Innholdsfortegnelse for 2/22/2021 i The Big Issue

letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk WHAT’S GETTING YOU THROUGH LOCKDOWN? LET US KNOW WHAT BRINGS A LITTLE BRIGHTNESS TO YOUR LIFE SO WE CAN SHARE YOUR TOP TIPS! Just read your “feelgood factor” pages in your issue [February 8]. Samantha Tofield explained that her husband came across Bob Ross tutorials on YouTube. For those who have not got access to the internet, his tutorials also appear on BBC Four on Monday-Thursday between 7.30pm and 8pm. It is a must for my partner and me. It is fascinating to learn the techniques but also no music background. Hope it will bring peace, joy and comfort to others. Annick Alton, email Working in my local building society has been my saving grace. Chatting with more vulnerable members of my community brings a little bit…

Running was always my release. By 16, I was already into athletics. But I wasn’t running well because I was doing what teenagers do – messing around and not wanting to listen to other people. I used to have to bike three miles to school because there wasn’t a bus, then biked to training then biked home. That was my life. But the mid-80s was an exciting time to want to be a runner when Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett ruled the world of middle distance running. If I was at school now, I’d probably be classed as dyslexic. The way they taught I just couldn’t compute. I wasn’t reading or writing properly, with maths nothing went in my head. I wasn’t academic whatsoever. I did my bronze medallion, athletics,…

The Thin Places in the title of Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s intense memoir-cum-nature book are “places where a veil is lifted away and light streams in”. They are pools of stillness in a “broken, burning and bleeding world”. They are remote havens where the author has felt “hope like the beating of moth wings on [her] skin”. The author grew up in Derry – or Londonderry – a town whose very name is a statement of religious affiliation. But, the product of a mixed marriage – a Catholic mother, a Protestant father – she was neither one thing or the other. In 1995, her father left home and the family were petrol-bombed out of their Protestant estate. But they were no more welcome on the Catholic estate they fled to. Then…

A growing number of cities, towns and councils have begun vaccinating people experiencing homelessness. They join trailblazers Liverpool, Oldham, and Redbridge in protecting the most vulnerable from Covid-19. The Big Issue has been pushing hard for a more comprehensive rollout of the jab for people who are rough sleeping or in temporary accommodation, many of whom have health problems and are at higher risk of the virus. Now, GPs in Birmingham, Manchester, Wolverhampton, and the London boroughs of Westminster, Kensington, Hammersmith, Brent, Ealing, Hounslow, Harrow and Hillingdon have started administering jabs to protect rough sleepers. But Homeless Link chief executive Rick Henderson warned of a “postcode lottery” in the local authorities including homeless people in their vaccine rollout plans. “The consequences of inconsistent practice could be serious, possibly leading to…

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 £830,000 of financial assistance to make up for lost sales. As the only certainty is more uncertainty, we urgently need your help to make sure…

Unemployment in the UK hit five per cent in November, meaning more than 1.7 million people are out of work. RORA is fighting to help those people back into jobs – and the country’s first citizens’ climate jury thinks a green jobs drive is the way to do that. Helping disadvantaged young people into jobs that will protect the planet must be a priority in the UK’s journey to net-zero emissions, they added. The government should create scholarships inspired by naturalist David Attenborough to train people in low-carbon industries like renewable energy and public transport, the group of 23 jurors recommended, propelling the UK forward in its climate effort and ensuring generations to come will benefit from reliable work. The panel, selected from 4,000 people across the Tees Valley and…

Smoke and Fumes: The Climate Change Cover-Up (dir: Johan von Mirbach) “For me, this is the biggest scandal in human history.” Any documentary featuring these words, spoken by a high-ranking environmental lawyer in Washington, demands our attention. And this vital film exposes six decades of climate change cover-up, revealing how huge corporations funded campaigns and scientific studies tasked with talking down the climate emergency. Since 1957 companies such as Exxon and Shell have known that burning fossil fuels sparks climate change. As well as suppressing this information, they actively prepared for a warmer world – building oil rigs to withstand rising sea levels and Arctic pipelines to withstand melting permafrost. Taking the story from the 1950s right up to the Trump presidency, this film exposes why climate change denial remains…

Months of polar darkness. Disease slowly eating men from within while predators stalked them in snow and ice. Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World tells the story of sailors stranded for the winter more than 400 years ago on Nova Zembla, an archipelago in the frigid sea above what is today Siberia. With William Barents as navigator, the Dutch sent an expedition north each year from 1594 to 1596. Their mission: discover a northeastern passage over Europe and Asia that could serve as a trade route to China. On the first voyage, a scouting run, the sailors saw their first polar bear and imagined they might tame it and carry it back to Amsterdam. It was a short-lived dream. That expedition identified promising routes both north and south…

