Man , and it’s one of the dullest films you’re likely to see this year. How did the heroic effort to land Neil Armstrong (played by Ryan Gosling) on the moon inspire such a boring film? The genius behind this peculiar accomplishment belongs to filmmaker Damien Chazelle. He’s the youngish director behind…

Grammar: The Biggest Issue I trained as a teacher in the late 1980s, a job I wanted to do so I could make a positive difference to young people’s lives; education often being the key to getting out of poverty. One of my most memorable influences was our study of Peter Trudgill’s book Accent, Dialect and the School. I still treasure my copy. For the first time, an academic was telling me it was OK to speak with my London accent and he went further to demonstrate how every regional dialect has “rules” of its own. It is merely an elitist social construct to claim that one set of grammar rules (eg so-called standard English) is superior to another. To do so is to destroy the self-esteem and future prospects…

Just over 22 years ago my friend and I went to the bank. We were in Belfast, a city then not quite settled, and we decided to launch a music magazine. We were very young. He, Colin Murray, was barely 20, I was a couple of years older and we didn’t know what we were doing. We had been canny enough to overstate the hands-across-the-barricades line that we walked together in still febrile Northern Ireland. That helped us to gently finagle some funding out of organisations like LEDU and The Prince’s Trust. But we were still short. We put together a business plan as LEDU had taught us, put on our best clothes and made an appointment to see the manager of the Ulster Bank on Shaftesbury Square. We made…

A fresh plan to provide free and safe showering facilities to homeless people has secured its first location. ShowerBox, spearheaded by homeless shelter volunteer Sarah Lamptey, was set up to give rough sleepers access to safe places to wash and will debut at Brixton Soup Kitchen. But Mayor of London Sadiq Khan responded to a petition, which had amassed nearly 2,000 signatures, calling for the showers to be installed in the city by pointing to existing day-centre services. Lamptey said: “I’ve had conversations with politicians where they say they want to commit to ending homelessness – well of course, I do too, that’s an almost patronising response. I thought, right, OK, I’ll do it myself.” The volunteer also said that the mental and physical impact of uncleanliness takes a toll…

449  At least 449 people died while homeless since October 2017 65 DIED ROUGH SLEEPING For 128 of the deaths, TBIJ had information about where they happened: 65 died rough sleeping; 16 in hospital and 47 in temporary accommodation 69% MEN 21% WOMEN 69 per cent of those who died were men and 21 per cent were women (the gender was not established in the remaining 10 per cent of cases) 18-94 The age range of those who died was from 18 to 94, with the average age of death for men being 49 and 53 for women JANUARY January was the worst month for deaths, with 33 people losing their lives 109 IN LONDON 258 cases were recorded in England and Wales , with 109 in London alone. In…

I went to the Labour and Conservative party conferences this year because of our Creditworthiness Assessment Bill, which is now passing through the House of Commons. But also to speak at the Fair by Design fringe meetings, held at both events. Fair by Design is a campaign with a simple road map to put an end to the extra costs that go with being poor. It’s a burning injustice that if you’re poor it costs you more money for your credit, gas, insurance and day-to-day living. It fits in well with the work we’re doing about reducing the cost of credit for the most stretched in our communities. Both conferences were surrounded by pickets against Brexit. Labels and stickers, leaflets and posters and EU flags fluttering with the Union Jack.…

Without access to fair credit and mainstream lenders, people are forced to turn to unscrupulous high-cost lenders, leading to them racking up bad debt and becoming another commodity on the market. The Creditworthiness Assessment Bill, currently being led through the House of Commons by Big Issue founder John Bird, aims to improve the access to fair credit through the sharing of rental and council tax data to prevent the debts from being accrued in the first place.…

It is the question that has long troubled investors: can you do good and achieve good returns at the same time? As a growing body of evidence points to the fact that sustainable funds can outperform their peers, impact investing is seeing an unprecedented boom. Investors are unleashing the power of capital to have a positive impact on the world. In the UK it is estimated to be worth some £15bn, and our latest Triodos Bank Annual Impact Investing survey suggests that we are on the cusp of accelerated growth over the next decade. With a forecast increase of 173 per cent, our analysis predicts that the market is set to be worth £48bn by 2027. These are some impressive figures, but what’s behind this acceleration? The research points to…

Since the 1650s chocolate has been one of Britain’s favourite treats. In 2017 we consumed an average of almost 19lbs of chocolate each, making us the biggest chocoholics on the planet. And consumption globally is on the rise, with the industry predicted to be worth almost £100bn next year. But we rarely consider how chocolate reaches our shelves, or the chain of people who get it there. Almost all of the world’s cocoa – 90 per cent – is grown by six million smallholder farmers, with the main sources in West Africa, including Ghana and Nigeria, and in South America where Brazil and Ecuador are the largest producers. But while we binge on the sweet stuff, despite decades of Fairtrade campaigning, some farmers still remain low-paid and many will never…

Cash is old money. During the last few months of 2017, card overtook cash as the most common payment method in the UK for the first time, according to banking trade association UK Finance. This, they say, is thanks to the explosion of contactless payments and online shopping. The organisation estimates that 98 per cent of the British population now hold a debit card, with 13.2 billion debit card payments throughout 2017. That’s up 14 per cent on 2016’s figures. The sea change hasn’t gone unnoticed on the high street. Earlier this month, consumer watchdog Which? found that almost 3,000 brick-and-mortar bank branches closed down over the last four years. News of more closures isn’t hard to find, with 54 RBS branches preparing to shut over the next few years,…

