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Issue 111

Monthly newspaper and online publication targeting 18 to 35 year olds. The ultimate guide to the hottest parties, going out and having fun. Music, fashion, film, travel, festivals, technology, comedy, and parties! London, Barcelona, Miami and Ibiza.

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From the dismal weather to the tacky TV shows, this collection of loosely connected tales of the supernatural is saturated with the dreariest details of UK life, along with the island's distinct affection for deadpan, miserabilist humour. Only in Britain would a teenager complain about O2's lack of reception while he's being stalked by a demonic horned beast. It's eccentric, culturally informed touches like this that grant Ghost Stories both its endearing personality and its Brexit-era resonance. Nyman stars as Professor Phillip Goodman, an author and TV star known for debunking psychics and supernatural sightings. Out of the blue, the sceptical Englishman one day receives a message from Charles Cameron (Leonard Byrne), a famed Scottish paranormal investigator from the 1970s. Cameron challenges Goodman to investigate three cases that he himself was never able to solve, leading the drama into a series of spooky episodes recalled mostly via flashback. Each of the film's three short stories consist of a slowly escalating encounter with some otherworldly presence – a security guard on his night shift (Paul Whitehouse) meets a creepy ghost girl; a stressed out millennial (Alex Lawther) is pursued through the woods by the aforementioned goat-like creature; a wealthy financier (Martin Freeman) is tormented by a poltergeist in his country home – and admittedly, none of them offer anything particularly new on paper. It is only through Dyson and Nyman's witty writing and taut direction that this trio of tales and Goodman's grim overarching journey come alive as a darkly comic saga of grief, despair, loneliness and regret. The demons evoked here are national as well as personal, channelling a cavalcade of cultural spectres that haunt the homes and families of Britain, from class tensions to the various forms of bigotry and prejudice that simmer just below the surface of this fallen empire. More at Guestlist.net 2018 / ISSUE 111 23 FILM In a world where the leader of the labour party, who was once arrested for fighting racists, is now an alleged anti-Semite, where people can make themselves better looking in a click of a button and where the most orange man in politics claims to have normal adult sized hands, it can be very hard to know what to believe anymore. We are always told about the importance of voting, but at the end of the day, is ticking a box on a piece of paper once every four years really enough to ensure that our voices are heard? This is something Brett Hennig explores in his TED Talk, which focuses on the topic of sortition, which is the process of randomly selecting people to govern instead of voting them into office. At first, the idea of randomly selected people being allowed to govern seems absurd, but as Hennig explains, it would result in those in power being more likely to share the same background and views as members of the public. This would lead to them being more likely to share the same concerns as regular folk, as opposed to elected politicians, who, as we all know, are often out of touch with the will of the people. If sortition were implemented, people of all races, ages, and backgrounds would be represented in government, which would mean that everybody's voice would be heard, so nobody would be silenced. Hennig also proposes that the randomly selected candidates should regularly meet with experts to advise them on certain topics so that they can have the best knowledge when it comes to passing laws and policies. In his opinion, the only major downside to sortition would be the end of career politicians, a group of people he clearly does not hold in high regard. Hennig acknowledges that the prospect might not seem plausible at first, although he explains that sortition was used successfully in Ancient Athens through the use of a device known as a Kleroterion, and that countries like France and Scotland are currently campaigning to implement citizen's senates. Not everybody will agree with him, but Hennig clearly states that he feels sortition is vastly superior to electing leaders, and he hopes for it to receive more mainstream recognition. As he says, change does happen eventually, it is just a matter of when and how. Sortition is too vast a topic to be fully examined in a nine- minute video, so be sure to visit the Sortition Foundation's website to learn more. Whilst it is certainly not a concept which everybody will support, sortition is still worthy of further examination. BRETT HENNIG ASKS WHAT IF WE REPLACED POLITICIANS WITH RANDOMLY SELECTED PEOPLE? FEATURED TED HYPERNORMALISATION IS THE MUST SEE DOCUMENTARY FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO KNOW THE TRUTH! However, Adam Curtis's latest documentary HyperNormalisation, has so many more facts as a post-truth documentary in its 2-hour 46-minute running time than have been said since modern politics began. Despite the film firstly seeming like the sort of thing a first-year student would watch as a right of passage into the conspiracy theorists' stoner club, HyperNormalisation is a genuinely entertaining and insightful look into the last 40 years of the politics, internet and journalism that has been spoon fed into our spongy and unquestioning minds. But guess what? It turns out to all be lies! That is, if you trust and don't question the documentary that is telling us it is all lies. Paranoid or not, everyone needs to check out the film that shows footage and interviews not normally shown on British TV and that can lead us to think differently about the world around us. HyperNormalisation is currently being shown on BBC iPlayer and is a serious must see for anyone who is sick of being treated like we can't see the truth. In addition to perhaps being the most engrossing British horror film of recent years, Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman's Ghost Stories might also be the most British. GHOST STORIES' IS A VERY BRITISH JOURNEY INTO THE SUPERNATURAL

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