‘Watching Doctor Who, I used to hide behind the couch when I came on’ A recommended prescription at this time is to listen to qualified medical professionals only when it comes to Covid. Sylvester McCoy was the Seventh Doctor, which is close enough. The 77-year-old’s bonhomie is certainly infectious, whether he’s talking about lockdown, politics, TV, travel or offering words of wisdom for lockdown. The Big Issue: How are you? Sylvester McCoy: I’m still alive! Where have you spent lockdown? I spent part of the time in France. I’ve got a wee... it’s not a chateau, neither is it a shithole, it’s in between. I went across there at the beginning of March for two weeks and came back four months later. So you’re one of the few people who…

From a defiled giant pink My Little Pony (Salome) and explicit MySpace messages (Two Boys) to nudity and new music (Salome again; The Mask of Orpheus etc), English National Opera (ENO) has always taken creative risks. Some have worked, some have not – and many have divided opinion. Productions have taken place amid financial woes, in-fighting and industry squabbles. This has sometimes meant that ENO’s artistic reputation has been overshadowed by its fancier neighbour, the Royal Opera House. But over the past year, the imaginative rule-breaking that lies at the heart of ENO has enabled the organisation to produce a portfolio of work that no other arts collective has managed during the same time scale. During the first wave of the pandemic, the ENO turned its costume department over to…

STEVE DIXON, 52 USUAL PITCH: Durham city centre I started off with The Big Issue at the beginning in 1991. I’d been homeless for two or three weeks and eventually I found myself in a hostel in Newcastle. One day this lad in the hostel emptied his pockets and had loads of money. When I asked him how he got it he says, oh, The Big Issue. So I went straight down there! I got a load of magazines and went into Newcastle city centre. My mate stood on the other side of the street and if anyone went near me he’d shout, don’t buy it off him – come over to me! We would share everything, it was fun. Before that I’d sold programmes outside St James’s Park so…

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More than 16 million people have received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine in the UK According to official figures, 4,266 people are estimated to be sleeping rough in England on a 'typical' night According to Homeless Link, 14 local authorities have begun vaccinating people with no home, including Liverpool, Oldham, and Redbridge 800,000 more patients have been offered a priority vaccine by their GP, but there are fears rough sleepers could slip through the net Research from Canada found people sleeping rough were 5 times more likely to die from Covid…

It seems that my borrowing of the Welsh Well-being of Future Generations Act so as to pass a UK-wide version through Parliament is not the first time that Welsh things have moved eastward. Of course there are many other Welsh initiatives and physical products that have made the eastward journey, possibly the tariff on single-use plastic bags being one of the most spectacular. But did you know, because I didn’t, that much of Stonehenge started off as a Welsh circle in the Preseli Hills, Pembrokeshire 5,000 years ago? I found out all about this last week when I watched a gripping documentary on BBC Two about the mammoth task of moving it eastward, and the background to the forensics of finding this out. This is the kind of TV I…

Why don’t we value services – and those delivering them? The political mantra is build back better. The basic premise that we’re going to exit Covid into a new age of skilled manufacturing jobs presumed to return from China. A simple and superficially appealing prospect. Sadly, as with too much of modern politics and economics, it’s far too simple to be realistic, and distracting from real issues around the global economy and future of work. Even if there was ever a golden age of mass manufacturing jobs there won’t be a second. Not because of Brexit, or consumer goods made in China, but because production is increasingly automated. That’s why manufactured products are now so affordable. We see the same pattern in the US and across Europe, the share of…

01 Tilly’s Kitchen Takeover by Matilda Ramsay The great thing about this cookbook is that it’s written by, and for, a child. Matilda Ramsay (inspired by her father, Gordon) offers kid-friendly, healthy recipes with such fully explained step-by-steps and patient preparation tips that a child needs little overseeing. The recipes are delicious too! 02 Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak If you want kids to play creatively, develop their imaginations, and conjure up their own magical worlds, this beautiful picture book is a great place to start. It can also help children to cope with feelings of helplessness and anger. 03 Wood by Andy Goldsworthy Art isn’t just about daubing a paintbrush. Andy Goldsworthy’s book will get kids making art with a whole host of found, natural materials.…

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. What movie connection do the singers Tom Jones, Tina Turner and Gladys Knight have? 2. Which legendary band have had minor UK hit singles with the songs Paying The Price Of Love, Jumbo and My World? 3. What does USB stand for? 4. Alopecia causes what to be lost from the body? 5. When Hibernian won the Scottish Cup in 2016, how many years had elapsed since their previous triumph in the tournament? 6. What is the largest moon of Saturn called? 7. Ascorbic acid is a form of which vitamin? 8. What is the capital of Kosovo? 9. Which rock legend uses the alias…