Innholdsfortegnelse for 7/19/2021 i The Big Issue

Look out for the lonely It is my opinion that the least talked-about major social problem that we have in our country is loneliness. I believe that it was Henry David Thoreau who said that most people “lead lives of quiet desperation”. You can be surrounded by a lot of people who know you, including family members, yet still feel very lonely and like you are all alone in this world. You can feel as if no one really loves you or cares FOR you. Caring FOR someone differs from simply caring “about” someone. I do not claim that my letter speaks for most people. But I do claim that it does speak for a sizeable minority. Stewart B Epstein, email Fact friction I usually enjoy the Fact/Fiction feature, but…

I was a very late developer. One of my nicknames at school was Titch. I was tiny when I was 16. I was living in Ilfracombe and a day pupil at West Buckland School, a private school in the Horth Devon countryside, 20 miles from where I lived. I’d get the bus every day and again at weekends to play sports. My father was an Anglican minister, so the church was a big part of my upbringing. My group of friends was mostly around the church rather than at school. We lived in a beautiful Victorian vicarage overlooking the sea. It was fabulous. I focused more on my academic studies than my sports, because you couldn’t get a job as a sportsman… or so I thought. I had no idea…

“Today I might have pneumonia, but last night was lovely.” Aisling Bea is feeling under the weather when The Big Issue calls. Because the previous night, she was literally under a lot of heavy weather, performing stand-up at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London. “It was so sunny when I was on my way, then as soon as I got on stage, it started to rain and from then on it was hilariously stormy throughout the whole gig,” she says, voice a little croaky from making herself heard above the downpour (and possibly the post-show drinks with her pal Nish Kumar). “It was torrential at one point – and I was totally out in the open. When they say Open Air Theatre, they’re not shitting around, you know?…

01 The Big Book of the UK by Imogen Russell Williams and Louise Lockhart The book combines a geographical tour of the UK with facts about places, foods, clothes and language. There’s even a quiz at the end for readers to find out how much knowledge they’ve absorbed. 02 Irelandopedia by Fatti Burke and John Burke Perfect for readers who want to learn more about the Emerald Isle. Each double-page spread is full of fantastic illustrations and interesting information about each of the Irish counties. 03 What’s Weird on Earth: Our Strange World as You’ve Never Seen it Before! by DK The ideal read for curious armchair adventurers. It features a selection of maps full of fascinating facts about the weirdest natural and supernatural phenomena from around the world. 04…

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. Which UK Number One single of the 1980s was the only one to top the charts for nine consecutive weeks? 2. Which team has won the European football Championship most times? 3. Which rock icon’s real name is Vincent Furnier? 4. Who was the last UK winner of the Open golf championship? 5. Launched in the UK in 1861, what is the world’s oldest chocolate bar brand? 6. In which English county is Stonehenge? 7. Marjorie Proops was a long-time ‘agony aunt’ in which UK newspaper? 8. Who sent the Native American rights campaigner Sacheen Littlefeather to receive his Oscar for Best Actor? 9. Which…

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Life used to be simpler, however painful and at times tragic it was. That life for me was catering for people who had fallen into homelessness. Seeing the victims of poor housing and poor work, of poor support leaving local authority care, or the armed forces. Or prison. And doing something about it. That is in our case providing people in need a legitimate income and lifting them out of wrongdoing. Providing a supporting social group for those who are caught in the loneliness of being without a home. These are all physical. You can see the physical need. You can often see the physical damage done to the person whose wellbeing you’re trying to address. How consider a threat, a large threat. That hangs over society but as of…

Local authority new builds and acquisitions (England) 29,674 1991/92 6,698 2019/20 [gov.uk] Housing and disability  MORE THAN HALF (54%) OF HOUSEHOLDS IN THE SOCIAL RENTED SECTOR HAD ONE OR MORE MEMBERS WITH A LONGTERM ILLNESS OR DISABILITY (2019/20 English Housing Survey) Homes by tenure (England) 1970 8,272,000 OWNER-OCCUPIED 3,202,000 PRIVATE RENT 4,506,000 LOCAL AUTHORITY RENT 1990 13,171,000 OWNER-OCCUPIED 1,906,000 PRIVATE RENT 3,944,000 LOCAL AUTHORITY RENT 2020 15,739,000 OWNER-OCCUPIED 4,799,000 PRIVATE RENT 1,583,000 LOCAL AUTHORITY RENT Average house prices across UK £249,309 AVERAGE HOUSE PRICE (UK) £266,532 ENGLAND £178,907 WALES £164,099 SCOTLAND £147,593 NI (January 2021, ons.gov.uk) UK HOUSE PRICES ROSE SHARPLY IN THE YEAR TO MAY, DRIVEN BY AN INCREASE OF 15% IN THE NORTH WEST OF ENGLAND. THEY FELL BACK SLIGHTLY LAST MONTH – THOUGHT TO BE DUE TO…

Creating a shelter is so intrinsic to our very nature, yet new housing schemes across the country are more often than not ill-suited to our everyday needs. Housing developers often reuse decades-old house plans, which in turn were based on Victorian living standards; tiny kitchens, separate dining rooms, tight staircases and corridors. Individual houses and flats in cookie-cutter estates cannot by their very design take into account how sunlight falls into each home, or views out. Although I totally understand that housebuilders have to make a profit; it seems that a lot of developers are only truly interested in the bottom line and architectural input and progressive home design are the first things to fall by the wayside. The creative vision and the desire of architects to design successful homes…

