Half Cut Barber

Frances Barber (ask your parents) had another of her notorious twitter meltdowns last night. What set her off on her alcohol fuelled keyboard warrior binge? Well, firstly it was London's stance on Uber, then it was the terrorist attack on London Bridge. Naturally, for someone like Barber, all roads lead to Jeremy Corbyn and the stage was set for another of her disturbing nonsensical rants.

Her feed was immediately beset with advice. Go to bed, stop drinking and seek help seemed to be the thrust of this, but Barber is not one to accept the kindness of strangers and it wasn't long before she claimed that they were all being personally sent by Aaron Bastani, or 'Asshole Bastardi' as she preferred to call him. 

Frances Barber needs help, but I fear she is beyond it. Her social media appears a litany of hatred and bile. Anti-Islamic, anti-Labour, anti-Scottish independance, transphobic and Pro-Zionist. She sees conspiracy theories everywhere, borne of an unhealthy fixation with Jeremy Corbyn. This is a woman who claimed that she personally knew the old Labour activist and Black British woman by the name of Margaret Cutting from Liverpool; that she was an inspiration to her when she too was a member of the Party in the early '80s. Except Cutting was conclusively proven to not exist. During the previous terrorist attack on London Bridge, Barber responded to a tweet from a Muslim who was reminding everyone that real Muslims are not terrorists with the words "Then please stop killing us". For further examples of disgust Ms Barber has for all things Muslim, look at the time she mistook Brighton Pavilion for a mosque or her contretemps with a cab driver of the Islamic faith. For Barber, it's a them and us society and the Muslim community are firmly in the 'them' camp to be treated with contempt and suspicion. This is basically racism, something Barber claims to deplore as she accuses Jeremy Corbyn and Labour of being guilty of it.

Barber isn't actually Jewish herself which poses a problem for one tweet she posted last night in which she used a blatant anti-semitic trope. 

She immediately claimed she was being ironic. But this really doesn't stand up too well at all. Thankfully more people realise that she is clearly deranged then those who stand by her (the usual clique of Corbyn haters; Silly Rachel Riley, Eddie Marsan, Tracy Ann Oberman etc) as evinced on Wikipedia during her meltdown last night.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Ignore the Biased Media, The Figures Do Add Up

The TV news wheeled out Paul Johnson (any relation?) today of the Institute to Fiscal Studies to say that Labour's manifesto pledges do not add up economically.

Except they do. At least, they do according to 163 prominent economists who have backed Labour's spending plans. And you can read about it in greater detail here.

So, that's 163 say yes. And 1 who says no. You do the Maths.

Asked to comment on Paul Johnson's claim that Labour's manifesto was ambitious, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said tonight that he took such a comment as a compliment. And quite right too. Compare that to the comments being bandied about regarding the Tory manifesto on its propaganda mouthpiece the BBC. The twisted mouth of Laura Kuenssberg announced it as a 'do no harm' manifesto. 

Do no harm?

130,000 people have died as a result of victimisation from the DWP on behalf of this Tory government. The NHS is being slashed ahead of its sale to Trump. Working families cannot cope and are surviving on food banks. Homelessness is on the increase, along with the number of homeless deaths. And Kuenssberg says it's a manifesto that will 'do no harm'. That horse has long since bolted, luv.

Let's ignore the biased media and listen instead to those experts Michael Gove wants us to be tired of. Let's be ambitious. Let's not accept the breadline policies of the Tories. Let's believe that we can live fairer and more equal lives, let's believe that we deserve them. 

Let's vote Labour on December 12th.

Protecting Their Own

I would say that today's not guilty verdict was unbelievable but, let's be honest, the fact that the establishment will always protect their own is surely inevitable.

I have nothing but sympathy for the families of the 96 tonight. I have no more words than that, but I feel this song says it all.

RIP Jonathan Miller and Clive James

The deaths of two cultural behemoths were announced yesterday, Jonathan Miller and Clive James.

