Innholdsfortegnelse for 13-07-20 i The Big Issue

VENDORS: Not all vendors are returning at once this month. Health issues mean some are shielding and areas of the country may be subject to localised lockdown restrictions. We will continue to support vendors who need help until they can start selling again. PPE: Safety is key, we do not want to risk any vendor or customer’s health. So we are providing ‘Welcome Back Packs’ for each vendor that include masks, gloves, sanitiser and wipes. Vendors will also be given waterproof bags to safely store magazines. PITCHES: Some pitches may have moved, depending on local safety measures and circumstances. A large number of vendors will now be offering contactless payment, but they will all continue to accept cash – there is no indication that handling cash or magazines will transmit…

Education bodies are putting pressure on the government to fight falling language learning, something they say will be key to the UK’s economic recovery from Covid-19. The British Academy, the British Council, Universities UK and the Association of School and College Leaders say their proposals could remove barriers to language learning for disadvantaged people, after the past decade saw the number of undergraduates in modern languages courses fall by more than half. They said languages are vital for effective international relations and commercial links – with eyes on the end of the transitional Brexit period looming at the end of the year – and said it boosts brain power and social cohesion within communities. The initiative is the first of its kind in a generation. It includes the creation of…

The National Skills Agency is very pleased to be part of RORA, together we can beat the recession and give everyone a better life! Spencer Mehlman, The National Skills Agency MD Anything that tackles the inter-related scourges of unemployment, homelessness, and chronic inequality is something that we support and agree profoundly with. Most of the big problems in the world are derivative from either climate change or inequality of one sort or another. In that context we strongly agree with the goals of RORA and support the initiative. Alan Jope, Unilever CEO We want to end homelessness for good. So we’re pleased to be working with The Big Issue to build the case for the next generation of social housing. Decades of failure to build the social homes we need…

We are not living in Ordinary Tory times. In Ordinary Tory (OT) times, when faced with a financial crisis, OTs pull up the drawbridge of governmental support and hope against hope that the minions survive. But these Extraordinary Tory (ET) times involve a full embrace. A throwing of arms around as many people as possible. Perhaps not the full rescue job, but going further down that road than Tories, Labourites and Liberalites have ever been. ETs seem unprecedented in their attempts at maintaining the social glue. Though still living in a vastly uneven social terrain, a flat playing field for some, a rocky road for others, the ETs have astonished us all. In short: expecting OTs, we are dazed and confused by the ETs. No, that’s a lie. The ETs…

When I was 16 I was in love with football. That was my whole life. I loved the outdoors; the fishing and the shooting and the woods and the rivers. But paramount was always football. You’d never, ever, see me without a football. When I was in a classroom I’d just be looking out the window at the playground, working out who would play against who at break time. That’s all I’d look forward to. I left school at 15 and I went straight into working on the building site with my dad. I’d been signed to Watford as a schoolboy. There were about 15 of us who’d been taken on and it was a great honour. I remember the headmaster getting me up at assembly and saying congratulations. So…

I’m a person who likes to collect things and so I got the idea to swap different Bob books around the world. In 2015 James and Bob did their first ever German book signing in Cologne. I got another flash idea – why not have a small James and Bob duo to show him? I’m NOT talented with wool but my best friend’s lovely mother is unbelievable! Together we looked for characteristics – with a scarf, Bob on the shoulder of James and a guitar. Since that day the pair are normally always with me. I’m sure that people in my everyday life laugh at this 48-year-old woman who plays with dolls, but I do it because I’m a storyteller who likes to tell people about this lovely man and…

I come from a family who relish a blank page. Father, brother, cousins, grandparents, great-grandparents, writers all. The tap tapping of a typewriter was a constant background noise during my childhood. A couple of years ago I started to receive emails relating to my mother, the journalist Anne Scott-James. They came from far afield, writers who had discovered her name and wanted to know more about her. I thought that if anyone should offer up an opinion then surely it should be me. After all, I had spent a lifetime studying the subject. Anne forged a path for women journalists, leaving Oxford University after only two years to look for work. She was very clever, very tall and a beauty. The best way to understand Anne is to read her…

