Innholdsfortegnelse for 1/25/2021 i The Big Issue

“It’s easy to forget how much every pound counts to someone who doesn’t have any other access to money.” Yorkshire resident Morgan, 22, is one of six million people set to lose £20 a week – £1,040 per year – if the temporary increase to Universal Credit payments are cut in April. And that is what will happen, unless the government changes its plans. After months of campaigning by anti-poverty experts, Labour forced a non-binding Commons vote to keep the “lifeline” £20 weekly Universal Credit increase. Parliament voted that the increase should be made permanent, with Conservatives abstaining – bar six Tory MPs who defied the party line and backed the motion. But that doesn’t mean the government will bring it into law. Morgan lives in housing supported by youth…

It would have been useful to get some warnings about the weeping. When those of us (men, I mean) reach a certain age, I now understand there is a latent trigger that is pressed. And after it’s gone, tears come easily; frequently they flood, ridiculously. Obviously, there are good times to well up – the success of your children growing and staking their independence as they find their own way in the world; your dog greeting you after it gets a post-operation neck-cone off; a curled goal to the top corner, from outside the box; a piece of great music that lodges deep within you. The quality control is a little off, though. Why get red-eyed and sniffy when there’s a positive resolution in Grand Designs (‘the windows fit –…

WATCHING: Sense and Sensibility, the Ang Lee film with Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson READING: The Spark that Lit the Revolution: Lenin in London and the Politics that Changed the World by Robert Henderson LISTENING TO: Dmitri Shostakovich’s Third Symphony (‘May Day’) in E-flat major PROMOTING Wellbeing Week, from January 25-28, when MPs are invited to attend a five-minute Zoom drop-in session with young ambassadors of the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill. Visit bigissue.com/today-for-tomorrow/ and read more on page 22.…

This week marks The Big Issue’s ‘Wellbeing Week’: January 25-28. It follows a time in January when the nation’s wellbeing is at its annual low. We have marked ‘Wellbeing Week’ with a series of virtual events for MPs to listen to young people aged 15 to 25, about their concerns for the future and for future generations. These young people are ambassadors of Big Issue founder Lord Bird’s and Green MP Caroline Lucas’s Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill. This is a real turning point in our #todayfortomorrow campaign where we have brought MPs together with young people, so that they have the opportunity to engage with them about the bill, which is currently making its way through Parliament, and crucially, why the bill is so important to them. We have…

01 Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) Orwell’s funniest novel is a spiky, semi-autobiographical satire of the London literary scene and thwarted ambition. Gordon Comstock, an unsuccessful poet terrified of sliding into bourgeois conformity, is a hilarious misanthrope and forerunner of the post-war Angry Young Men. 02 Homage to Catalonia (1938) It sold very few copies at the time but Orwell’s account of his life-changing six months as a socialist militiaman in the Spanish Civil War has become a classic, with vivid descriptions of life on the front, his brush with death and his hair-raising escape from Stalinist persecution. 03 Coming Up for Air (1939) The story of commuter George Bowling’s midlife crisis combines Orwell’s nostalgia for the rural Edwardian England of his youth with his anxieties about the coming war,…

In an alternate universe, Róisín Walters would be in the middle of a busy patch of work, spending the early weeks of January fine-tuning the logistics of her hectic schedule for the year ahead. In January 2019, her career took her from Liverpool and the salaried position of Associate Principal Second Violin of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, to London, the Britten Sinfonia, and the Assistant Concertmaster seat. Her work is varied. Alongside her freelance orchestral job, she usually works almost every day of the week, playing up to four weekly concerts and travelling across the country to fit in gigs with UK’s top orchestras whenever possible . Fast-forward to 2020 and Walters found her work stopped by the pandemic, as concert halls closed their doors for the foreseeable. Whereas…

A hand up... Our sellers BUY the magazine for £1.50 and sell it on for £3, keeping the difference. Not a handout… Vendors earn a legitimate income, and gain valuable social and employability skills. With your support now, we can continue to help them now and in the future. The right to citizenship… The Big Issue Foundation, our charitable arm, helps sellers to 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.…

Universal Credit was introduced by the coalition government in 2013, designed to streamline the benefits system. Instead of a patchwork of means-tested benefits like housing benefit and income-based Job Seeker’s Allowance, it wrapped them up into one monthly payment, currently claimed by around six million people. It is paid to those on low incomes, both in and out of work. People receiving benefits have been gradually migrated on to the UC system since its introduction. The government aims to have everyone on the newer system by 2024.…

VENDORS Across the country vendors are prevented from working on their pitches by the national lockdown. Our staff is working closely with each vendor to make sure there is extra support to make up for lost earnings. We also understand that apart from reduced income, the lack of social interaction will cause a lot of distress. If you would like to pass a message on to your local vendor please email editorial@bigissue.com and we’ll do our best to make sure they know they still have your support. SUBSCRIPTIONS AND SHOPS Since the first national lockdown in March, we have supported our vendors with more than £700,000 of financial assistance to make up for lost sales. As the only certainty is more uncertainty, we urgently need your help to make sure…