Miller was a true renaissance man. A qualified doctor, he embarked upon a career as a performer after shooting to international fame as part of Beyond the Fringe, alongside such brilliant talents as Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett. Once described as 'the English Danny Kaye', the quicksilver like brilliance of Miller would not be satisfied with performance alone and he gradually moved behind the scenes to become the editor of Monitor and a director at the National Theatre, before moving on to become artistic director at the Old Vic and a critically lauded director of opera. Knighted in 2002 for his services to the arts, Miller's whole life was arguably a testament to the post war generation's determination to see the potential in everyone. He was responsible for my favourite adaptation of CS Lewis' Alice Adventures in Wonderland and for that I will always thank him. He died at the age of 85, following a long battle with Alzheimer's. RIP.

Clive James put paid to the myth that critics are only critics because they can't produce anything themselves. The Antipodean rose to fame as a critic of both literature and television, with columns that were wryly humourous, but he quickly showcased his skills as a broadcaster in his own right with some of the funniest, game-changing programmes to grace our screens in the '80s and '90s. I will always remember those evenings, being allowed to stay up with my dad to watch James use his clever, eloquent and pithy turns of phrase repeatedly get to the heart of the matter and make us both laugh. The notion of taking a 'sideways look' at the world may sound terribly hoary and cliched these days, but James made it an art form. Diagnosed with leukaemia in 2010, James passed away on Sunday at the age of 80. RIP.

Tories Attempt to Rewrite History, Or Hancock's Half Truth

Today, the (Tories are bad for your) Health Secretary, Matt Hancock (the cunt), took to twitter to celebrate an important anniversary. "100 years ago today," he wrote, "the first female MP, Nancy Astor, was elected to parliament. The female Conservative candidates standing in this election are exceptional and I look forward to working with them in parliament to achieve further progress on gender equality across our society"

Except that's not strictly true. The first female MP elected to parliament was in fact, Constance Markievicz.

Astor was a Conservative MP and religious bigot. Yes, she was the first female MP to take her seat, but Constance Markievicz was the first to be elected. As an Irish Republican and member of Sinn Féin, she refused to take the seat she had so emphatically won. As well as a veteran of the Easter Rising, Markievicz was also a socialist and suffrage campaigner. In short everything the Tories have always been against. Given her politics, it's obvious why they would want to write her out of their history books.

Hancock knows that he is wrong, but he is blatantly selling a falsehood in order to paint his party out to be the leading proponent of gender equality because they had a female MP take her seat 100 years ago. He claims she was the first, but he is wrong, and in perpetuating this falsehood, the reason for it has been laid bare for all to see.

The Real Don Tonay, a Follow Up Post

A couple of weeks ago I received an email relating to a post I made in January about Manchester's Don Tonay. The email was from his daughter Donna and, after some back and forth, I got some answers to the questions, opinions and myths that were evident in that original post about one of Manchester's most intriguing businessmen and a key figure in the early days of Factory Records. With Donna's permission, here is the answers she provided me that shed some light on her late father.Included in this post are photographs she kindly shared with me of Don. I hope you enjoy...

I started by asking Donna just what her father's ethnic background was, given that it was the source of much confusion and conflicting opinions among the Factory set;

"My Dad always said he was from Dublin. But we are not really sure" she replied. "We know he changed his name but we don't know what it was before. My Mum has a lot of theories about that. It was either during the war to avoid going back or to get away from his family. Who knows. He would never tell you"

"He definitely was Irish. He knew Dublin like the back of his hand. I have had a DNA test and I have come back as 70% Irish so I think that was true. His friend, Phyllis, Phil Lynott's (Thin Lizzy) mum said they were neighbours when they were children in Dublin"

I asked her about Don's life prior to owning the Russell Club, home of the Factory nights;

"He opened the first blues in Moss Side called the Monton house. Engelbert Humperdinck used to try and get in every night, but he was too young so my Dad said he was throw him out most nights" 

"He owned property all over Moss Side and rented it out. If they didn't pay their rent he would smash the toilet so they had to move out. He said it was cheaper to buy a new toilet"

"When he met my mum they travelled around the country opening illegal gambling dens, as gambling was illegal in the '60s. In their place in Bristol, Cary Grant used to come in"

