Innholdsfortegnelse for 5/16/2022 i The Big Issue

Muse completed a triumphant return to live performance with an electrifying show to support The Big Issue in London last week (May 10). The gig, at Hammersmith Eventim Apollo, was opened by fellow rock veterans Razorlight as part of The Big Issue’s 30th anniversary celebrations, with all funds raised going to The Big Issue. It was the second of two gigs by Muse at the venue, with the first, on May 9, in support of charities Medécins Sans Frontières and War Child. Big Issue vendors Dave Martin, John Gregg and George Anderson, who sold a special commemorative Big Issue edition at the show, also enjoyed a moment in the spotlight. They were welcomed onstage and introduced to the 5,000 fans.…

The government announced a new wave of anti-protest measures at last week’s Queen’s Speech and the plans could mean protesters like the ‘Grannies for the Future’ who took action at a council meeting would face prison. Ministers have vowed to take action against “locking on” – a tactic used by protest groups Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil as well as Giovanna Lewis and Annie Webster, two pensioners who attempted to glue themselves to a desk at April’s Dorset Council meeting. The climate activists, labelled as “anarchists” by council leader Spencer Flower, could be jailed for up to a year if the government’s Public Order Bill goes through. “Serious disruption prevention orders”, dubbed protest ASBOs, are also back. If much of this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Most of…

I was really into Irish dancing when I was a teenager. I’m one of four girls, and my mum got us into dancing. I was pretty good at it. I danced competitively and travelled a good bit with it, so my whole social scene was built around that. It was my real passion. Most people in my age group would have been nudged into Irish dancing classes in one way or another – in the local hall or at school – it was pretty compulsory in the 1980s. I was a lively kid, so this was an outlet for me to play and hang out with loads of other little mad eggs. I forget how much I love dancing until I let loose at a wedding – I really need…

1 Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas One of the first books I read cover to cover at university. The winner of the first Wolfson Prize, it salvaged thousands of details about English popular belief and arranged them into a vivid worldview we had lost. It changed my life. 2 Berlin, the Downfall: 1945 by Antony Beevor A masterly account of the ‘twilight of the gods’ annihilation that Hitler wished for himself and his people. Beevor soars elegantly between macro and micro, from generals poring over campaign maps to the plight of civilians cowering in the rubble. 3 The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis Before the Netflix series came Walter Nevis’ novel about chess wizard Beth Harmon, which stokes drama and emotion with a…

Stuart Murdoch – lead singer of Belle and Sebastian – arrives a few minutes late for our rendezvous at Mono, a vegan cafe in the edgiest part of Glasgow city centre; but he has an excellent excuse. “I set out on my scooter,” he explains, “but after a few streets, I realised I wouldn’t make it in time, so I went back for my bike.” We are here to talk about the band’s new album, A Bit of Previous, which was released in early May. Murdoch is emphatic that – while the album was produced during the pandemic – it is not a response to it. Indeed, musically, it is a poppy antidote to the pervasive gloom. From the synth-laden borderline Erasure energy of Talk To Me Talk to Me…

Ernest Rutherford – the ‘father of nuclear physics’ – was a tall, bolshie New Zealander with a voice so loud that he’d disrupt electrical equipment in the lab in Cambridge. His students and staff were famous for concocting physics experiments out of tin cans and sealing wax, adding a few wires or magnets and making major breakthroughs. They would sit for many hours staring down a microscope, counting little flashes of light on a screen in the dark. Rutherford knew how hard this was. His students would later recall hearing him singing songs at the top of his lungs as he jovially surveyed his labs. Rutherford intuitively understood something important about how to do difficult, groundbreaking, long-term work: we need to work together. In the early 20th century, teams of…

KYLE ACADEMY, SOUTH AYRSHIRE Caring Cafe In 2018 a small group of S2 girls began a Young Entrepreneurs course organised through South Ayrshire Council. After training, they put together a viable business plan and decided that rather than just making something and selling it, they wanted to provide a useful service to the school and community. The idea of a ‘Caring Cafe’ was born – a cafe where anyone would find a warm welcome, a cuppa and a friendly face to chat to. They also wanted to show we cared for the producers and farmers in the developing world, by using Fairtrade tea, coffee, hot chocolate and sugar. But these days, we are not just about trade justice. We are about climate justice too. We want people to understand how…