With UK cinemas now (cautiously) starting to open their doors, and major chains set to be up and running by the end of the month, the next stage for the movie industry is to give us something to actually watch on the newly reopened big screens. It’s little secret that the big blockbuster movies we were expecting to be watching this summer have pretty much fled for the time being. Films such as Fast & Furious 9, Minions 2, Ghostbusters: Afterlife and even the People Just Do Nothing movie have been rescheduled for 2021. Some films have encountered shorter delays, with Wonder Woman 84 now arriving in October and Top Gun: Maverick at Christmas. But only Tenet, Mulan and Bill & Ted Face The Music are due in cinemas before…

Last weekend I finished the The Last of Us Part II (TLOU2), allowing me to finally break free of my spoiler-blocking bubble to dive into the discourse surrounding the controversial game. I found a toxic environment that even the harrowing, violent game world would struggle to match. If one of the year’s biggest media releases has passed you by during lockdown, let me bring you up to speed. TLOU2 is the sequel to the seminal 2013 video game that pushed the envelope for storytelling in the burgeoning medium. Set in a post-apocalyptic world hit by a pandemic (sound familiar?) based on the Cordyceps fungus, you follow the story of Joel and Ellie – a smuggler and a girl who may be immune to the infection – as they travel across…

NEED HELP? Why not get together with other Big Issue readers @BigIssue; @bigissueuk; facebook.com/bigissueuk Get the answers in next week's mag! Good luck 1. What was the first song on the first Now That’s What I call Music compilation in 1983? 2. Which planet in the solar system has the most gravity? 3. In which year did the UK’s first McDonald’s restaurant open? 4. How many sides does a nonagon have? 5. Which British director has made the films Following , Memento and The Prestige? 6. Which European country (technically) shares a border with Brazil? 7. Which famous Scot was born in Dumfries in 1759? 8. Due to apartheid, South Africa were barred from the summer Olympics after 1960. In what year did they return… 9. …and where were the games…

What are you listening to at the moment? I’m not asking you to make me a tape. Though that’s not the worst idea. What are the sounds that are keeping you buoyant just now? There has to be something. I know there are people out there who say they’re not really into music, but I don’t understand. I understand they say there are more important things. You and I are clearly not of that sort. We know the fundamental life-giving importance of music. During lockdown, people started to switch the news off and stick tunes on. Spotify reported a 1,400 per cent increase in working-from-home themed playlists. And these are wide-ranging. Dolly’s 9 To 5 has been a favourite. Ironically. There is more Bach, the Don, being sought, and more…

While the success of Big Issue cover star Marcus Rashford has eased the burden struggling families face to feed themselves this summer, there is still a long way to go to end hunger. Independent foodbanks across the UK are demanding change as more and more people are forced to depend on their services – adding that they “should not be relied on to continue to pick up the pieces”. Organisations from the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN) said their teams have been running beyond capacity for months in response to the Covid-19 crisis, with demand still growing despite lockdown measures being lifted. The rise in those without food in recent months has been stark – the number of food parcels distributed across 80 local authorities in March was 46 per…

What’s your big idea? We want to bring together a wide range of ideas to set out a plan for the future. We call on you if you are in politics at a national or local level, from the corridors of Westminster, devolved administrations or councils across the country. If you are part of the third sector, social enterprise movement or tackling issues around homelessness. Business leaders, in the property or finance industry. Environmental campaigners, teachers, librarians, historians, radical thinkers and social mobility advocates. If you have an idea that could make things better, share it so we can spread the word. We recognise that the Alliance will build coalitions with uncomfortable allies in order to really address the problems that lie ahead. But we must act and we must…