"It was my stepdad, who was one of the Quality Street Gang, that allegedly put the Krays back on the train (when they arrived in Manchester with an eye on taking over the city). The Thin Lizzy song, 'The Boys are Back in Town', is about them"

One thing that everyone seemed to agree upon, I said, was that Don Tonay was a handsome, tall and well-dressed gentleman. A cool man who was a world away from the blunt northern club owner stereotype played by Peter Kay in 24 Hour Party People. Donna agreed and confirmed this;

"My Dad was always well-dressed and well-spoken. He wore silk socks and handmade shoes. He was also 6ft 4". Saying that, he could always scruff it and get cracking with whatever needed doing in the clubs or many shops that he owned"

Returning to 24 Hour Party People, I asked if the family were consulted at all on the production;

"We were not consulted. A friend of mine was friend with one of the cameramen who got me onto the set where I had an argument with Tony Wilson, as my dad had only just died of a massive heart attack on the 19th September 2000 and this was November of that year when they were filming. He (Wilson) had the good grace to apologise. You see, there would be no Factory without my dad, he bankrolled it all."

Donna concluded with her belief that her mother should write a book. It's one I emphatically agree with. Hollywood film stars, music legends and gangsters, it would make for great reading!

BBC Bias Is Off The Scale Now

Take a look at this tweet from Aaron Bastani. In it you will be able to compare footage from Friday night's Question Time Leaders special. In the original live footage, a woman in the audience poses a question to our alleged Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who is immediately met with jeers and laughter. In the following day's BBC News at One, the footage is edited to remove the laughter and replace it with applause.

This is blatant corrupt bias. The kind of thing one would witness in dictatorships.

The BBC are, as ever quick to reply, arguing that the footage was 'shortened for timing reasons'. But that is utter nonsense. We see something with our own eyes and then we are fed it back in a complete different way, with a completely different implication for the powers that be. Like I say, it's the kind of action one would expect from state television in a dictatorship.

Only a week earlier, the BBC came under fire for showing footage from 2016 of Johnson laying a wreath at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday rather than the actual footage from the day before in which Johnson looked dishevelled, jumped the gun and laid the wreath upside down. I wrote about this on this very blog here. More, I complained about it to the BBC. Their reply to me was woeful, citing human error in a highly pressurised newsroom environment. That same excuse just doesn't cut it here, and I have sent a complaint specifically about this distortion of the Question Time footage.

Question Time itself of course is notoriously corrupt. On the same show, Jeremy Corbyn faced questions from the audience. He came off significantly better than Johnson despite the fact that one of those questions was posed by Hull West and Hessle Conservative representative and activist Ryan Jacobsz. The South African Jacobsz initially tried some play acting as he posed his question, claiming that he wanted to believe so very much in Mr Corbyn's promises in order to fool the audience that he was impartial, before launching into a deeply aggressive hectoring rant about perceived anti-semitism. This is not the first time that Mr Jacobsz has appeared on Question Time, in fact it's his fourth; as you can see here. Is this flagrant stitch-up all over the news? No. The Tory friendly media have instead focused on the actress Kate Rutter, stare of I, Daniel Blake, being in the audience and allowed to ask Jo Swinson about austerity. But, as a Sheffield resident, Ms Rutter had more right to be there than Hull's Jacobsz.

I have complained about both of these issues and I urge anyone who believes that their licence fee should be going to an impartial public service broadcaster who is beyond reproach to do the same. 

Silent Sunday: WWI Conscientious Objectors

(Please read my note in the comment box below)

Out On Blue Six: Vic Reeves & The Wonder Stuff

End Transmission

Wordless Wednesday: Hitch at the Rovers

It's Our NHS, Let's Keep It That Way

Voting Conservative next month is essentially voting to end the NHS as we know it.

As we saw tonight in the ITV debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, Johnson cannot be trusted with the NHS. Labour sought a freedom of information request for the under-the-table negotiations between Johnson's Tory government and Trump's government in the US...and the almost the whole document was redacted. Despite his constant protestations that the NHS is not for sale, Boris Johnson is, once again, lying through his teeth.

