Table of contents for 9/9/2024 in The Big Issue

Libraries are a boundless resource. We must keep their lights on It’s not a surprise. There is a depressing metronomic regularity to the news, but it’s not a surprise. Libraries are in crisis. And the country greets the details with a polite frown and a shrug. Because, you know, nobody ever died because of a library closing, did they? Well… did they? The figures are coarse. Since 2016, more than 180 council-run libraries have been closed or passed to volunteer groups in the UK. Deprived communities take the hammering hardest, being four times more likely to lose theirs. Research suggests this has so far cost 2,000 jobs. So far, because 950 more libraries are at risk. That’s a third of those left. If it wasn’t for volunteers, the picture would…

I was a PhD student, he the songwriter of the nation’s fave pop combo, marrying Beatles-level tunefulness with Lydon-esque punk swagger and a good turn of phrase in his lyrics (best of the bunch being “sniffing in a tissue, selling the Big Issue”). What better home, then, for wider dissemination of the interview I bagged with Noel Gallagher for my thesis on the decline of idealism, than that esteemed organ? Noel’s wise words in 1999 addressed my thesis topic “youth culture”: one of substance and substances which provided great cover for exploring all sorts of things in the name of research. After cornering him at an NME awards night, I netted a phone interview for a quieter moment via a landline number he wrote on a cassette liner card for…

Gail Porter was one of the most famous faces of the 1990s. The Scottish presenter started out on kids’ TV before becoming a staple of the schedules, with huge tabloid interest too. Then, after developing alopecia in 2005, and experiencing mental health issues, Porter found herself homeless. She spent time sofa surfing and even a brief spell rough sleeping in London’s Hampstead Heath. The memory of trying to keep her clothes clean while finding a roof over her head has stayed with her. “If I got money I’d end up going to the laundrette and that was a good tenner gone,” she tells Big Issue. “I wanted my clothes to be clean and give myself a little bit of self-respect. But anything costs you money. “I’d go into the laundrette…

Since publishers have finally recognised horror as a legitimate art form, the genre has become a necessary acquisition for each publishing house. But the lifting of horror to supposed “literary” heights has had detrimental effects, as publishers aiming for commercial success label anything vaguely haunting with the horror moniker. Titles claiming to be literary horror often leave their monsters lurking in the shadows never having the guts to reach out and grab the reader. I can confirm that this is not the case for Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium. The novel dabbles in folklore and feminist mythmaking to topple the literary canon established by Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, which crescendos into a frightening finale worthy of any scream queen. Tokarczuk uses rich and textured prose to create terror in the valley.…

CULTURE INTERVIEW Alexandra Roach It’s guaranteed to be a runaway smash. New BBC thrill ride Nightsleeper is set onboard a Glasgow to London overnight train that’s electronically hijacked (hackjacked) by an entity known only as ‘Driver’. The consequences of disaster would be huge, especially for the Scottish acting industry as so many familiar faces play passengers (James Cosmo, Sharon Rooney, Sharon Small, Katie Leung and more). All the strangers on the train are carrying a lot of baggage, revealed during the twisty journey. Hoping to save the day are off-duty cop Joe Roag, played by Peaky Blinders and Gangs of London’s Joe Cole, with Alexandra Roach’s Abby Aysgarth directing the response from the National Cyber Security Centre. Roach is best known for police drama No Offence and last…

CLAUDE WILLIAMS, 63 I’m struggling a bit at the minute but it’s all good. Everything happens for a reason. I’ve been selling the Big Issue about 10 weeks this time but I’ve sold the magazine before. I started because: 1. I needed some money, 2. I needed to be doing something more active in the daytime and 3. I think it’s a good magazine and I want to promote what they’re doing. I think if you look a little deeper at what the Big Issue does, they are quite helpful and positive people. I have done criminal things in the past but I don’t make a habit out of it. I’ve been to jail three times and I came in as a standard prisoner and left as super enhanced. I…

EXCLUSIVE Asylum seeker still waiting for a Home Office decision after 16 years trapped in limbo: ‘It’s degrading and humiliating’ By Greg BarradaleBig Issue senior reporter An asylum seeker has waited 16 years for a decision on their claim, the longest wait on record in Home Office figures obtained by Big Issue. Charities slammed the wait for an initial decision, totalling 6,008 days, as an example of the UK’s broken asylum system, and said long waits harmed those seeking asylum. A total of 19 asylum seekers have waited 10 or more years for a decision, the figures also revealed. “These are appalling figures, indicative of a dysfunctional asylum system that has consistently failed to make swift decisions and instead left people in a cruel limbo, stopped from working and unable…

Labour promised us a rose garden, but instead we got déjà vu A rather cheeky article by Matt Rudd appeared in The Sunday Times recently. The touch of the piece was light and kindly, not often to be found in major newspapers. It challenged the gloom perpetrated by Keir Starmer in what has become quickly known as The Rose Garden Speech; a message from the gardens of 10 Downing Street packed full of grim warnings. The speech may go down in recent political history as a brave attempt at sobering up the electorate, or a foolhardy piece of thoughtlessness that threw away any optimism left over from the election. Realism was stamped all over it. It echoed the speeches made by David Cameron and George Osbourne after the Tories came…

CONSPIRACY THEORIES Welcome to the edge. This is Brimstone Head on Fogo Island, Newfoundland. Watch your step. According to some, this very spot is poised precariously on the edge of our flat Earth. For his latest book, professional mischief-maker turned travel writer Dom Joly journeyed to sites associated with mystery, intrigue, cover-ups and conspiracy: Dealey Plaza, Roswell, Finland (enjoy the internet rabbit hole you’ll fall down when you discover that some believe the country doesn’t exist) and Newfoundland. Fogo Island supposedly marks one of the corners of the flat Earth, the others being Papua New Guinea and the Greek island of Hydra – the line between those two intersecting the site of the Bermuda Triangle, which explains A LOT. Joly travelled to Brimstone Head with John, a Newfoundlander who believes…

