Innholdsfortegnelse for 06-03-2017 i The Big Issue

WE BELIEVE in a hand up, not a handout... Which is why our sellers BUY every copy of the magazine for £1.25 and sell it for £2.50. WE BELIEVE in trade, not aid… Which is why we ask you to ALWAYS take your copy of the magazine. Our sellers are working and need your custom. WE BELIEVE poverty is indiscriminate… Which is why we provide ANYONE whose life is blighted by poverty with the opportunity to earn a LEGITIMATE income. WE BELIEVE in the right to citizenship… Which is why The Big Issue Foundation, our charitable arm, helps sellers tackle social and financial exclusion. WE BELIEVE in prevention… Which is why Big Issue Invest offers backing and investments to social enterprises, charities and businesses which deliver social value to communities.…

I blame the London Olympics. Remember Super Saturday. Everybody won. Mo was amazing. Greg Rutherford jumped to glory. Jessica Ennis-Hill was incredible. More, more, more we roared. They’re all brilliant! Medals kept being collected. Team GB won 65 in total in 2012. But we got greedy. Bring more! In Rio last summer they won 67 medals. 67! Much of the success was put down to canny money placement by UK Sport. That money comes from the Exchequer and the National Lottery. Millions of it. For the next funding cycle ahead of the 2020 Olympics there is £345, 279, 427. And this is where the problem lies. Last autumn, UK Sport announced there was less money than before so there would be some cuts. Wheelchair rugby was to receive exactly zero.…

A Hawaii state senator wants to define homelessness as a medical condition. Senator Josh Green, who is also a doctor, has proposed a bill to allow doctors to prescribe housing to someone who has been homeless for six months or more and is suffering mental illness or addiction. His core argument is the efficiency of prevention – an idea vociferously championed by The Big Issue. Green pointed out that it costs less to prescribe someone a house than deal with long-term effects of homelessness. Housing a rough sleeper in Hawaii costs $18,000 a year, compared with $120,000 a year in the US to treat someone left to sleep on the streets.…

“Government and businesses must work in tandem to revitalise the UK’s many Blackpools” I saw a map displayed on a poster outside the British Library the other day. And I was shocked. As if the water had been drained out of the seas it showed the scarred and weird world at the bottom of the ocean. It looked like the skeleton of the world and I had never seen it presented like that before. Strangely I had been talking in Blackpool earlier at a college and had mentioned my idea of starting a water-bottling business in that town. But the water wouldn’t come from some hill borehole; rather, it would be extracted from the sea. It would be desalinated water, in other words. There are, though, some issues I need…

In the El Sauce region of Nicaragua, at the foot of the Segovia Mountains, there are only two ways for families to earn a living. The first is cattle production, which causes deforestation and global warming. The other is honey production, which improves the ecosystem because it can only succeed if farms are well nurtured and rich in native trees. In spite of the fact cattle farming is less risky in terms of price variations, a local cooperative called Ucasa has chosen organic honey production. They’ve worked hard to make it a success over the last 10 years, producing honey from more than 4,000 hives, including a rare type made from the pollen of just one variety of flower. This honey has a unique flavour and therefore a higher value.…

Fallen Spires With each passing week I find myself reading The Big Issue and shouting: “Yes! Thank goodness for common sense and thoughtful, intelligent writing. There’s still hope in this crazy world.” John Bird’s article ‘All Change. The Buildings of the Future are Here’ [February 6-12] elicited such a response. Ten years ago I moved to High Barnet. I was struck by the Spires Shopping Centre – a lovely area with homely, old-fashioned paving, flower beds, painted railings and seated areas shaded by small trees. The cafe even played music in its garden area. I have whiled away hours with family and friends, soaking up the atmosphere, one with a genuine sense of community, where strangers, over time, stopped being strangers. However, things are changing. Our lovely little shopping centre…

With Fairtrade Fortnight in full swing, the future is bright for producers supplying products for the British market as sales increase, according to latest figures. Last week the Fairtrade Foundation reported sales of £1.64bn, an increase of two per cent on the previous year. Long-standing tea-break favourites have enjoyed sales boosts, including bananas – which saw an increase of six per cent – and coffee, up eight per cent. And the Co-Op Group, which plans to only use 100 per cent Fairtrade cocoa in all its own-label items, is set to give a major boost to producers over the next 12 months. Fittingly, one of the themes of this year’s Fairtrade Fortnight is #putfairtradeinyourbreak. And the tea-break range continues to expand. Honey is a delicious way to join the Fairtrade…

1. FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON Daniel Keyes This brilliantly employs the main character’s voice to show how he changes after an experiment to dramatically boost his IQ. When such advancements now seem on the brink of possibility, Keyes’ 1966 novel continues to raise questions about the nature of life, intelligence and happiness. 2. THE MARTIAN Andy Weir Art and science are often set in opposition to each other but The Martian proves this is a false dichotomy. Weir’s novel shows the tremendous – and very real – creativity involved in scientific problem-solving. 3. A WRINKLE IN TIME Madeleine L’Engle For many, myself included, this young adult novel was one of the first introductions to the concept of quantum physics – to tesseracts and multi-dimensional universes. It came at a time when…