Johnson also took the opportunity to lie to the ITV audience by wheeling out the 'we are building 40 new hospitals' line again and again tonight. Did I say line? I should really say lie.

The Tory government are only committing to funding six NHS trusts with hospitals in desperate need of rebuilding. A further 21 have been allocated 'seed funding', but this would not come to fruition for at least a decade. Around the time it will take Boris Johnson to secure a trade deal with the US.

But don't take my word for it. Listen to this passionate and eloquent medical student here, who dared to ask Boris Johnson a question when he arrived at her hospital for a PR stunt under a phalanx of security and secrecy.

And the debate itself? Well ITV conducted a poll immediately after it and Jeremy Corbyn came out as the most popular based on his performance by 78% to Johnson's paltry 22%.

Be part of the 78%. Vote Labour next month and give the NHS not only the future it deserves but the opportunity to care for us in that future.

Richard Madeley's Winter of Discontent

The Professional Dickhead Richard Madeley (Dick by name, Dick by nature) wrote a column for the Daily Express this weekend. In it, the rampant Tory bemoaned the way that Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party has politically enfranchised a great number of young voters and advising them that they would do well to take heed his personal memories of the Callaghan government of the late 1970s. Yup, the hoary old line of 'rubbish piled up in the streets' and 'not being able to bury the dead' was wheeled out by the real Alan Partridge.

"This week, chatting to a group of 30-somethings," Madeley writes "I described what the Winter of Discontent was actually like if you were there (I was 23). Endless power cuts, freezing evenings spent by guttering candlelight or evil-smelling paraffin lamps; no fire service (the lads were on strike); no funerals (so were the gravediggers); rubbish piling above head height (what we used to call the dustmen were all out too)"

This was all the result of an out of touch, weak Jim Callaghan, Dick attests, who was on 'a jolly' in the West Indies when it all kicked off and came back seemingly oblivous to the situation or how to decisively end it. Hmm. Calling the Guadeloupe Conference, where the world's biggest leaders discussed topical and pressing subjects of the day, 'a jolly' is a pretty odd thing to do if you wish these days to be taken seriously as a political journo, Dick. 

But it seems Dick Madeley's advice to his wholly fictitious young audience was falling on deaf ears.

""But don't you see - this is what will happen if Corbyn wins," I said. "He's a Marxist! He says he wouldn't even press the button! He doesn't understand the basic principles of detterrence!" Reader, I'm not sure they even knew what Marxism is - and as for "the button"..."

The Professional Dickhead Richard Madeley, it seems, knows all about 'the button'. Because, prior to this, his article pontificates at length about what it was like to grow up and come of age during the Cold War. However, what I personally took from this is that the BBC4's recent, excellent Cold War season had been on TV at Chez Madeleys. 

And reader (I mean, seriously?) it's clearly Madeley who doesn't know what Marxism is if he thinks that Jeremy Corbyn is a Marxist.

Perhaps Dick should have done some reading and listening during the Winter of Discontent. He might know then that the industrial action of which he speaks came as a direct result of Callaghan's government reneging on the promise of reforms previously made to the TUC. Now, that doesn't sound like a very Marxist from Callaghan's Labour does it? So, if by his logic Corbyn is a Marxist, why would that happen again on his watch? He also doesn't seem to realise that much of the industrial action was actually against Tory led councils, for example the binmen strike was against Westminster Council, whilst the dead were left unburied in Liverpool, whose county council was controlled by Conservative.

Dear old Dickie also seems rather confused in his memories. Bless. Old age does that I guess. But the fire brigade (or 'the lads' as he condescendingly calls them) were actually on strike for nine weeks at the end of 1977. They actually returned to work in January '78, when the Winter of Discontent commenced.

Perhaps he should have used his valuable long memory and cast further back in time, to the first Winter of Discontent, the one that occurred under Tory Ted Heath's government that led to a three day week and victory for the miners. Actually, maybe I am being unfair because he seems to have done this a little bit, as his reminiscences seem like a fudge of both time periods. Where there even power cuts during Callaghan's Winter of Discontent? There certainly were during Heath's. Perhaps someone with a more reliable memory could give me a definitive answer on that one. No, I'm not looking at you Dick.

