Innholdsfortegnelse for 3/4/2024 i The Big Issue

A dubious milestone was reached at the end of January: the one thousandth fact check of a statement by Donald Trump undertaken by the website Politifact. Trump’s thousandth claim? That the Democrats had “used Covid to cheat” in the 2020 election. Meanwhile in the UK, the charity Full Fact reported that 50 MPs, including two prime ministers, cabinet and shadow cabinet ministers, declined to correct false, unevidenced or misleading claims in 2022. The statistics regulator had to write to the government at least 10 times to challenge it on its use of statistics or other data. As election year grinds on in both the US and UK, we can expect much more of this sort of thing. Does it matter? Isn’t playing fast and loose with the facts an inevitable…

RNLI AT 200 Like all good British ideas, it was born in a pub. As Sir William Hillary gathered a crowd in a London tavern two centuries ago, something radical became a reality: an organisation to rescue those stranded at sea. What began as the ‘Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck’ is now known by four letters: RNLI. And it celebrates its 200th anniversary on 4 March. Throughout its history, the RNLI enjoyed relatively little controversy as it went about the dangerous work of saving over 144,000 lives. Yet recently it’s been under attack. Fleeing global conflicts, people risk their lives to cross the English channel in small boats and claim asylum in the UK. Many die. The RNLI steps in to save them.…

At 16, I was already really into my band. Kool & The Gang started, with a different name, in Jersey City, New Jersey when I was 14. We were called the Jazziacs at the time, and this was 1964. So it’s been 60 years this year. My brother was into John Coltrane; George Brown, my drummer, was into ‘Philly’ Joe Jones; Dennis Thomas, another original member, was into Cannonball Adderley; Ricky Westfield was into Herbie Hancock. We used to rehearse in a church hall with a little stage room. People like Pharoah Sanders and McCoy Tyner would come over for Sunday jams. I had three things going on – I could be a mechanic or a boxer, but I became Kool in Kool & The Gang. My father had wanted…

Should they get elected, the Labour Party have said they will train up “positive male influencers” to go into schools and teach young lads not to be dickheads. This, they reckon, is a necessary response to the insidious influence of internet weirdos like Andrew Tate. Tate, in case you don’t know, is a buffed-up manchild who chomps cigars and brags about his fast cars on social media. Somehow, he has become a role model to millions of young men across the globe who buy into his daft worldview (based on throwback ideas of ‘tough guy’ masculinity and a fear of women, veiled thinly behind confused, shouty, anti-feminist rhetoric). He truly is the dick’s dick. The sort of bloke who almost certainly had no mates at school and struggled to ever…

Without an endless supply of cash, we have to choose what we spend our money on. This is called prioritising, and the easiest way to do it is by thinking about needs and wants. Needs are things we must have to survive, like healthy food and clean water. Wants are nice to have, like sweets or a new bike, but we don’t need them to live. Learning to prioritise buying things you need before splashing out on stuff you want helps you make the most of your money. How it all adds up Work out the cost of a trip to the cinema, including bus fares, tickets and snacks for the show. Then write down how much you’d spend on a home movie night, buying treats from a shop. When…

COUNCIL TAX There’s a council tax hit coming to millions – thanks to a decade of broke local authorities On 1 April, millions of households in the UK will get poorer. Councils, desperately fighting to balance the books, plan to raise council tax as high as they can. Towns and cities are bankrupt and local government – the unglamorous web of bin collections, social care, and education that keeps the country running – is falling apart. Over half of council leaders in England warn their authorities are likely to go bust within the next parliament. And the most vulnerable will bear the brunt. If you’re lucky enough to live in an area without a bankrupt council, you’re likely to be £100 worse off. Council tax hikes are normally limited to…

A few Fridays ago I took a train from London to Leamington Spa, last visited by me over 50 years ago. To go to a pub called Murphy’s Bar on a corner in central Leamington to sing It’s Now or Never by Elvis Presley. Landlord Kevin Murphy gave the night over to a fundraising for Safeline, a charity devoted to helping people survive sexual abuse, started 30 years ago. A third of people with drink and drugs addiction issues have been sexually molested in childhood and early life. I was met at the station by a silent Rebecca Davidson, a new young local councillor for Leamington who had asked me to come along and make a fool of myself. Her silence was to last for 24 hours and was part…

The first six weeks of the Suevic’s voyage from Australia to Liverpool were uneventful – but on 17 March 1907, the ship sailed into a fog and ran aground on a reef off the Cornish coast. For 16 stormy hours, 60 crew members from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution battled to bring all 456 of the people on board safely back to land. Every one of the rescuers was a volunteer. Not a single life was lost. The Suevic rescue was unusual in its scale – no other single RNLI operation has saved so many lives – but not its type. In its two hundred year history, the charity’s lifeboats and lifeguards have saved over 144,000 people. Its crews rescued sailors whose ships were torpedoed in the First World War;…