When I was 16 I was in boarding school, preoccupied with passing my A levels so I could get the hell out of school. I was very interested in sports – football and boxing. And trying to find my friend group, and trying to figure out where I was with that friend group. And trying to figure out who I was as well which, of course, was a complete mystery. If you met the 16-year-old me the first thing you’d think is, cut your hair. Somehow, though I was in a Catholic boarding school, they were fairly lax about our appearance. And my hair was quite long. I looked like, remember that movie No Country for Old Men – Javier Bardem has that really atrocious haircut? That’s what I had.…

On 17 October 1956, a significant milestone was marked for both the newly established nuclear industry and for British national pride. At 12.16pm, in the presence of numerous dignitaries and the press, Queen Elizabeth II ceremonially pulled a lever, initiating the flow of electricity from the Calder Hall Nuclear Power Station in Cumbria to the National Grid. Subsequently, Workington, 15 miles up the coast became the first town in the world to be powered by nuclear energy. The Daily Express reported on this development breathlessly: ‘A-Power: It’s Here! In Action! The First Dinners are Cooked!’ The excitement spawned by this advancement was not just around the technology’s electricity-generating potential but for Britain’s standing on the world stage, something that had taken a serious battering in recent years. Another publication reported:…

From the stage at Towersey Festival, the planes fly. I have three helpers, Islay, Trystan and Eleanor (I am guessing five, seven and 34 years old). When I finish reading a poem, I hand them paper copies and they fold them up with great care and they are propelled through the air into the audience. At the end of the show, I am surprised by the joyous reaction. It is harder to judge a successful gig in the moment. When I was predominantly meant to be a comedian, there was a sense of success based on the volume of laughter. Even then, the paranoia of the performer could psychosomatically dull the noise of laughter and amplify any possibility of derision. But laughter is not a perfect way of judging the…

HOMELESSNESS People experiencing homelessness wore trackers on the streets of London for three months as part of an innovative study to find out where rough sleepers go in a bid to help them access more support. The study – the first of its kind in the UK – saw academics from the University of Roehampton team up with charity Sutton Night Watch to track nine anonymous people who are homeless in Sutton, South London, for three months each, between August 2023 and February 2024. Heatmaps from their movements gave researchers an insight into where people sleep on the street, areas they avoid due to the risk of theft or violence, as well as how weather conditions influenced where they went. Dr Melissa Jogie, the academic behind the research, said she…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue The riot act The scenes of far-right thuggery were heartbreaking, as it was unleashed on those who need our understanding and support most. Was I surprised – answer no. Fourteen years of north/south division, lack of social investment, cutbacks against those most in need, a fertile breeding ground for ignorance and hate via the far-right beast in our midst. For those so unfairly targeted by the erstwhile Brown Shirt copycats, we must remember that the west in many ways helped create the refugee crisis through its failed military enterprises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Sudan. Before anyone believes I’m criticising our brave armed forces I am not! The failure is…

Whatever you call it – misinformation, fake news, alternative facts, or any one of a dozen other names – bad information is unavoidable in our modern media landscape. Every day there is a new dodgy rumour, a faked image designed to inflame hate, an AI deepfake or a politician telling a false story. Most of these, though, are largely harmless. They go out, they spread (or fail to do so), people spend some time debunking them (usually ineffectually), and they’re quickly forgotten. Others are different. When Donald Trump spread the false narrative that he had actually ‘won’ the 2020 election it set off a chain of events that culminated in the 6 Jan assault on the US Capitol. When a handful of Twitter accounts invented and then spread the false…

Originally from Malaysia, Sohanpal left a post-9/11 United States for the UK and built a successful career. But nearly 20 years later, he found himself at the heart of the Home Office’s “hostile environment” tactics against asylum seekers and was pushed into homelessness. His artworks and writings reflect some of his experiences. They have featured in books including The Book of Homelessness – the first graphic novel created by homeless people. Sohanpal’s latest artwork, titled Sad Eyes, is a mixture of oil paint, spray paint and acrylic. “I was seeing the world with great sadness,” he explains. “Walking in the cold and the rain, people just walk by as if you don’t exist. Because you are homeless it’s as if you are invisible. What they don’t see is that you…

There aren’t many jokes in Civil War, writer-director Alex Garland’s recent unsettling movie about a near-future USA fracturing into armed conflict. But there is one laugh in an early scene when veteran war photographer Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) is buttonholed by a wannabe snapper. “You have the same name as my hero: Lee Miller,” gushes the young fangirl. “Do you know her stuff ?” (This is like going up to Noel Gallagher and saying: “I love your band. Do you know The Beatles?”) Dunst’s deadpan reaction in the face of such naive enthusiasm is sublime. But then – as if to underline that Garland himself certainly knows who Lee Miller is – Civil War cuts to a shot of Dunst soaking in the tub of a tiled hotel bathroom. It’s…

Wah Wah 45s, the UK independent record label synonymous with homegrown danceable soul, jazz, funk, dub, disco and afrobeat, turns 25 this month. It seems fitting that it began life on the dancefloor. “Wah Wah began as a club night in the early ’90s, run by Hospital Records label boss Chris Goss and his late brother Simon when they were students,” Dom Servini, DJ, broadcaster and current boss of Wah Wah 45s, tells me. “Having proved its worth at The Albany in the West End, the night was brought to The Jazz Cafe in Camden in the late ’90s by booker Adrian Gibson. Adrian suggested to Chris and Simon that they start a record label to reflect the music they were playing at their night – classic wah wah funk,…