Then again, maybe Madeley could have considered a more recent memory, such as Blair's Labour government. He could have told his imaginary 30-something pals all about the tremendous, progressive achievements made in the late 1990s, such as the creation of the Sure Start scheme which gave our children, and our country's future, the very best start in life - something that Corbyn has pledged to bring back after the Tories spitefully closed it down. Or maybe he should just consider the present; a time of breaking-point NHS, of food banks and homelessness and disabled people dying because of inadequate benefits, and of working families unable to make ends meet because the cost of living has soared whilst wages have stagnated for a decade. 

In conclusion, the Professional Dickhead Richard Madeley thinks the late 1970s were bad? Clearly the realities of the present day do not reach his ivory tower. Or maybe him and his wife are just too pissed to notice most evenings?

RIP Andrea Newman

Andrea Newman, author of Bouquet of Barbed Wire, has died following a long battle with cancer.

Born in Dover, Newman was an only child who grew up in Shropshire and Cheshire. A precocious talent, she started writing a novel at the age of nine and was musically gifted, winning a piano cup as a teenager. After graduating with an English degree from Westfield College, University of London, Newman worked as a teacher and a civil servant before undertaking to write novels professionally. Her first two novels, A Share of the World and Mirage, were optioned by film companies, but it was her fourth novel, Three Into Two Won't Go that became a movie in 1967, directed by Peter Hall and starring Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom. 

It was her sixth novel, 1969's A Bouquet of Barbed Wire, that would make Newman a household name. Adapted as a seven-part TV serial by LWT in 1976, the drama gripped the nation and broke new ground in what was considered acceptable on television. Over twenty million viewers regularly tuned in each Friday evening to see the peculiarly close relationship between Frank Finlay's Peter Manson and his daughter Prue, played by Susan Penhaligon. Whilst Bouquet was never X-rated, its smouldering tone of implication and longing was palpable and deeply affecting, influencing any number of middle-class bonkbusting TV dramas that followed and continue to prove incredibly popular to this day.

RIP.

RIP Ian Cullen

Ian Cullen, the actor best known for his roles in Z Cars and When the Boat Comes In, has died at the age of 75.

Born in County Durham, the RADA-trained Cullen scored an early leading role when he played David Balfour in the 1963 BBC adaptation of Kidnapped. In the following year, he guest starred in the Doctor Who serial The Aztecs as the warrior Ixta, who challenged Ian Chesterton(William Russell) in mortal combat. Later in the decade he starred in Emergency War 10, before becoming a household name as PC Joe Skinner in Z Cars, a role he played for six years until his character was sensationally killed off in 1975. His next big role was as Geordie Watson in When the Boat Comes In from 1977 to 1981. In 1997, Cullen was at the forefront of Channel 5's soap opera, Family Affairs, as the patriarch, Angus Hart. Echoing his dramatic departure from Z Cars, his character was, along with his whole family, killed off in a shocking boat explosion.

Other credits included Blake's 7, The Bill, Sorry!, Return of the Saint, Catherine Cookson's The Gambling Man and Spender. As well as acting, Cullen was a screenwriter responsible for children's series The Paper Lads and Rogue's Rock in the 1970s, and he was the recipient of a Gold Award for his narration on the feature, The Destiny of Britain in 2008. In 2014, following the death of Kate O'Mara, Cullen came forward and identified himself as the father of her son, Dickon, who tragically killed himself in 2012.

RIP.

Silent Sunday: Barred

Wordless Wednesday: Tyred

Out On Blue Six: Tokyo Prose

Was sat in the bar at Liverpool's Fact Picturehouse earlier this evening waiting to go in to see The Good Liar when I heard this track....

My friend Shazam'd it for me because I was so into it. I'd never heard of Tokyo Prose before. But then, I am 40 now *sighs*

End Transmission

A Vote for The Brexit Party is a Vote for the Tories

Nigel Farage played his hand today, but if you consider it for anything longer than a few seconds you'll see it's not as strong a hand as the mainstream media would have you believe.

