Innholdsfortegnelse for 07-10-19 i The Big Issue

Almost two years ago I began to investigate why people in their fifties and sixties, who had arrived in the UK as young children from the Commonwealth, were wrongly being classified as illegal immigrants. Some of them were forced out of the UK back to their birth countries, places they hadn’t visited for 50 years. Some were arrested and put in immigration detention centres, others were forced out of their homes and jobs or denied NHS treatment or benefits. It seemed shocking and mystifying. To begin with no one was really able to explain why this was happening. Investigating what was going wrong was a slow and painstaking process. Two years on, it’s clear that the government’s hostile environment policy was responsible. The Guardian’s coverage of the Home Office’s cruel…

UK total: 13,400 hectares planted Scotland planted 11,200 hectares of trees last year ahead of a 10,000 hectares per year target England planted 1,420 hectares below their target of 5,000 hectares per year Wales planted 520 hectares with a target of 2,000 hectares per year from 2020 Latest tree-planting stats: forestresearch.gov.uk/ tools-and-resources/statistics/statistics-by-topic/woodland-statistics/ Forestry Commission: Forestry Statistics 2018…

Many aspects of the world that physicists and cosmologists have uncovered and unravelled over the past century are amazing, interesting and useful to boot. From technologies like lasers and splitting atoms to the esoterica of black holes, dark matter, the expanding universe (and even other universes), physics has revealed the world to be governed by rules that scientists can understand, but that allow and describe wildly unfamiliar and even hard-to-believe phenomena. But there is another side: the strangeness of the world, and its depth, and subtlety, are not just ‘out there’. Reality has a nature that is so deeply familiar that we do not realise how mysterious it is underneath. For millennia-penetrating minds, discontent with familiar answers, have asked the core questions: ‘What is this?’ ‘Who am I?’ ‘What is…

A lot of bottle I have to admire your optimism [Editorial, September 23-29]. “They’re smart”, “Let them have the keys. Those kids will save us all.” I train at the academy at Forres. During the term time there is a lot of plastic bottles, tin cans and fast-food wrappers strewn around. I pick up some of the bottles and cans and put them in my recycling bin at home. When I was picking up a bottle, a passing woman said, “You’re fighting a losing battle.” I replied, “This is the generation that is going to save the planet.” On a more positive note, I’ve been buying The Big Issue for many years and the content and layout has improved massively over this time. I’d love to buy Big Issue Christmas…

Pretty much every week I listen to The Blue Nile’s Hats . There are few richer pleasures than driving at night through Glasgow listening to this record. If it’s raining, it’s a balm like few other things. It’s a record that has carried me through a lot. I think it made me want to marry a Scottish woman. If Scottish women can break a boy’s heart and make him write songs like that, I thought of Paul Buchanan, Blue Nile’s creative force, then they must be quite something. They are, of course. I mention this partly because the album is 30 years old next week, so I was set on a train of thought. Thirty years. Time bends, as Arthur Miller said. And we look back and look forward, and…

I was quite lost at 16. From the age of eight I had very unrealistically, the way many children do, decided I was going to play professional football for Manchester United. But it was clear that was not going to happen. I was very fit and committed and played for Salford Boys, but in big games I would go to pieces. I now realise the failure was useful. I wanted to be a footballer for my dad’s sake. Acting felt more of an original idea. And I think my parents recognised that the offbeat nature of the choice suited this offbeat child of theirs. I underperformed at school because of peer pressure. Our working-class community had this depressing way of holding each other back. Anyone who did well was seen…

01. China Planted: 2,407,149,283 Target: 3,871,695,491 02. India Planted: 2,159,416,120 Target: 5,368,287,802 03. Ethiopia Planted: 1,725,345,748 Target: 3,744,333,974 04. Pakistan Planted: 1,006,776,433 Target: 1,139,737,089 05. Mexico Planted: 789,305,937 Target: 794,454,883 06. Turkey Planted: 716,069,151 Target: 1,117,106,840 07. Peru Planted: 646,502,236 Target: 685,112,490 08. Nigeria Planted: 626,725,649 Target: 636,368,369 09. Kenya Planted: 534,425,973 Target: 650,918,707 10. USA Planted: 315,523,869 Target: 1,169,804,029 40. UK Planted: 14,448,892 Target: 2,019,985,277…

