The coastal idyll of lazy summer days filled with walks on the beach and wild swimming (or what locals call swimming), couldn’t be further from the truth for many who were born and raised on the edge of Britain.
Writer Nataha Carthen calls it the “salt belt of deprivation”. In this week’s issue, she writes all about it. Coastal homelessness and rough sleeping is not new to those who live around and near to the coast, but it often goes unnoticed due to the breadth and scale of living so close to nature; basically there are more places in which to take shelter.
But that’s not the only thing in our special coastal issue. We ask how you can be a good staycationer, whether we need a poet in every port, and examine the helter skelter of British politics.
Inside the Big Issue
A poet in every port
The Southbank Centre’s flagship project, A Poet in Every Port, is taking a mobile National Poetry Library to 11 coastal towns across the UK. At each port, from Penzance to Bangor, Southend, Blackpool, North Uist and more, there will be events, workshops and readings, plus a studio in which to record your own poetry. The whole shebang is inspired by the travelling exhibitions of the Festival of Britain in 1951. In this week’s issue, we explore why it matters.
Airbnb kills communities. Is it time for a ban?
When a street is full of short-term lets, where permanent households are in the minority, does a community die?
Why privatisation is ruining your life
Privatisation in the 1980s and ’90s was a flagship policy of the Thatcher era. The country’s utilities, along with two million council houses, have since been sold off. Some 40 years on, water, energy and social housing are all in crisis.