Emma Lennox, teacher at St Bernard’s Primary School, Glasgow Ms Lennox discusses St Bernard’s social enterprise and its recent popularity Tell us a bit about the social enterprise activity at St Bernard’s… A group of P6 children came up with the idea of selling reusable sanitiser bottles known as Santatisers. We used a teacher’s personal Cricut machine to do that. We made lots of money and with the profit bought our own Cricut machine to make Santatiser bottles. We expanded by making and selling personalised reusable water bottles. Why did the pupils choose to focus on this in particular? The children were really concerned with the amount of plastic waste. Through market research we noticed a lot of children in school were still using single-use water bottles. They researched charities…

There are “significant concerns” that stretched local authority services will not be able to cope with an influx of refugees from Ukraine presenting to councils as homeless, MPs have warned. Clive Betts, chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, made the admission in a letter to refugees minister Lord Harrington, following reports that people from Ukraine who have arrived in the UK are now ending up without a home. Refugees have been able to come to the UK since the conflict broke in February if they have family members in the UK and if they have a willing sponsor through the Ukraine Family Scheme and the Homes for Ukraine Scheme respectively. But some refugees have reported to councils after falling out with hosts or finding family members cannot…

The actress told us dating isn’t a concept in France [‘We all believe in love stories’, May 2], sparking a debate on Reddit about global romancing customs She’s right. There is no “base” progression, or dates. Basically, since people are in a mixed environment (in soirées etc), all the filtering usually done in first and second dates is done while still hanging out in a group. Once you’re having a one-on-one rendez-vous, unless you screw up bad, it means a green light to go on to the next level. And since France is more like a soccer country, you score or you don’t. And sometimes, it happens that you end up with a meeting of three, with the third person not initially aware that they are the unwanted extra. This…

The cost of living crisis is having a “catastrophic” impact on families across the UK, experts have said, as nearly one in five households with children struggled to put food on the table in April. More than seven million adults had difficulty finding the money to feed themselves, according to new research from The Food Foundation, and 2.4 million went a day without food as incomes fail to keep pace with rising taxes, food prices and energy bills. “The situation is rapidly turning from an economic crisis to a health crisis,” said Anna Taylor, executive director of The Food Foundation. “Foodbanks cannot possibly be expected to solve this. The government needs to realise the boat is sinking for many families and it needs to be fixed. Bailing out with emergency…

The new owners asked me why I thought the river had dried up. I suggested knocking down so much jungle was the reason Red Road Green is the story of Idenea, a young Brazilian woman who travels with her family into the Amazon rainforest on a government promise that they would lead a better life. I was inspired to write her story by my own experience as a rancher in the Amazon. I’d always dreamed of owning a ranch. Cowboy stories and riding my horse while imagining a herd of cattle in front of me were probably the reason. My wife was Brazilian, so the idea of ranching in Brazil rather than Australia made sense. After a couple of years in Rio learning the country, we made guiding rules; be…

As I head towards my sixth decade as the nation’s most glamorous Third Division TV reviewer (B&M Saturday league), bits have started to fall off everywhere. And just as I’m failing to address my slow physical decline by eating Mr Kipling Viennese Whirls and walking 13 steps a day, I’m also failing to address my home address, which seems to be crumbling at a similar rate as I am. Plaster flakes off, paintwork goes yellow and doors creak at the same spooky timbre as my knees. It’s obviously taking on my existential angst too, because the other day the house number started sadly peeling off the front door, like the false eyelash of a depressed starlet. If we take the Jungian metaphor of the house as a symbol of the…

There are people who seem happy on the outside, but they have their own problems. You get to understand people better working as a vendor ALINA BABOI, 25 I’ve been selling The Big Issue in Stratford-upon-Avon for about seven years. I started because it was a very easy way to start earning a living. When I had my first child and didn’t really have someone I could always rely on to stay at home, selling The Big Issue was really flexible. There are days when I can come to work and days when I can’t. I was selling the magazine when I was pregnant. I had a bench near me so whenever I got tired I could sit down and my customers would bring me juice or some fruit over,…