“Brighton Fringe is unique as it’s by the sea with events even underneath the pier” “There’s a phrase that people here like to use, and it’s ‘very Brighton’,” explains Julian Caddy, Brighton Fringe’s managing director, in relation to a show returning for 2017 called Silent Disco Walking Tours with Guru Dudu. This sees participants in headphones strutting around the town dancing to Staying Alive and the like, much to the amazement and amusement of locals. “That one’s definitely very Brighton,” he says. You could say much the same thing of the festival at large. While it may trail a distant second in the UK to its spiritual cousin the Edinburgh Fringe in terms of size – around 1000 shows to Edinburgh’s more than 3,000, and around 500,000 attendees to Edinburgh’s…

Throughout music’s history, composers have made use of any number of weird and wonderful tales on which to base their music. Few, however, can be more bizarre than the true story of Tarrare, the 18th-century Frenchman who suffered from polyphagia (excessive hunger), which has been transformed into an extraordinary chamber opera for puppets by brothers Tom and Tobi Poster. After runs in Bristol and London, you can catch the elaborately named The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak this week in Oxford (The North Wall, March 8 & 9) and Bath (Michael Tippet Centre, March 10). Tarrare’s story is a tragic one. His depraved appetite for all manner of matter – vegetable, animal, mineral or metal – took him from circus freak shows to revolutionary prisons, experimental asylums and, finally,…

I am a retired librarian. One of my jobs was going to under-5s in a disadvantaged area, reading stories and talking to parents about joining the library. Many parents didn’t realise it’s free to join libraries and free to borrow books; some thought their children were too young. We showed a picture of a baby with a library membership card on its tummy. You’re never too young. Sharing a book with even a very young baby, or even one still in the womb, is a lovely thing to do, for the closeness, the fun and letting the baby hear a parent’s voice. Too many children start school with delayed speech development because they didn’t hear enough spoken language. Even without the experience and knowledge of trained librarians, libraries are still…

Quazi Design- Drop Earrings Half Gold £10.00 PLUS P&P Quazi help to drive sustainable change and social impact by transforming waste magazines into original accessories using local artisans. Give Me Tap- Matte Grey Bottle £12.00 PLUS P&P Purchasing this bottle gives someone in the Wa region of Ghana 5 years of clean water. Slogan T-Shirts by The Big Issue £20.00 PLUS P&P Street art inspired designs with feel-good messages. Fikay Eco Fashion – Blue Elephant Holdall £39.99 PLUS P&P Kind to the planet and ethically staffed, Fikay up-cycles used cement bags from Cambodia into fabulous, striking accessories. The Soap Co – White Tea Gift Box Trio £32.00 PLUS P&P Luxurious, beautifully packaged products, created in a supportive work environment by people who are blind or disabled. Jollie Socks- The No…

“I was homeless in London. The first thing that hits you is the shame” I was brought up in a middle-class suburb outside Dublin. It’s a lovely city but it was weird. Very Catholic, very priest-focused. I stopped going to Mass when I was 12. My family were fine about it, there was no big crisis. I used to be an altar boy, which was quite a sweet thing to be, but I just dropped out. It just went from me, the whole religious world. Maybe it was sublimated by my imagination and preferring other stories. I hated football and all those boyish pursuits, and I didn’t do well at school. But I was happy in my world of books and music. The opportunities for work in Dublin then, outside…

“She is the best therapy for me” I have a cat called Smudge who I would be lost without. I have depression and she is the best therapy for me. My wee pal came into my life at a point where I was at a real low and, as dramatic as it seems, she really saved me. Claire Davidson, Aberdeen “It was like medicine” I moved to Birmingham in 2008 when I finished my design degree and was offered a job at the Cadbury design studio. I was working as a graphic designer on the packaging side for 13 years. In 2012, after the Kraft takeover, I was made redundant. I was scared as we’d just taken on a new mortgage. Spending day after day at home applying for other…

In the 18th century Captain Cook brought the word ‘tattoo’ back to Blighty from his voyage to the Pacific. Today, one-in-five Brits are tattooed. But the art of inking skin goes back much further in the mists of time. The most comprehensive exhibition ever staged in Britain of tattooing reveals all, from ye olde salty sea-dogs and saucy mermaids like those on this 1920s travelling tattoo artist’s banner to original new art on silicone body parts. Tattoo, March 17–January 7, National Maritime Museum, Cornwall. nmmc.co.uk…

Rebecca Hall excels in the tragic true story of Christine Chubbuck in Christine, which is available on digital download, Blu-ray and DVD. A meticulous portrayal of a woman on the edge, Christine is played by Hall in a film that sheds light on one woman’s mental health struggle that in 1974 led to her shocking the world by taking her own life – live on TV. Always the smartest person in the room, Christine is relentless in her pursuit of an on-air position. An aspiring newswoman with an eye for nuance and interest in social justice, her boss constantly pushes for juicier stories that will drive ratings higher. Plagued by self-doubt and a tumultuous home life, when an on-air co-worker initiates a friendship that ultimately becomes yet another unrequited love,…