• Big Issue Invest is the social investment arm of The Big Issue. It extends The Big Issue’s mission by financing the growth of sustainable social enterprises and charities across the UK. • Big Issue Invest offers loans and investment from £20,000 to £3 million, and since 2005 we have invested in over 360 organisations, all of which have positively influenced the lives of people across the UK. • We currently manage or advise £200 million of social funds, including the UK Social Bond Fund, in partnership with Columbia Threadneedle, and the UK Equity Impact – Employment Opportunities Fund, in collaboration with Aberdeen Standard Investments. The capital raised by Big Issue Invest comes from mainly private sources and not from sales of the magazine, and Big Issue Invest pays any dividends generated by…

Thanks to the likes of the hugely successful reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race, the fabulous FX drama Pose and some eye-opening insider documentaries (search for Beautiful by Night and Beneath the Makeup), western audiences are becoming familiar with the nuances of the trans drag queen scene. A world once so foreign – previously treated as an unknowably exotic, tragic or comic marginal society – is now, more than ever, open for visitors. The battle for general acceptance has not been won – we’re as far from a consensus welcome as we are from picnicking on Mars. But the increasing embrace of LGBTQ stories, as diverse and complicated as those of the nuclear family, is getting us closer. With their (no longer ‘his’) characterful and colourful memoir Unicorn, Iraqi writer Amrou…

The country is fucked, this much we know. But Brexit isn’t the cause, it’s just the symptom. Blame David Cameron for calling the referendum, sure. Blame Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and all the other dickheads for using the whole thing as an opportunity for career development, fine. But blame all of them for something much worse than these fleeting acts of gutless vanity. Blame them for the political decision they made nine years ago to inflict austerity measures on ordinary communities to help pay for the crimes of banks and brokers. Systematic erosion of the state, the safety nets it provided to the vulnerable and the contributions it made to our collective futures, is what cultivated the anger, anxiety and divisions that brought about Brexit and all its toxic fallout.…

There’s echoes of Derry Girls in A Bump Along the Way, a funny, well-acted mother-and-daughter comedy that reverses the usual unexpected pregnancy storyline. It’s not straight-laced 16-year-old Allegra (Lola Petticrew) but her mum Pamela (Bronagh Gallagher) who gets up the duff while plastered on a night out in Derry for her 44th birthday. It’s a film that manages to be sweetly life-affirming while feeling true to mothers and daughters. A Bump Along the Way is in cinemas from October 11…

A hand up, not a handout... Our sellers BUY every copy of the magazine for £1.25 and sell it for £2.50. 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. Poverty is indiscriminate… That is why we provide ANYONE whose life is blighted by poverty with the opportunity to earn a LEGITIMATE income. The right to citizenship… The Big Issue Foundation, our charitable arm, helps sellers tackle social and financial exclusion. Prevention… Big Issue Invest offers backing and investments to social enterprises, charities and businesses which deliver social value to communities.…

Groups in Finland are crowdsourcing ideas for a ‘forgiveness’ emoji. But what else is missing from the emoji lexicon? @mattdawhit the Isle of Wight needs a hovercraft emoji please @WightHot A drum I’ve been banging on behalf of @HovertravelLtd for a while now! <hovercraft emoji> @YBreevaart67_63 would a George Michael emoji xxx @closetpolitics I often think I could do with a tumbleweed emoji @juancamus A white dove? Katie Moreton, Facebook Its not an emoji as such but the Roma/Romani flag isn’t included in the flags that you can choose from…