With the support of accountancy firm Mazars, this year the Social Enterprise Academy has been able to offer an innovative financial education pilot for 12 schools across North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire and Glasgow. The focus of the programme is to allow young people to create a social enterprise that tackles issues they care about while learning about financial education in a hands-on way. Participants had the chance to work closely with a social entrepreneur from a financial education background and delve into the financial skills they need to operate a social enterprise, while learning about budgeting, profit and loss, and costs. Financial management is an integral part of running a social enterprise, and it’s really exciting that the young people involved now have the opportunity to explore fundamental financial concepts…

1. The remarkable rise of Ncuti Gatwa from sofa surfing and homelessness to Doctor Who 2. Boris Johnson scraps plan to let workers keep tips despite admitting minimum wage isn’t enough to live on 3. Life on Mars sequel has “a lot of travelling in time and car chases”, John Simm reveals 4. Mike Scott of the Waterboys: “Taylor Swift made me cry” 5. Martin Lewis: “The link between money problems and mental health problems is just so strong”…

‘Sofa surfing is tough. No matter how nice your friends are there is a limit’ There was an outbreak of joy last week when it was announced that Ncuti Gatwa, star of Netflix hit Sex Education and friend of The Big Issue, would be the new Doctor. The Rwandan-born actor (he says he’s proudly a Rwandan-Scotsman) moved to Scotland with his family as a refugee, fleeing Rwanda’s brutal civil war in 1994. Now 29, he grew up in Dunfermline and Edinburgh, trained at the prestigious Royal Conservatoire in Glasgow, and moved to London aged 21 – where he took temp jobs as he worked to establish himself in the theatre. But before he found fame in Sex Education , Gatwa was homeless. He made the revelation while speaking to The…

In an era when we’ve never been more connected we are somehow lonelier than ever Jennifer Egan never stops moving. She slips constantly between viewpoints and characters and tenses. Individual chapters are treated as opportunities for experiment and fun – perhaps delivered in the form of a series of emails or in text speak or as a PowerPoint display or, at one point in The Candy House , her new novel, as a series of gnomic, single-sentence instructions to a young female spy as she carries out her mission. Egan’s books move through time and back again, her characters making use of existing technology and smart tech of the near future. She is like a hyperactive optometrist, constantly testing the reader “how about this?... and now this?... and what about…

Everyone already seems to have scrolled past Astroworld. Profit and celebrity always speak louder than tragedy On and just after the night of November 5, 2021, 10 people between nine and 27 years of age died because of a crowd crush at US rapper Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas. Twenty-five people were hospitalised, and more than 300 were treated for injuries on site. As the nightmare unfolded, Scott played on to the end of his set, encouraging his fans to stage dive, make the ground shake and stick their middle fingers in the air, even as ambulances crept through the dense sea of humanity extracting lifeless young bodies from the fray. Less than six months later in late April 2022, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival took…

“We are working towards our exciting goal of a social enterprise in every school in Scotland by 2024” It is now a year since we last worked with The Big Issue magazine for a Social Enterprise Academy schools special edition. And when we reflect on this past year, we can’t help but be taken aback by the amazing activity happening in social enterprises in schools during these challenging times. The young people we work with are full of incredible, world-changing ideas. Their sheer resilience as they have adapted to the ever-changing conditions in which they operate their social enterprises has been remarkable. A highlight was our Global Meet Up, where young people around the world connected to share their social enterprise experiences. Watching them collaborate and share their ideas was…

Emma Dunne, teacher at St Denis’ Primary School, Glasgow Ms Dunne talks us through the Team TALENT social enterprise and the positive impact it has had on the young people involved Tell us about the social enterprise activity at St Denis’ Primary… Our school’s social enterprise is called Team TALENT, which stands for ‘Talk About Love, End Negative Thoughts’. The children came up with the idea to sell stress balls and other mindfulness products such as worry jars, comic books, bookmarks and CDs. This year we’ve decided to make it a free service with our lunchtime club, giving the children an opportunity to come together and do something fun at lunchtime. What has it been like for the young people running a social enterprise during the pandemic? It was challenging.…