In choosing only to stand in constituencies that are traditionally Labour strongholds, Nigel Farage has revealed to all that he knows his party have no chance whatsoever at election victory. Equally, he knows that the Conservative party have no hope in winning any seats in the predominantly leave voting north country and the south east. So, with his eye on the only chance at power he believes he has, a coalition with the Tories that will push a no deal Brexit through, he has decided to make this pact with Boris Johnson. 

But herein lies the paradox at the heart of Nigel Farage's risky gamble, or rather brainless plan; as even the leave voters within a traditional Labour constituency would rather die than vote Conservative, why then would they vote in the Brexit Party to return the Tories to power?

The only game that the Tories and the Brexit Party have is Brexit. But Brexit has long been a distraction in this country, a sideshow that has taken up three long years. This election is going to be fought on raising and improving living standards and the quality of life for all. This is how Labour are fighting this election and it is how they will win it. For Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, this election can only be about keeping us divided and distracted by Brexit, because when we are preoccupied by such deep divisions they can continue to impose upon us policies that only benefit themselves and their kind. 

The first rule of a class system is to keep the working classes fighting amongst themselves. Don't fall for it. Even if you want to leave the EU, please do not vote for the Brexit Party. Vote for Labour and ensure we get a deal that benefits everyone in society, rather than just the privileged few. 

Don't vote for Nigel Farage's mob, because to do so is to vote for the Tories. They are nothing more than Boris Johnson's enablers.

Vote Labour.

More BBC Bias

Yesterday a shambolic and dishevelled looking Boris Johnson made a right pig's ear out of his wreath laying at the cenotaph. Fidgeting during the two minute silence and approaching the cenotaph too early so that he was forced to step back into line, the biggest calamity was yet to come - he disrespectfully laid his wreath upside down.

(Incidentally, can you imagine the furore that would have occurred had Jeremy Corbyn made such a gaffe?)

Except you'd be forgiven for not noticing these errors if you watched BBC Breakfast this morning, because their report selected footage of the cenotaph from 2016 instead when, as foreign secretary, Boris avoided such a faux pas at the wreath laying ceremony.

The BBC think that we wouldn't notice the likes of Tim Farron and Theresa May stood in the line up and realise that this was archive footage.

The BBC were wrong.

The BBC think its audience are idiots. Idiots who are there to vote Conservative and protect the status quo. 

Let's prove the BBC wrong. Let's put an end to this ridiculous favouritism in our mainstream media next month. Let's vote Labour.

Why Labour is Literally the Party of the Future

Only the Labour party has the determination to unlock the potential of every child in the land thereby securing not only their future but the future of the country too.

Under Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party promise to transform the lives of every family for the better. They will do this be reopening the 1,000 Sure Start centres that the Conservative party so spitefully closed when entering a needlessly austerity driven power nine years ago. That's a Sure Start centre in every community and a radical expansion of child care in the UK.

Labour will also be putting an end to child poverty ensuring that every child of primary school age is given a free hot meal each day to aid their concentration and learning.

Compare this to Boris Johnson's Conservatives. If returned to power next month, they will ensure that 515 constituencies will receive less funding per pupil than in 2015. Only 17 constituencies will actually get a raise, and they are the ones held by the Conservatives.  Because the Tory party are only considered with looking after themselves and providing for their own future. They don't even want to acknowledge the child poverty issue that the UN recently highlighted. They prefer pretending that it isn't even happening, because it's not happening to their children is it?

But Labour aren't just looking to secure your children's future, they are also pledging that mothers will receive not nine months, but twelve months paid maternity. This will ensure that mothers can spend longer with their newborn babies and they will also have the opportunity to choose working hours that suit them.

You may have heard the Tories bleating this weekend about Labour's figures, that they believe (based purely on assumption - remember that the Labour manifesto hasn't actually been published yet) that the spending plans for such pledges are astronomical. But, after his consultation with the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation amongst others, Oxford University economist Professor Simon Wren-Lewis argues that it is the Tories spending plans that are truly unsustainable...thanks to the needless black hole that is Brexit. Labour's spending plans are actually far more sustainable because they will increase taxes on high earners and the Corporation Tax, something that the Tories do not want to do, because that's hitting their elite friends. 

