Get one, give one
I share Dr Glasbey’s thoughts on people donating a Covid-19 vaccine to
someone worse o�f elsewhere [Locked down but not out, February 15].
Any of us in the UK who wants one will receive a vaccine this year for free,
whilst extremely poor, sick, vulnerable or elderly people in developing
countries will not be given this opportunity; they will continue to su�fer,
and many of them die, simply because of where they live.
I have researched this issue and found there is something we can all
do to help. Covax is a global campaign to provide Covid-19 vaccinations
to people in the world’s poorest countries. It’s mainly being funded by
donations from Western governments but it still requires more funds
to buy and deliver all of the doses it requires. We can “pay it forward” by
donating the cost of our vaccination, or whatever we can a�ford or feel
comfortable with, to Covax. Get One, Give One. Simple. I’ve been thinking
about how much we should donate when we get our jab because Gavi,
which runs Covax, tells me it’s not possible to estimate the cost of buying
and administering di�ferent vaccines in hard to reach areas. I think
a reasonable starting point is the price of a private �lu jab in the UK:
around £1 4. Duncan Lancashire@bigissue@McBrideME
Lying in bed, reading @BigIssue and
it’s still angers me to see the picture of people
having to queue in the snow at a foodbank in
Glasgow. To have people having to rely on these
amazing services, is a travesty! Thank you to the
people who have helped others.@EllaJP
Thanks to @MarianKeyes for recommending Cold Comfort Farm
in last week’s @BigIssue. I read it in two sittings on my Kindle. Such a
quirky, funny, unique book. I had no idea what I’d missed all these years.@HarbourHousing
A really important message from @PeteKrykant_OPC in this
piece with @BigIssue. “There’s no mistaking what we are and what
we’re doing. The ambulance is really symbolic. We’re not hiding, this is a
health response to a health issue.”@idcampbellart
Just got my @BigIssue in the post, brilliant
feature on Trainspotting... beside it is West Coast
Magazine from 1992 , with a short story by
@IrvineWelsh featuring Spud, Sick Boy, and
Renton (I had a short story in the fold-out
Young People’s Supplement!).he £1m fi gure is signifi cant. It keeps rolling,
proudly, around in my mind.
To date, since the start of the Covid crisis, The Big
Issue has given £1m to our vendors.
That fact bears repeating. The very thought of it just knocks
my socks o�f.
It’s not all cash. There have been various kinds of support,
including shopping vouchers and utility top-up cards. On
one occasion, The Big Issue bought a vendor, laid-low by a
chronic condition, housebound and feeling the walls close in,
a reconditioned rowing machine. It changed her life. I love
that story.
It was a big change for The Big Issue to start handing funds
out. Since our launch nearly 30 years ago, under the investment
of Gordon Roddick and the rocket propulsion of John Bird, we
have been a hand-up organisation. The Hand Up Not a Handout
mantra has been so hardwired into our DNA that sta�f wake in
the middle of the night and roar it at the walls.
And then Covid turned everything on its head. We had to put
our hand out so that we could pass funds along to our vendors.
They could not trade, so we had to help.
I say we. The reality is this couldn’t have happened without
you. If you hadn’t, in your thousands, in your tens of thousands,
supported us, we’d have been gone. And our vendors would have
been in a world of trouble.
But you subscribed and you donated, and you encouraged
and you sent messages and notes to us and to your vendors. You
directed subscriptions to individual vendors through the online
map we built.
And here we are, handing out £1m, and more (!), to some of
the most vulnerable people in Britain.
We’re not a government agency. We can’t call on the infi nite
pockets of a quiet benefactor. Yet in the grip of the worst
peacetime crisis in a century, an event that threatened our
very existence, we galvanised and found a way to get over
£1m out the door to people who needed it most. It makes me
feel very proud.
Part of a journalist’s role is to maintain a sharpened cynicism,
to not take what we’re told immediately but to challenge and to
deliver facts and truth, hopefully with some style. Don’t make it
boring. Also, journalists are the most incredible gossips. But that
isn’t really relevant here.
The thing is, while there remains a need to keep the antennae
up for shysters and double-talkers and crooks, from wherever
they emerge, Covid has proved something that hopefully will
remain; people are good. People, the great majority, want to
help. The examples are boundless just now. I saw a tweet as I
sat to write this from a councillor in Lewisham who was looking
a�ter a foodbank. He said a woman had come in and donated
£500. She had been saving it for a long weekend away with her
husband. But her husband had died. She lived nearby and she
had seen people queuing for food. She felt they could really use
the money. Her late husband would have approved, she said.
I’d rather fi nd stories like that just now. About people going
out and quietly doing good.
Like you all have. You’ve helped us give away £1m. That’s a hell
of a story.TThanks
a millionPaul McNamee is editor of The Big Issue
[email protected]
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