Innholdsfortegnelse for 20-07-20 i The Big Issue

BLACK LIVES MATTER BLM Mural Trail From Inverness to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth, Stirling and beyond, powerful murals are completed or in progress as part of a project by Scottish BAME artists to show solidarity with the global Black Lives Matter movement. Arts venues around the country – many of them still in lockdown – have given over walls, railings and doors to be used as canvases for the works, which once completed will link up to form a Scotland-wide mural trail. You can find information about finished murals on the curators’ social media channels, as well as details of a crowdfunder to help pay for new commissions. @BLMMuralTrail, instagram.com/blmmuraltrail SHOP Celeb-designed pins to thank local heroes From Keira Knightley to Ringo Starr, some of the UK’s biggest stars have backed…

VENDORS: Not all vendors have been returning at once. 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 have provided ‘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 the…

Earlier this year the UK government was accused of violating children’s right to food during the Covid-19 crisis. A Human Rights Watch investigation exposed problems within the “deeply flawed” electronic voucher system for families in England whose children normally receive free school meals. Designed to let families buy food in supermarkets using £15 of vouchers a week per child, the system’s glitches and understaffing were leaving children hungry. This meant foodbank demand reached a record high during lockdown. • Foodbanks across the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN) saw a 177 per cent rise in need for three-day emergency food parcels from May 2019 to May 2020 – from 32,541 to 90,400 • IFAN services supported 56,023 people in May this year compared to 23,782 in May 2019 • The number…

The NHS has been fighting for our lives for the last few weeks and months. Throwing all its resources at the pandemic. Millions of health and care workers have been magnificent, rising to the occasion with bravery and skill. They have demonstrated, among other things, that we must support and resource them better for the future. Government has also had a crucial role to play: providing leadership and direction, introducing emergency legislation, and supporting the NHS and the economy. There will be many lessons to learn from this experience about preparedness and the role of government in future health emergencies. And it’s been up to us, the general public, how far and how fast the virus spreads. Our behaviour has mattered – and still does. Millions have volunteered to help,…

JOIN US AND CHANGE THINGS FOR THE BETTER Last week, we launched the Ride Out Recession Alliance. As the lockdown eases, the furlough system retreats and the reality of the incomes and jobs being destroyed becomes clearer, we see that this forthcoming period could spell disaster for hundreds of thousands of people. And we want to do something about it. At The Big Issue we will work for those at risk of losing everything. The Ride Out Recession Alliance is a desire to change thinking in order to better the lives of many. At launch we said we will be the platform and lead facilitator. We need the ideas and the energy of many, many people and organisations. Already, some fantastic organisations have answered the call, including Shelter, Generation Rent…

The Big Issue: What impact is Covid-19 having on housing? Polly Neate: We already had a very deep housing crisis. The public health crisis that we’re now in the middle of has collided with that and a huge number of people are caught in the fallout. Credit where it’s due – the government did put the evictions ban in place and extended it, which was great. But now the evictions ban is going to end on August 23 and we know that nearly a quarter of a million renters have fallen into arrears during the pandemic. We also know that 1.7 million renters are anticipating losing their jobs in the next couple of months. If you put all of that together it equals a surge in homelessness that we can’t…

A good novel about rock’n’roll is notoriously difficult to pull off. The supposedly interesting bits of that life – the celebrity, the drink and drugs, the glamorous parties – are cartoonish, clichéd, and have been excavated relentlessly across decades of tabloid culture. Plus, a biography of Keith Richards or Mötley Crüe will easily outpace the novelist’s concoctions. The rest of it can be quite crushingly dull: a person in a room trying to write a song that has anything at all to recommend it; the long hours travelling between gigs; the monotony of sitting around recording studios; the inevitable intra-band bitching and personality clashes. Then there’s the music itself. Music journalism is famously hokey. Some do it well; more do it badly – replicating in words the mysterious chemical reaction…

How To Build A Girl Available on Amazon from July 24 A naive but talented youngster gets thrown into the deep end of music journalism and learns some difficult truths about a self-mythologising business that can eat you alive. That sounds a lot like Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe’s wide-eyed and even wider-trousered love letter to 1970s American rock. But it also perfectly describes How To Build a Girl, a similarly raucous coming-of-age tale based on Caitlin Moran’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. Directed energetically by Coky Giedroyc, it does everything Almost Famous does but with much funnier lines and a West Midlands accent. Booksmart star Beanie Feldstein plays precocious teen Johanna Morrigan, a bullied swot and wannabe poet who dreams of a world bigger than the crammed Wolverhampton council…