This week we have two exquisite novels from the edges of the crime fiction genre by two of the finest writers in any genre at the moment. First up is ›e Turnout by Megan Abbott, a book that takes a deep dive into the world of ballet, blending nerve-shredding noir plotting with sharp psychological insight. Abbott is an extraordinary writer, and her more recent novels have focused on finding the secret cracks in the relationships that women have with each other in highly pressurised environments. She has dealt with the worlds of gymnastics and scientific research of late, and she adapted her most famous book, Dare Me, for Netflix, delving into the troubled psyches of cheerleaders in small-town America. The Turnout focuses on sisters Dara and Marie Durant who, along…

You would think that aǼter 18 months of being locked in the house, any self-respecting twentysomething would now be hellbent on wringing out every hot minute of their hot years. Mad with existential angst and unfocused horniness, they would be blindly propelled like a plague of cicadas in thongs towards their ultimate destiny: Love Ssland. There they would be sure to find romance, or if not, at least be the source of a few juicy complaints to Ofcom. But no, because this is 2021, and everything is awkward and weird and disappointing. This year, it would seem that nobody fancies each other, and there’s nothing going on but the rent. Despite beauty standards that include kidney-coloured lipstick and copious amounts of underboob, I’ve seen more chemistry between the mannequins in…

Pitch: Hikarigaoka I like to watch professional wrestling and baseball, as well as international wrestling such as WWE. Pro wrestling is cool and exciting when the moves are done. I play baseball, so I understand the fun of it. When When I w I was c a child living in Akita, my met hometown, I used to do sumo. I was once in send place in a touwinment. I still ctoun do it wherever there is a ring. ver there is a ring. I waI w tnt the Olympics to be held. Otherwise e, I’ve h e heahat fthat foreign road broadc ers ers will take trillions of yen in lties, penalties a , and hat I think that’s a waste of o money e, the Olym, the Olympics w…

Pitch: Western Tokyo Although recently I haven’t been playing any sports, I used to play soccer. So now I’m into watching the games of the national team. I remember I was a member of the soccer club in my junior high school days. I hardly attended practice, but the team had me play to make up the numbers. I didn’t get any goals, but I think I was a good passer. From my perspective, to prevent infection I don’t think it’s a good idea to hold the Olympics. I can see the Olympic cauldron from my sleeping place, and in the daytime foreign media people with passes making their way to the site. I think saying there is a “bubble” is a stretch.…

Millions of Brits are falling short of the minimum income needed to live secure and stable lives even if they are on Universal Credit or earn the national living wage, anti-poverty experts have warned. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s annual Minimum Income Standard (MIS) report found single people would still be £3,000 short of an acceptable income to cover rent, food and other essential costs even while working full-time on a living wage. A couple with two children who are out of work and relying on benefits would fall around £14,000 short of the necessary income, rising to around £20,000 for couples without children. Only if the couple were both working full-time on the national living wage and received Universal Credit would they be earning just over the £34,200 required to…

The Big Issue was launched 30 years ago to tackle the homelessness crisis. Back then, we were focused on helping the thousands of people forced to sleep rough in our towns and cities. Thirty years on, a global pandemic has made the issue of homelessness bigger than ever. Hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of losing their households right now. The numbers are staggering. There are 564,000 people in rent arrears, 190,000 owner-occupied homes in financial difficulty, 4.3 million people are behind on household bills. Our research also found a shocking statistic. In the first quarter of 2021, there were 632 mortgage repossessions and rental evictions. This means that a household was made homeless on average every three-and-a-half hours. Since the first lockdown last year, we have supported…

George Clarke is an architect, a very busy television presenter (currently filming FIVE series) and a committed Big Issue ambassador. He’s also a proud proponent of social housing, a vocal critic of the government’s housing policies, and a genuine expert when it comes to how to build for the future. Given the housing crisis and the worrying likelihood of an imminent rise in homelessness, shouldn’t we be listening to experts? We say yes. When the country is crying out for affordable, high-quality, future-proofed, ecologically sound housing – let’s hear expert voices on the state of the nation’s housing, on planning rules, on how we house people now and into the future. And Clarke is the expert when it comes to these things. So we asked him what he would do…

In 213 BC, the emperor Qin Shi Huang was feeling insecure. Yes, he had successfully unified seven warring states to create the kingdom that became China; and yes, he had achieved a level of raw power previously unknown in the region. But he was disliked, to say the least, and as he travelled his domains in disguise he seethed upon hearing Confucian and other scholars compare his regime unfavourably to the past’s golden ages. Ne decided to immolate that past. In what became known as the Burning of the Books and the Burying of the Philosophers, countless poetry, history, and philosophy texts were set alight. Qin kept copies for himself, but those who knew the texts best were not spared. Nundreds of scholars were buried alive. From that point forward,…

As the sound of Martin Garrix featuring Bono and The Edge’s histrionic, accidentally Rangers FC-endorsing Euro 2020 official anthem We Are The People echoed around stadiums across the continent earlier this summer, we were reminded yet again of how the beautiful game and music (of often questionable beauty) are inextricably intertwined. Why doesn’t the Olympics – the supreme crucible of sporting achievement – always have such a prominent and identifiable anthem? Most modern Olympics have had o›ficial theme songs, but except for Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé’s Kleenex-slaying continental belter Barcelona (recorded in 1987 and used at Barcelona 1992, less than a year after Mercury’s death) or Whitney Nouston’s whopping One Moment in Time (Seoul 1988), few have really registered in the popular consciousness. The rest can generally be placed…

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