I tried an experiment the other day. I walked in a straight line through a station. And sure enough I collided with a man. We both desired to occupy the same space. I looked at him and he looked at me. He seemed irritated that I was where he should have been. And as I was experimenting and not truly entering into this spirit of seeking the same place at the same time I could reflect. “I’m sorry, I seemed to have occupied your space mistaking it for mine.” He said nothing but, indignant, he moved on. I gave up my experimentation because I did not want to get depressed about the human condition. I have always thought I was right, until proven wrong. Even then I normally struggle like…

What would you do if you were separated from your family, under hugely dangerous circumstances, for months at a time? You’d probably want to call them. That’s what Samuel Kellerhals and Alexandros Angelopoulos thought when they created Elpis Solar, a non-profit organisation getting solar-powered phone chargers, water-filtration systems and the chance to earn an income to those living in Greek and Rwandan refugee camps. The duo became friends when studying for degrees in environmental sciences at the University of Edinburgh. In 2015, Angelopoulos spent the summer in his native Greece at the height of the refugee crisis. He was horrified by the difficult conditions he witnessed people living in, but surprised by the one request they all seemed to share – a phone charger. “Many of them will have walked…

In these uncertain times there is one thing you can bank on – we need to plant more trees. ONE TRILLION of them, in fact. They play a huge role in absorbing the carbon emissions that threaten to destroy the planet as well as working wonders for biodiversity and preventing flooding. Planting that many trees makes it something of a growth market and with the increasing trends moving towards ethical investments, it’s time to ask: does investing in trees offer a viable financial return? A study released by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Crowther Lab – an authority on the subject started by star ecologist Thomas Crowther – has taken on the task of mapping out where they could be planted. Planting the required one trillion trees…

01 The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend The first of a superb eight-book series. I grew up with them, just about. Funny enough to make me laugh out loud in a full train carriage, which is rare! His frustrated loves, his expertise on the Norwegian leather industry, measuring his ‘thing’ and the chaos of a school coach trip – all brilliantly told. 02 The Broken Empire trilogy by Mark Lawrence Prince of Thorns was the first. Very dark fantasy, with a hugely damaged boy as the main character. So well written it made me want to kick my own computer in sheer envy. 03 Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman  I haven’t seen the recent TV series, but the book is somehow…

Where has Chris Morris been in our hour of need? After making his film debut with 2010’s Four Lions about a bunch of crap Sheffield Islamic terrorists, Morris went silent. As our politics and democracy have been ripped apart by expensively educated donkeys, what happened to the genius satirist behind The Day Today, Brass Eye and Nathan Barley? He’s been in America, it turns out, fastidiously researching another caustic War on Terror black comedy – “based on a hundred true stories” it says in the opening credits. It’s been known for years that the FBI’s sticky fingerprints are over virtually all the biggest domestic terror plots in America since 9/11. Typically, it goes down like this: an undercover agent or paid informant pretends to be a terrorist, befriends a target…

There exists somewhere on these islands at this time a large warehouse, presently being piled high with physical copies of albums from the likes of Ed Sheeran, Stereophonics and – if rumours are true – perhaps also a forthcoming new one by Coldplay. Your reaction to which may be “pass the flamethrower!”, and not unreasonably so. But hold fire. Because this is the music business like any other under-threat industry in the UK right now doing its best to prepare for a potential no-deal Brexit. Or at least, it’s one of the multinational conglomerates in the music industry doing its best to prepare. Warner Music to be specific, one of the “big three” major labels, which relies for its distribution on a firm based in Germany. “We’ve been working hard…

Topshop, Norwich Every day, 8am-3pm I was made redundant from a job where my accommodation was part of my salary. That was about eight years ago. I went on a bit of a jolly but eventually the money ran out and that’s when I realised, bugger, I haven’t managed to find a job. Then I ended up homeless. I was in a tent and I quite enjoyed it because for the first time in my life I had a bit of freedom. I could go where I wanted and it was quite liberating. I went from eating brambles and apples off trees to selling The Big Issue and after my first day going out and treating myself to a steak dinner. I took to it right away because I used…