Are you slowly emerging from lockdown? Does the sunlight burn your eyes as you shuffle timidly into the outside world? Does the unfamiliar sound of engines running and children laughing stab painfully at your eardrums? Do your ‘real world’ clothes feel tight and uncomfortable? It must be awful. That’s why I intend to stay in lockdown forever. Like one of those war veterans lost in a Japanese jungle in the Eighties, still fighting World War Two. Working from home, wearing nothing but loose-fitting sportswear, shaving only sporadically and eating beans on toast a minimum of eight times per week is very much the life for me. It might sound uncivilised but, in fact, it’s quite the opposite: I get more sleep, eat healthier and get loads more work done because…

We humans were born for adventure. But this summer, many of us are choosing to stay closer to home instead of navigating the complexities of a Covid-dominated summer. Despair not: adventure abounds. It’s there in your own back yard or apartment balcony. Look about you, biologist EO Wilson suggests, at the little things that run the earth. A few years ago, my husband and I ripped up our grass and replanted with native wildflowers. Now we have all the drama we can handle. Birds warring over mates and territory. Bees busy nectaring. Butterflies fluttering about. You can go on a butterfly safari, just by getting some native flowering plants and finding a comfortable seat in your garden. Because if you plant it, they will come. To you. No need to…

1. How many former British PMs are still alive? 2. In what year was Myspace founded? 3. In 1979, the first nudist beach in the UK opened. Where was it? 4. When Scotland’s devolved parliament was launched in 1999, who became First Minister? 5. What was the name of the person who is credited with coining the phrase Artificial Intelligence? 6. In which year was the first Xbox released? 7. Oasis took their name from a venue in which English town? 8. The Uffizi museum can be found in which city? 9. What planet are Transformers from? 10. Which well-known pair live at 62 West Wallaby Street in Wigan? 11. With which team did Manchester United draw 5-5 in Sir Alex Ferguson’s last match in charge in 2013? 12. Which…

HOW TO KEEP YOUR BIKE RUNNING SMOOTHLY Since lockdown, there’s been a big increase in cycling. You see a lot of people on brand spanking new bikes and some people who you would never have seen cycling are now on bikes. As far as maintenance goes, tyre pressure is one of your key starting points. It depends on your surfaces, but you should really check the pressure before every ride. In hotter weather the tyres will expand and when it’s cooler they’ll shrink. When it’s hot sometimes it’s necessary to let some air out, for example if you’re going off road you should let a little bit of air out so that you don’t puncture on a sharp stone or something. You’ll get more rubber on the dirt if…

Why move Parliament, if only temporarily, from the banks of the Thames to York? York has a lot in its favour. York Minster has a few ideas about itself, but as examples of great English Gothic go, it’s a piece of work. And there are few better hours to be lost than sitting in the window of the Guy Fawkes Inn watching the twilight gather. Maybe that’s why Boris Johnson floated the idea of moving Parliament to York. Though I’ve never seen him in there. Or perhaps he wanted to march to the top of the hill. Though that, as we know, causes complications. Besides all else, it’s just 60 miles to Barnard Castle. York is a grand place to spend time. But it’s a bit, you know, obvious. It’s…

HOW IT WAS TOLD With 2020 full of twists and turns, you may be looking to the stars for guidance. But have you been looking at the wrong horoscope all along? Last week the country was plunged into an astrology-driven identity crisis as mainstream publications ran headlines about a 13th star sign, Ophiuchus, announced by Nasa. The stars have moved around since the Babylonians created the star signs more than 2,500 years ago, the stories claimed, meaning that on further inspection the newly discovered constellation covers people born between November 29 and December 17, between Scorpio and Sagittarius. And for those not born under Ophiuchus – the serpent bearer – your sign will likely still have changed as dates shifted around the zodiac wheel to accommodate the new one. The…

The Nationwide Foundation is an independent charity that believes everyone in the UK deserves to have access to a decent home that they can afford. Its Decent Affordable Homes strategy influences systemic changes to the housing system by supporting, testing and evidencing solutions. We are delighted to support the Big Issue’s Ride Out Recession Alliance as it looks to develop and implement practical steps and solutions to prevent tenants losing their homes, and help people remain in employment. We look forward to working collaboratively with a broad group of alliance stakeholders to identify the interventions that are needed, particularly on how to protect private rented sector tenants as the end of the eviction ban approaches and they feel the impact of growing housing debt. Last month, the Nationwide Foundation co-ordinated…

I became fascinated by recycling when I was very young, back in the early 1980s. My sister and I went to live temporarily with my grandparents, in a bungalow on the outskirts of Weston-super-Mare. During my time there, I acquired a sense of my nan’s respect for materials, her abhorrence of waste. We didn’t attend school for these weeks, and instead spent our days crafting, drawing and writing. I made a book of (terrible) poems reusing the green-bar computer paper that nan kept in stacks. Nan sewed the pages together for me on her sewing machine. It was in that bungalow that I started to make my first patchwork quilt. I used old cards as paper templates, and the quilt itself incorporated my grandpa’s pyjamas and fabric from offcuts (nan…