Books about words, writing, and the history and geography of language are in abundance this autumn, which seems fitting in these Orwellian times. Simon Lancaster’s You Are Not Human (Biteback, £12.99) is a fascinating study of the effect of metaphor; how connecting an event, place, or people with a picture, however illusory, can dictate the nature of its impact. His examples are varied – Russians as trolls, women as bitches, poor people as scum, children as wild animals – as he shows how normalising positive and negative metaphors can have extraordinary results, from the extermination of six million people to the election of a president. However much you might think you’re rather too sophisticated to be bewitched by linguistic spin, you’re likely to find you unwittingly fall into numerous traps…

William Clegg QC wrote in The Big Issue [September 24-30] about “why dramatic cuts to Legal Aid could prevent justice for any and all”. May I suggest that the high charges by lawyers is the barrier to justice for all. My local solicitor charges £200 an hour for a consultation. I understand that top QCs can charge as much as £2,000 per hour to stand up in court. This is set against average earnings of £15 per hour or a minimum wage of £7.83 per hour. Legal fees seem to be the barrier. As a fellow of two professional technical institutions for 15 years I was as well qualified as a top lawyer but retired having received a payment during the last 18 months much less than £200 per hour.…

He may have spent last week defending billionaires and presidents but love-him-or-hate-him rapper Kanye West has also had his eye on homelessness too. The controversial star featured on these pages earlier this year after turning his hand to social housing. Now he has taken his latest attempts to connect with the man on the street a step further – inviting a man sleeping outside New York’s iconic Electric Lady studios to show off his skills behind the mic. Jorge Flores, who goes by the stage name of Nino Blu, appeared on Instagram with West, himself adopting the moniker of Ye to promote his new album, to tell the tale. “My birthday was the other day and I just became homeless cos the guy I was living with is a little…

The Big Issue battle to save libraries is heading straight to the heart of Westminster. In July, the great and the good from the libraries community – including Arts Council England, the government’s Libraries Taskforce and library and information association CILIP – attended a roundtable meeting to discuss a sustainable funding method to keep libraries open long-term. A total of 816 centres have closed their doors since 2010 and they continue to be under threat, with cash-strapped councils looking to tighten belts. A follow-up roundtable is pencilled in for October 30 where Big Issue founder Lord John Bird will be presenting hard, quantifiable research to libraries minister Michael Ellis and local government minister Rishi Sunak. But the numbers alone are not enough. We know how much of a role libraries…

To let the Bureau of Investigative Journalism know about someone who has died while sleeping rough, or is considered statutory homeless but in temporary accommodation, fill out the simple form at bit.ly/dyinghomeless. The Bureau advises speaking to local homelessness charities to see if they are aware of any deaths that may not have been counted. They also suggest checking with the coroner’s office or local council homeless outreach teams as well as friends, families, community members and outreach workers.…

The inspiration for The Bank Job project leads straight back to Wall Street. Occupy Wall Street, in fact – the movement that sharpened the world’s gaze on the American financial power centre in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse that drove banking giants Lehman Brothers to the wall. The financial hardship culminated in a two-month occupation of Zuccotti Park in 2011, where the suited-and-booted bankers who bore the brunt of the blame for the biting fallout were forced out. Instead, they were replaced with protesters sleeping in tents and donning Guy Fawkes masks (ironically, an intellectual property officially owned by megacorp Time Warner). The movement became the enduring image of the people’s rebellion against the big banks – but its legacy triggered a longer battle against debt. Started three…

CHILD TRUST FUNDS Do you have a child born between 2002 and 2012? Time to cash in, as some now-teenagers could have hundreds of pounds to their names. In 2005, the Labour government introduced the Child Trust Fund: a long-term savings account automatically set up for children (which would later be replaced by junior ISAs). The state contributed to these until the initiative ended, but many lay dormant and remain untouched today – meaning that some children could have up to £1,000 sitting in the bank. Visit the HMRC website to find out the provider and balance of your child’s fund. gov.uk/child-trust-funds FLIGHT DELAYS AND CANCELLATIONS FROM TRIPS LONG PAST A bad experience six years ago might mean more than a stressful memory. In fact, EU compensation law means you…

“There is very little comfort being an outsider in both worlds.” Writer-director-actor Desiree Akhavan did not want her new Channel 4 series, in which she plays the lead role opposite Maxine Peake, to be called The Bisexual. Nor, when she burst on to the scene with cult hit film Appropriate Behaviour was she delighted to be introduced with references to her sexuality at every turn. Yet the latter led, she says, quite directly to the former. “I have been living with this since 2014. The minute I premiered my first film I found myself always being introduced as ‘the bisexual film maker’ or ‘the bisexual New Yorker’ or ‘the bisexual Lena Dunham’. And for some reason, it made me feel very uncomfortable,” says Akhavan, when we meet at Channel 4…

READ MORE FROM... MALCOLM JACK VISIT BIGISSUE.COM AUTO GOONS Jason Derulo: Whatcha Say If there’s one thing that Jason Derulo loves more than singing his own name as a sort of narcissistic audio ident – and there’s a 57-minute-long YouTube compilation of clips of him doing that if you require proof – then it’s slathering his voice in Auto-Tune. Then singing his own name. Paris Hilton: Come Alive To be fair to Paris Hilton, in that same way that she has no other discernable talents beyond basic stuff like walking and talking and breathing air, nobody expected her to be able to sing either. Thus the hotel heiress’s short and extravagantly Auto-Tuned pop career, which was less high-end Hilton than it was motorway service Travelodge. U2:…