Innholdsfortegnelse for 8/16/2021 i The Big Issue

An interactive map, created by non-profit Climate Central, shows how large parts of England’s coastal regions, particularly the north-east, could be under water by as early as 2030 without immediate action to protect communities against global warming. London, Cardiff, Hull, Blackpool and Portsmouth are expected to be the most vulnerable of the UK’s towns and cities to rising sea levels. The sobering diagrams use precise elevation data against predicted flood levels by the end of the decade to identify areas most at risk. Dr Benjamin Strauss, the organisation’s chief executive, said: “Our greatest hope is that our tools accelerate planning for sea level rise, and so help to avoid as much suffering as possible.” coastal.climatecentral.org/map…

Reading the article on rent arrears and evictions in the latest issue gave me an idea. While the total arrears is a big number, the individual average of £700, while no doubt all-consuming and overwhelming to an individual with no job or a low-paid job, is not a big number. Is there a role for a service similar to lendwithcare, where individuals can “donate” to other individuals and families to cover their rent arrears. Clearly, some anonymisation and safeguards would need to be in place and it may be that, like lendwithcare, a charity lends or gives a grant to the individual first, and then the donor covers the loan/grant enabling the charity to lend/grant again. Just an idea, but if we broke down the problem to an individual level…

I had just gotten into folk music when I was 16. I got a guitar and I was learning everything I could, which basically ended up being three chords. There was a radio station in Washington DC, about 25 miles away, which played folk music every night. It opened up a whole world for me, all those songs and incredible singers and songwriters. So I had my radio on every night while I was doing my homework, just discovering all these artists like Joan Baez, who was really the one who made me pick up a guitar. Besides her music, I feel she changed the heart of America through her involvement in the civil rights movement, using her voice, literally using her voice, the way she did. I’d love to…

1 The Goshawk T & AD Poyser – Robert Kenward The ultimate monograph on the natural history of the Goshawk. Packed with wonderful insights into their behaviour, peppered with engaging field notes. The first stop for anyone interested in these birds. 2 Trees of Britain Collins - Alan Mitchell Mitchell is the grandfather of all things tree in Britain and this gem lists most of our oldest and most impressive specimens. Also includes detailed notes on where to find them in both urban and rural settings. The ultimate tree guide. 3 Deer of Britain and Ireland Swan Hill Press - Peter Carne This covers the history and distribution of every deer currently living wild in our isles, native and introduced. Full of useful details about where they are and what…

At the start of his new series, 6.5 Children , Ashley Blaker explains that the reason he has yet another show on Radio 4 is because of the Jewish Conspiracy. Throughout the series, he does not shy away from using lightness of touch when dealing with dark thoughts, though this is not what the series is really about. It is the story of bringing up a large family – well, large from an Anglican perspective, though actually quite small from an Orthodox Jewish perspective. Ashley has six children; the average in Orthodox Jewish families is 6.5. Ne admits that he is not able to keep up with how many children some of his friends have, comparing this to the Fast and Furious film franchise, wondering “are they still producing them?”…

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. Matt, Chris and Dominic are the first names of which UK band that formed in 1994? 2. Mount Vesuvius overlooks which Italian city? 3. Which Anglo-Saxon king died in 1066, leaving no heir to the throne? 4. In which London street does Sherlock Holmes live? 5. In which year did Golden Wonder launch the Pot Noodle brand in the UK? 6. Northern Quarter, Deansgate and Rusholme are areas in which British city? 7. Which type of pastry is commonly used in a Beef Wellington? 8. What nickname do adult male gorillas have due to their hair? 9. What do the names Eleanor, Michelle and Martha…

At the heart of the UK’s fight against the climate crisis is a target of 2050 for reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. These gases trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the surface of the earth and the air above it. Cutting down on our emissions is the most effective way to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels and, scientists theorise, eventually reverse the crisis. Reaching net-zero means balancing the amount of planet-heating greenhouse gases we produce with the amount we remove from the atmosphere using, for instance, carbon capture technology. This will mean phasing out fossil fuels and powering up with renewable energy instead, investing in public transport to cut car travel, and retrofitting homes with planet-friendly systems such as heat pumps in place of gas boilers.…

Doughnut forsake us Like Jonathan Porritt (Big Issue, August 2), I too read and saw the sense of A Blueprint for Survival. Its proposed strategy seemed to be an answer to the future resource shortages and environmental problems flagged up in Limits to Growth, a contemporary publication from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A fundamental issue is the grip that economists have on government policy, continually advocating growth whilst ignoring any limits. Yes, I am glad to have modern dentistry and medical expertise, but while these have developed during two centuries of economic growth, that does not imply cause and effect. About two years ago, you carried an article which mentioned Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth, an economist with a radically different approach. Every politician should read it, take note…