When I was nine years old a television crew came to my school. They wanted to take a small group of children from my class to the Science Museum and film them for a schools programme. It was incredibly exciting and every child wanted to be picked. There were not many non-white children in my school and when I saw, who I now presume was the researcher, talking to Vimal Shah I knew the game was up for me. Even at that young age I instinctively knew they were not going to pick more than one ‘brown kid’ to be part of the group they selected. For a week I was jealous of Vimal Shah and upset that the production crew had picked him to go to the Science Museum.…

Governments across the globe are adapting to the Covid challenge in different ways and with different degrees of success. Governance is key to successful adaptation. Countries’ responses have differed in both the quantity and the quality of actions taken. Many governments have committed colossal sums with a ‘whatever it takes’ mentality. But if there is one thing we learned from the 2008 financial crisis, it is that injecting trillions into the economy will have little effect if the structures they are spent on are weak. We cannot risk that happening again. Can we produce enough PPE for frontline workers? Enough ventilators for patients in intensive care units? A vaccine to help build immunity? Can we protect people who have lost their jobs so they have the basic right to a…

This week we have two wonderful pieces of speculative fiction that draw on elements of African futurism to create near-futures that are shifted from the real world in a number of ways, both minor and profound. First up is Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor. The Nigerian-American author is one of the leading lights of fantasy and science-fiction for both adults and children, most famous for her superb Binti trilogy. Remote Control is a standalone novel but shares some DNA with that trilogy, featuring a teenage girl protagonist with special powers, and demonstrating Okorafor’s knack for complex world-building with the lightest of touches. It’s a testament to the author’s skill that she can create a nuanced and profound science-fiction story in just 160 pages, one that is as rich as books…

1. Now that Wham!’s Last Christmas has finally topped the UK singles chart, what is now the best-selling song not to make the top slot based on physical sales only? 2. Before the Brexit vote in 2016, what year did the previous UK referendum on whether the UK should stay in Europe take place? 3. Which Oscar-winning actor is the sister of fellow Academy Award winner Warren Beatty? 4. What is a group of jellyfish called? 5. In which year was the English Premier League founded? 6. Alberta is a province of which country? 7. What is the much-delayed new ‘crossrail’ train line set to open in 2022 in London called? 8. L Ron Hubbard founded which organisation? 9. What is the first name of Boris Johnson’s son who was…

It is about this time 30 years ago that I was receiving annoying messages from Gordon Roddick of The Body Shop to meet and talk about a possible street paper. Gordon the year before had bought a copy of a street paper call Street News in New York and was impressed with the homeless vendor’s story. About selling the paper to make money so that he didn’t get into trouble. I was irritated because I much preferred the said Mr Roddick to help me establish a publishing house where I could publish my own books that I couldn’t get published otherwise. Yet he kept coming back to this passion for a street paper. Which irritated me no end because it meant me having to return to thinking about homelessness and…

My accent was always one country behind where I was living. I was born in Wales, moved to Ireland, to England and then to Scotland so it was always trying to catch up. As a kid, you always feel like an outsider and I guess I was lonely at school. Maybe that is why I was such a dreamer. I loved music but was not the least bit musical, loved art and photography but was not the least bit artistic. I was the kid who hoped to run away and join an Andy Warhol-type scene but just didn’t have any of the skills required, except for an adventurous spirit. I would go back to my younger self and tell her you will be loved. Because at that point I was…

It’s amazing how oǼten the initial spark for doing or making something is some small, seemingly insignificant, issue that has always annoyed you. In the case of A Circle of Five it is that snapshot portrayal of the ‘Windrush Generation’ in popular media. Is there anyone on the planet who has not seen that short newsreel clip of black men and women cautiously walking down the gangplank of the MV Empire Windrush the day after it arrived at Tilbury Dock in June 1948. According to the newsreel commentary at the time: “They are coming from our British Colonies in the West Indies to help rebuild the mother country.” This provides such a wealth of information that for all practical purposes they could well have materialised out of nowhere, pausing only…

During those morose moments of lockdown and the uncertain in-between times, there have been certain people who have thrown lifebelts with simple but brilliant bursts of creativity and absurdity. Alistair Green has produced hundreds of immaculately observed straight-to-phone-camera monologues, recreating the overly energetic dances at discos, alienated mothers at Christmas and anti-lockdown protesters getting tangled in their slogans. Sometimes in two minutes he manages to create an entire theatrical arc, from hope and humour to melancholy and broken dreams. His recreation of the agony of being in the front row of a comedy club is a masterpiece. Joz Norris’s YouTube channel is further into the absurd even though it is rooted in the reality of someone desperate to make content but tormented with doubt. A good place to start is…