‘With the help of The Big Issue, I was housed in a little bungalow’ MARK WORTHINGTON, 48 PITCH: Co-op, Ivybridge 9am-3pm Tuesday-Friday I’ve been blessed with all the support that The Big Issue has given me through lockdown and before. I’ve got a lot to be grateful for. It’s been a difficult time for everybody in the last few months. For example, I’m a northern lad from Wigan and even my football team has gone into administration. It’s just been so challenging for a lot of people. And I’m not a selfish guy, I think about others a lot, sometimes too much. I remember my uncle taking me to the football as a boy and I never wanted to move from Lancashire. But my mum and dad wanted to move…

The front cover this week, with its brave surfer almost overwhelmed by waves, yet being clever enough to use the threat to their advantage, is one of the most poignant images of the post-war world. A symbol of ease and wonder, perhaps even indulgence. But also a symbol of how far away from want and need one is. Alas that want and need is threatening us again, and therefore we need to get surfing over its threats. Possibly around 1964-5 we encountered The Beach Boys in the charts and on the radio airwaves. They took the music of The Beatles and, instead of sitting around the dance hall sipping Coke, or dancing illogically – no one seemed to be able to dance in those days – they took you out…

Gospel queen 1988 Finding fame with debut hit My One Temptation 2012 With her elder daughter Monet in London 2020 With The Kingdom Choir in new documentary Gospel According to Mica My grandparents raised me in South London and I grew up in the church. I went seven days a week, it was very intense. So my childhood was full of lots of music and lots of Jesus. You say that to people and it sounds shocking. But actually it was really good. Pentecostal churches are very much community-based, and as I could sing I was the star of the church from a very early age. At every gospel concert, church service, I was called to sing. And I saw the amazed reaction of the people. Even at nine I…

“Wiltshire and Swindon Credit Union is pleased to be able to add our voice to the Ride Out Recession Alliance, representing our community and working with others to reduce the impact of the pandemic. We are already seeing the economic effects of this crisis locally, and we are doing what we can to address short-term financial emergencies. We all now need a longer-term strategy to help vulnerable members of our community, a group which is growing larger by the day, to maintain financial resilience and remain in their homes.” Fiona Cox, business development director, Wiltshire and Swindon Credit Union “As a long-term partner of The Big Issue and key local provider in Northampton of both homelessness and wider poverty services, Hope is very concerned about the impact of Covid-19 on…

Frequent Street Art contributor Michael submits his work via London outreach centre for homeless people the 240 Project. He struggled during lockdown, “watching lots of YouTube and ranting on Facebook,” he says. He fell behind on rent and worried about losing his flat. “240 Project have been great, doing stuff online and helping with issues,” he says. Michael likes to have humour in his artwork. “The more ridiculous the better,” he says. “I loved Monty Python and the whole silliness thing. I think the world is a very silly place and hopefully this comes through in my pictures.” The work on this page is created by people who are marginalised. Contact street.lights@bigissue.com to see your art here. To see more and buy prints: bigissueshop.com At least half of the profit…

01 My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult Basically a child is conceived to save her dying sister. An incredible story, beautifully told and I cried throughout. 02 Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt I met Carol at a French book fair and fell in love with her. Then I read about June losing her uncle to Aids in the Eighties, ugly cried and loved her all the more. 03 Wonder by RJ Palacio A boy with a rare genetic condition goes to school for the first time. I sobbed my heart out for this beautiful and bullied boy. This is a book that should be on the school curriculum. 04 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Tells the story of two displaced migrant ranch workers moving…

During these difficult times, 2020 has definitely been a moment to count my blessings. Despite the lockdown, I’ve been privileged to see one of my favourite jobs come to fruition, with series three of In the Long Run coming out on Sky TV. While doing press interviews though, one question keeps coming up: What are you most proud of? Of course, I am proud of In The Long Run, because I’m part of something we still don’t see on our TV screens even in 2020: a British sitcom about a family that just happens to be black. This lack of representation is something I’ve been trying to change for years through my work with TriForce Creative Network. The systemic issues within our industry that we are talking about now via…

The lockdown locks have finally been cut and the first draught pint has been sipped. There have been joyful – yet distant – reunions with family and friends. But while life as we knew it has resumed in many ways, whole chunks are missing in action. We may be able to get a manicure, go to the pub (hurrah) or even take a flight, but cultural life is still on hiatus. Theatres and concert halls continue to cope with the summer season that never was. Festivals grapple with online formats, mining archives for broadcastable nuggets. In lieu of hosting physical audiences, some arts organisations, such the Royal Opera House, have begun livestreaming events. BBC Four’s Royal Opera House: The Reopening (now available on iPlayer) shows some of the first, emotionally…