GIGS The satisfying solo project For about 20 years now, I’ve made a habit of going to gigs alone. Mainly out of necessity – such is the solitary, slightly strange life of the music reviewer (tiny fiddle). But increasingly, it’s something I do by choice. More and more so, it’s a ritual I’ve come to love. When I first started getting commissioned to write about concerts in Scotland for newspapers and magazines as a young freelance journalist straight out of uni, I couldn’t believe my luck. Something which for ages I had paid to do for fun with my mates, suddenly I was making money from. Best job in the world. But the caveat was becoming accustomed to going to gigs by myself. Either because the PR company wouldn’t stump…

MARK DRANSFIELD, 59 I started selling the Big Issue 10 years ago, first in Leeds where I live, but I have been here since 2018. As soon as they asked me if I would like a pitch in Hebden Bridge, I said yes straight away and I was there the next day. I’d only been through the town before but everyone said they were nice people there and they are. But what I didn’t know was that I’d be sharing a pitch with a family of geese! They live in the grounds of the church opposite, but at least two of them – Mr and Mrs – head across the road regularly to the Co-op car park. They’re usually here when I arrive but if not, I reprimand them for…

In curious symmetry this week Big Issue has startling figures about what the online world is doing to us, and something of a solution. Which is handy. The renowned psychologist and neuroscientist Daniel Freeman reveals an incredible statistic. When he surveyed 10,000 UK adults for a new study into conspiracy thinking he found that over a quarter of them believed there was a conspiracy against them. He quoted an earlier study that found almost 40% of people believed that Covid lockdown might be an excuse to impose mass surveillance. When the internet offers rich pickings for whatever delusional road you want to race down, it’s not hard to see how external influence can tip towards dangerous psychosis, or at least add rough salt to troubled minds. Healthcare professionals speak of…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue False profits The report by Big Issue into private providers of fostering services [Issue 1602, 12 February] raises further questions about the role of profit in children’s social care. We need a proper discussion on how the system is working and we absolutely cannot allow children to be seen as commodities. @KatharineSJ Cycle of poverty Brexit seemed to be the start to a new UK order. An absolutely diabolical and chaotic order. Covid hit; a several-year lockdown; recession; cost of living crisis; extortionate energy bills; strikes; and the worst is forced migration to a broken, unfit for purpose, benefits system – universal credit. According to Big Issue, “All claimants will be…

Gareth Ward’s voice breaks as he remembers his dad Norman, who took his own life after a 15-year battle with terminal cancer. He ended his pain, but it plunged the family into trauma they are still coping with years later. Gareth is now a passionate campaigner for assisted dying. Assisted dying is illegal in the UK but the law often turns a blind eye to people going to Dignitas in Switzerland. Accompanying loved ones risk prosecution, with a maximum sentence of 14 years, but the majority of cases do not lead to charges. Recent polling shows that two-thirds of British people back a change in the law. Labour leader Keir Starmer has expressed his support. Assisted dying bills in the Isle of Man, Jersey and Scotland are set to move…

REVIEWS The mammoth risks of playing God with nature Speculative fiction can draw on the cutting edge of societal and technological change and extrapolate that into the future, making commentary on the state of the world right now. This week we have two books that do exactly that in very different ways. First up is The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler. The American author made a splash last year with his debut, The Mountain in the Sea, which examined human, animal and AI consciousness in a near-future dystopia. The Tusks of Extinction is a tight and focused novella which explores similar themes, this time with even more emotional impact. The protagonist is Dr Damira Khismatullina, the world’s foremost expert on elephant behaviour, in a near future when elephants are…

Carol Wilson’s legs felt like jelly as she walked through the tunnel of Mexico’s largest football stadium. Tens of thousands of people roared and waved as they waited for a game of women’s football. It turned to white noise when she got onto the pitch. The 19-year-old England captain stood still absorbing it for a moment. It was a scorching August day, and the Azteca Stadium magnified the sun. This was the 1971 Women’s World Cup. It is the largest event in women’s sporting history with games reaching more than 100,000 spectators – but it remains unrecognised by football associations and was largely forgotten for 50 years. Wilson’s team was banned from playing football again. A new documentary Copa 71, produced by Venus and Serena Williams, tells the extraordinary story…

BIG ISSUE RECIPE COLLECTION Get stuffed and go posh We’ve been delighted by the delicious recipes that readers have sent in since we launched our drive to collect budget-friendly dishes. But we’re still hungry for more This week, two volunteers at FoodCycle got in touch to share meals that go down nicely. They run community meals across the country, tackling food waste, poverty and loneliness all at once. On their website they have a catalogue of recipes donated by FoodCycle staff or volunteers, which you can search by ingredient – the idea being you’re able to use up anything you have knocking around. They also have ideas for those who may not have access to kitchens. For now enjoy this Greek dish and a twist on a British staple. foodcycle.org.uk/recipes…

Hopefully you’ve learned that while spending is fun, saving is important. There are different ways to save – in a piggy bank or in a real bank, for example. Most banks offer an app, so you can keep track of your money really easily. Some even let you separate your account into different sections, so your spending money and savings are kept apart. Just like adults, kids can get interest on their money when it’s in the bank. While it’s not a huge amount, this is free money that the bank gives you for keeping your savings with them. And interest rates are a bit higher now than they have been recently, so that means the bank will be paying you that little bit more. To help your money tree…