Most of the brands that line our high street and internet shopping baskets don’t own the factories that make their clothes, author Lauren Bravo points out in her book published in January, How to Break Up with Fast Fashion. As a result they often wash their hands of responsibility for how they are run. “‘We didn’t know’, comes the response every time some terrible truth is revealed about pay or conditions,” she writes. Fast forward to July and Boohoo has expressed shock at the findings of an undercover report by The Sunday Times alleging a Leicester factory, used to manufacture many of Boohoo’s garments, pays workers less than half the minimum wage. In a statement on its corporate site the online retailer, known for its £5 bikinis and “ultra-fast” turnover…

A little less than a month ago, on June 15, I said my final goodbye to Bob. He’d been at my side for 13 years, since I found him injured in the hallway of my building in Tottenham, north London, one evening in March 2007. He passed away at the age of 14 or so. I never knew his exact age; it never seemed particularly important. What really mattered was that Bob became much more than a cat or mere companion to me. He was my best friend, my soul mate. My brother, almost. Two slightly broken souls, we transformed each other’s lives. So it has been very hard to accept that he will no longer be around. I still can’t quite believe he won’t be a daily presence in…

This week we’re looking at two very timely American novels dealing with issues of race, gender and identity in the US, both doing so through the lens of the past. First up we have The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. New York Times bestsellers across the pond and it’s easy to see why with this one. The book spans several decades from the 1950s and revolves around twin sisters, Desiree and Stella Vignes, who run away from the fictional small town of Mallard as teenagers and end up leading very different lives. Mallard is an odd town, populated by black people with very light skin, a fact which is set up believably and becomes crucial for what follows. As the twins struggle to make ends meet in a viscerally depicted…

01 Picture by Lillian Ross The acclaimed journalist got unprecedented access to the filming process of one of the giants of cinema, John Huston. It’s the story of what it takes to get a movie made and the compromises that nearly kill it. 02 You’ll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again by Julia Phillips The producer risked her reputation and career by writing this brutally candid and funny book about the self-destructive Hollywood lifestyle that can grind up a successful filmmaker in her own success. 03 Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman The screenwriter of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men writes with wit and candour about the art of the screenplay and the difficulties of the film business. One of the…

“A night they host at ›e Cube, Young Echo, which is legendary for hammering at boundaries of electronic music, so this Sunin and Robert Stewart, they work under the moniker SRS, and this is a track from their latest release, Data Fossil.” All those words and phrases are just what I except to hear when I listen to Radio 3’s Late Junction, though the only expectation in terms of the playlist is that I will always be taken by surprise by something. However much I think I know what to expect – whether cacophony or ambient spacescape, something will infiltrate my predictions and subvert it. I have eulogised Late Junction before and it continues to offer an eclectic home invasion of disconcerting voices and the sort of music that would…

I cried a million tiny tears when I saw an Ennio Morricone performance at the Barbican in London in 2001. It was during Deborah’s Theme from his score for Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in America. Morricone was conducting the orchestra. Stage right were a small ensemble, ready to play the more electric western themes that were his signature. Why the tears? Why the overwhelming emotion? I’ve listened to themes and watched their evolution since I was a small boy in Manchester, heart beating a little faster at the thrill of Danger Man or The Avengers, knowing that the music that pulsated throughout these shows, by composer Edwin Astley, was the very glue that kept me joined emotionally to the pictures and stories that were parading before my eyes.…

STEVIE TAYLOR PITCH: Pret, Old Street, London “It’s been quiet but I did alright on the first day when the BBC came down to film with me. That went great, even if I feel like I’m in a goldfish bowl with the visor on. I’ve been wearing it not only for myself, just to reassure people. “It’s a great idea to have these visors and the rucksacks – it’s phenomenal, it’s got the logo on it, it’s brand new and packed with PPE, you can’t knock it at all. “I was hoping to meet up with Jake [Hill-Gowing, who cycled the length of the Tour de France on an exercise bike in Stevie’s honour] but he has been struggling with a serious chest infection. We were gonna meet up Tuesday…