To say our current property tax system is out of date would be a major understatement. Council tax is based on property valuations from 30 years ago, undertaken when Chesney Hawkes was No 1. Perhaps The One and Only was simply a reference to your first council tax evaluation. Partly as a consequence of being so behind-the-times, council tax is also deeply unfair. People who live in modest homes get a worse deal than those living in the wealthiest areas, while struggling renters are hit just as hard as their, often older, counterparts who have made it on to the property ladder. Too often, council tax works for the millionaires rather than the millions – and works against the drive towards intergenerational fairness. That’s why the Fairer Share campaign is…

Does it sound melodramatic to say that drama can have an incredibly dramatic effect on a person’s life? Cardboard Citizens is an award-winning charity that makes theatre with and for people with lived experience of homelessness. This year it celebrates its 30th anniversary (as does another organisation addressing the big issue of homelessness: this magazine). Emilia Teglia, 45, is just one person whose life was turned around by drama and The Big Issue. In 1999, she was a vendor in London. She had come from Rome, had become addicted to class-A drugs and was now homeless. “I was really in a bad state”, she says. “I spoke English but not a great amount. I wasn't eligible for any state benefits. I had addiction problems, no fixed abode problems. My view…

FiǼty years ago, restless Lafayette graduate Jay Parini, faced with the choice of ensconcing himself back in the bosom of his mother in Icranton Pennsylvania or being drafted into the Vietnam War, decided to escape both fates by moving to study Icottish Literature at It Andrews University. Nis mother did not approve, saying: “Scotch girls have a reputation and the men apparently wear skirts.” But young Parini, still an anxious virgin but keen to rid himself of that nagging condition, was willing to risk the threat Icottish girls might pose to his delicate person and step out into the world. Parini is well known now as a breezy, successful college professor, poet, novelist and literary biographer. But the picture he paints of his adolescent self in a new memoir, Borges…

I’ve learned how to be a bit more cheeky and stand up for myself I started selling The Big Issue three or four years ago. It’s nice here in Morningside, so beautiful, and selling the magazine is great because I can work some days and be home on others for my daughter. She’s five and so I sell it when she’s at school, but I’m at home on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. I couldn’t do that with another job. We have a flat in the Leith area of Edinburgh. Everybody’s nice there and the shops are really good. I like Edinburgh even when it’s cold – it’s the same in Romania, anyway. Scotland’s a nice country but all my family are still back in Romania – my mum, my dad,…

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Camping is in my blood. I’ve been doing it since I was a teenage runaway aged 14. Taking a tent and disappearing. How of course you don’t have to rough it like in those early days, but still you are not laden with comforts; unless you glamp. Something I have yet to try. This week I’m back with the field and the tents. And a van, and soil toilets. Summer is not summer for me unless there is a campsite that we can end up in. The first time was a mere overnight stay. Five 14-year-olds, called the scum of the earth by my mother and local police officers, decided to break free of the adult world. We were simply going to disappear and never come back again. We were…

A good week for fans of interactive maps. On our news page we featured one showing parts of the country that will be under water if climate change isn’t stopped. Another, drawing on research from University of Sheffield academics, breaks down the number of people struggling to afford food by local council area for the first time. It shows that inequality across the UK means food poverty levels in one in six council areas are more than 150 per cent higher than the national average. The map models food poverty figures collected by the Food Foundation, which reveal 4.2 per cent of adults across the UK had been hungry but unable to eat at least once in January, when the initial study was carried out. Yorkshire and the Humber had…

At the age of 47, aǼter putting it o›f for nearly two years, S finally bit the not inconsiderable financial bullet and accepted that S needed varifocals. If the pain of purchasing these particular spectacles was borne mainly in the wallet, my ego was correspondingly bruised. Time has been reasonably kind to me. I still have a full head of mostly brown hair and all my own teeth. But here were my eyes showing their age, as the optician tactfully explained. As windows to my soul, they’d always been somewhat faulty, myopic with a slight astigmatism, and needing double glazing since I was around ten. Now, however, they were letting me down, not so much by being weak, but by shattering a much cherished illusion that I was still a…

It’s been a tough 18 months for everyone who believes in the power of live music, and Tom Odell is nothing if not a devotee to that cause. The Brit and Ivor Novello award-winner has come out of lockdown with a new album – Monster, his first since 2018’s Jubilee Road – and a renewed belief in the importance of creativity. “The arts, the culture of the UK, is what makes this country,” he explains. A working musician since he was just 21, Odell found huge success with his debut album, Long Way Down, which rocketed to the top of the UK charts and went platinum. Ten years into his career, The Music That Made Me finds a mid-career Odell still learning from the greats who came before him –…

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