Innholdsfortegnelse for 11/22/2021 i The Big Issue

Covid has pushed thousands of people to the brink. There was no break for renters during the pandemic. While an eviction ban protected them from losing their homes during the first year of the pandemic, there was no welcome payment holiday like that handed to mortgage payers. Many have racked up thousands of pounds in arrears. And the pressure is increasing. Last week property site Zoopla reported rent increases had hit a 13-year high as demand skyrocketed without an increase in supply to match. The typical cost of renting in the private sector now stands at more than £800 per month, and that cost has risen by six per cent during the year to the end of September and has surged three per cent in the last three months alone.…

Five years ago, I won BIG on a scratchcard. It was a very lucky, very surreal day. A client of my video production company was filming interviews with high-profile people encouraging young people to get involved with social causes. Long story short, I ended up in George Clooney’s summer house – which was bigger than my house – then as we were packing up, George brought in Bill Murray who just happened to be visiting. He is my ultimate hero. On the way back to Cardiff I bought a scratchcard. I was feeling really lucky, I was in the zone! The first two numbers were £250,000, so in my head it was definitely going to happen. I ended up winning £20 instead. At first I was really disappointed but I’d…

A shocking proportion of young people convicted of a crime end up with another conviction. But a social enterprise helping young offenders into work has dramatically reduced that figure and received two prizes at the Queen’s Awards hosted by Prince Charles at Windsor Castle. The Skill Mill has helped hundreds of young people break the chain of re-offending by offering 16- to 18-year-olds, intensive work programmes to help them gain employment. The awards mean The Skill Mill, which receives funding from Big Issue Invest, The Big Issue’s social investment arm, will be able to fly the Queen’s Awards flag at its office and will be given a Grant of Appointment certificate. Just 17 of the 225 people helped by the Skill Mill have been re-convicted and the social enterprise believes…

495,000 renters are in arrears (Citizens Advice) £360 million has been racked up in rent arrears (Citizen Advice) 225,000 renters are “probably” or “likely” to lose their home (StepChange) £9,266 per person is saved in public spending for preventing someone from homelessness every year (Crisis) £2,263 is the cost of preventing homelessness for one person for one year (Crisis) £2,234,025,000 would be saved if £360m in rent arrears is paid off now rather than waiting for people to fall into homelessness…

Lockdown gave ample space for many of us to wallow in self-pity It takes a daring novelist to be the first to bring the boredom, impotence, anger and mania of the last year and a half into their fiction, at least if they expect it to sell. And a talented one as well, since such a restriction in life’s possibilities meant that descriptions of binge-watching, Zoom calls and losing one’s sense of taste left writers with little to work with. I suspect that for most readers a reminder of lockdown life is as welcome as having a lecture on the details of general anaesthetic after an operation. Despite its brevity, The Fell by Sarah Moss manages to break out of the confines of the home for much of its setting.…

If COP26 had been a film, its ending was more frustrating and depressingly hollow than that of No Time To Die . On the final Friday at 6pm, while intense negotiations were ongoing in the Blue Zone, a couple of hundred metres away on the other side of the Clyde an awards ceremony for the Climate Crisis Film Festival was beginning. These Oscars of the eco-world were taking place in Glasgow’s Science Centre – home to the second-tier, corporate-tinged Green Zone – and were the culmination of two weeks of in-person and virtual screenings. While COP has been rightly criticised for excluding voices of those on the frontline, the CCFF projected them onto an IMAX screen. The awards themselves were the first-ever environmental film awards open exclusively to filmmakers who…

When I first gave up drinking I didn’t want to become one of those judgey twats who avoids the pub. I still wanted to socialise with people who were drinking. To be honest, I didn’t have much alternative. Pretty much everyone I knew drank. I was lucky. My oldest mates just accepted the fact I’d quit booze without barely a mention. They didn’t seem to have any issue with getting wankered in my company and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. But slowly – and without ever making the decision consciously – I have drifted away from nights out, particularly ones in the pub. I started out wanting to carry on living the same old social life only without the booze and drugs. But I’m almost seven years…

Jess Gillam The soprano saxophone’s spiky beats melt into long sighs. Positioned between two grand pianos, the soloist perfectly understands composer Graham Fitkin’s funky, jazz-minimalist piece Hard Fairy (1994). The saxophonist is Jess Gillam, the 23-year-old Ulverston virtuoso whose has been impressing listeners ever since she appeared on BBC Young Musician in 2016 – the first saxophone player to make the finals. The Fitkin performance was part of Gillam’s latest recital at Wigmore Hall, London, where she is currently artist-in-residence. Gillam’s exhilarating concert followed a mixtape format, placing a transcription of a Telemann sonata alongside arrangements of pieces by Thom Yorke and Chilly Gonzales. Kings Place also has a saxophonist in residence: Cassie Kinoshi unveils her latest piece as part of London Unwrapped, where she is joined by Aurora Orchestra…

WORDS: JULIA REITER Mars (sort of) 1 Last week we reported on chillies spicing up the diet of astronauts on the International Space Station. The good news is, if we ever reach Mars we’ll be able to add tomatoes to the menu. Ketchup king Heinz has launched a special edition of its classic condiment made from tomatoes grown in an extreme environment replicating the red planet. “From analysing the soil from Martian conditions two years ago to harvesting now, it’s been a journey that’s proved that, wherever we end up, Heinz Tomato Ketchup will still be enjoyed for generations to come,” said Cristina Kenz of Kraft Heinz. Portugal 2 As the world is working out the new work-life balance, Portugal is leading the way. A new law has been passed…

Strictly Come Dancing is seriously good Saturday night television. A mainstream light entertainment show that is currently doing some heavy lifting. The show, hosted by Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman is raising the mood of the country. Viewing figures have risen from a relatively low (for Strictly) 8.5 million for the launch show in September to a rollicking 10.5 million – with a higher percentage of the total Saturday night audience than even last year. Strictly offers a vital window of joy during the dark days of another pandemic winter. Talk about public service broadcasting – the way the show kept our spirits up last year, despite strict social distancing rules and the lack of audience making it challenging to bring the Saturday night sizzle and sparkle, was truly heroic.…

I left school when I was 15 and I had to take an apprenticeship in an engineering factory. I hated it, but it was my father’s wish that I should have a good engineering job. I did it for about a year but my wish was to be in showbusiness. I didn’t know at the age of 16 that I was going to be a singer though. It was a year later, when I was 17, that I got up and sang in a club and people liked it. I just got up and sang, because I had courage after having a pint of beer, which I shouldn’t have had. The people stood up, and they never did that when I played the saxophone. Then they came over and asked,…

1 Pippi Longstocking By Astrid Lindgren, illustrated by Lauren Child The ultimate rebel girl… living on her own, doing what she wants, answering to no one. I loved it, my daughters loved it, and now my granddaughters do too! 2 Empress & Aniya By Candice Carty-Williams A warm and insightful story about real friendship; friendship that requires Aniya to think long and hard about her peer group. Empress is a rebel by nature, so her personal journey takes her in a different direction. 3 Stone Girl Bone Girl By Laurence Anholt, illustrated by Sheila Moxley The true story of Mary Anning, who discovered an ichthyosaurus in 1811 when she was only 12. She was endlessly teased at school for her interest in fossils, but she ignored the…

Many good things start with a tickle. The Mr Men and Little Miss books are an example. When Adam Hargreaves was six years old, he asked his father Roger what a tickle looked like – and an iconic series of children’s books was born. Mr Tickle was published in 1971 and since then the series has sold an estimated 250 million copies – with another title sold somewhere in the world by the time you finish reading this sentence. “It’s an extraordinary number of books, I find it quite mind boggling,” Adam Hargreaves, now 58, says. He has spent the year reflecting on the 50th anniversary of Mr Men, who were joined by Little Miss characters in 1981. There are now over 90 inhabitants of the Mr Men and Little…

A pair of glittery red heels fills the shot; a baseball bat swings ominously. The camera pans up to reveal the bat-wielder as Mariah Carey, clad in a dazzling ballgown. The singer creeps out of the house and smashes a pumpkin: Halloween is over and Christmas can begin! How did Carey come to be in charge of our calendars? Because, for lots of people, the festivities only really start when they hear All I Want for Christmas is You , the 1994 hit that made the American singer a household name. For others, it might be John Williams’s evocative soundtrack to Home Alone or the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge singing Coventry Carol . Our annual musical associations quickly become traditions; listening, singing and playing is deeply integrated into celebrations.…

The ‘lockdown project’ rapidly became a cliché: The bread-baking, bassoon-playing, Japanese-learning homeworker battling through the ennui of isolation. And yet that drive to find something new to occupy oneself with during a time of intense anxiety and separation was certainly real, and even healthy. Although I didn’t bake sourdough as my wife did, from March 2020 I searched for that special something to ease my lockdown woes. I sampled military rations from Lithuania; I became addicted to reviews of luxury yachts on YouTube; I took up learning Finnish. None of these were enough though. I needed something more interactive, more quixotic and more enthralling. And I found that something in the multilingual warning messages inside Kinder Surprise Eggs. The warning message and I had a history. The 37 languages on…

I’m thankful to The Big Issue – I thought it was brilliant what they did for vendors during lockdown STUART DRUCKER, 48 I’ve just returned to The Big Issue after being away for three years. When I was selling before I was in rehab because I was coming off the drink and the drugs and I wanted to keep my mind going. The Big Issue was amazing with me. The staff got me to the point where I was doing a 5k run and a 10k run and I owe them a lot. I stopped selling because I got a flat when I was coming out of rehab and then I got a job working at Asda as a butcher and a fishmonger. But just before Covid they closed the…