If you find it disgraceful that the Tories are essentially saying we cannot afford to achieve even the basic level of dignity that we all deserve, but they're still happy to fund, protect and bail out their friends, then vote Labour.

If you want your children to have the very best start in life, vote Labour.

If you want the UK to prosper in the future, vote Labour.

Please, please, please, vote Labour at the polls next month.

Silent Sunday: Remembrance

Out On Blue Six: Aron Wright

Anyone who doesn't fast forward through the commercial breaks or watches TV live will be familiar with this lovely song, as it's the music used in a very touching advert for Lloyds Bank, featuring the trademark black horse and its foal

The ad is a beautiful marriage of music and visuals, though I still maintain that horse isn't looking after the foal when it makes it walk across the icy lake first!

End Transmission

Plus Size Bond Girls: November

Bit late with this month's, but better late than never...

Sorry We Missed You (2019)

"Let’s get the cardboard off the concrete!"

Sorry We Missed You, Ken Loach's follow up to I, Daniel Blake is initially something of a slow burn affair as we are introduced to the family unit at the film's heart  and the alarming practices and pitfalls of freelance, zero-hour contracted 'service economy' of in-home carers and parcel delivery drivers. But when the storyline comes together and this family reach breaking point, Loach delivers a veritable gut punch to audiences, the ramifications of which will bruise the mind for some time to come.

Ricky (Kris Hitchen) and Abbie (Debbie Honeywood) are a loving couple with two children Seb (Rhys Stone) and Liza Jane (Katie Procter). Thanks to the global economic crash in 2008 (y'know, the one that the Tories seem to believe happened because there were too many libraries in Wolverhampton) the family have been cheated of a mortgage and a home of their own, thanks to the collapse of Northern Rock and Ricky being laid off as a construction worker. Renting ever since, the family have got by thanks to Abbie's work as a zero-hour contract nurse, travelling around Newcastle to care for the elderly and seriously disabled in their own homes. But when Ricky hears about the potentially lucrative rewards he could get working on a quasi self-employed basis for a delivery company, he decides to take the plunge and convinces Abbie to sell the family car so that he can purchase his own van rather than rent a van from the firm at £65 per day. This decision has repercussions for the family; for a start, without a car, Abbie is now reduced to travelling to her numerous work appointments by bus, whilst their children have essentially become latchkey kids. A degree of self sufficiency is relatively fine for the bright and diligent Liza Jane, but for her older brother Seb, already at that 'difficult age', it is offers an all too tempting chance to drop out. Pretty soon his school work and attendance begins to suffer and he finds himself in trouble for fighting and shoplifting. Ricky knows he needs to be there for his family, to take Seb in hand and guide him back to the straight and narrow and reassure Liza-Jane that everything's going to be fine, but when he asks his supervisor, the bullet-headed Maloney (Ross Brewster, delivering one of the film's most striking characters) for time off, he quickly learns the grim reality of non-conventional employment where you only earn for the work you do and the targets you meet. Everything else is a deficit that will cost him big.

Ken Loach is hands down in the top three of my all-time favourite directors alongside Mike Leigh and Alan Clarke, so I'm fully versed in his movies and his style. I know for example that he almost always employs amateur actors, and I greatly appreciate the rawness and authenticity he can gain from such performers, but I wasn't quite prepared for the levels of amateur performances that is to be found in Sorry We Missed You. To be blunt, the acting (combined with the slow-burn nature) of even the central cast within the story did have me worrying at first that this might only stretch to being an average movie in the director's body of work. No disrespect to any of the actors, but they are not Oscar winners. With the exception of Katie Procter, the youngest member of the cast and a real find, there perhaps needed to be a little more light and shade and a greater degree of complexity and nuance to how they approach the characters, or more specifically Paul Laverty's dialogue, as some scenes do feel like they're just reading the lines. Debbie Honeywood is sometimes guilty of this, yet she is somehow never unconvincing in the role of the compassionate and caring Abbie and always gives the audience a sense that this is a genuine person rather than a film character who exists for just 100 minutes. Being a Mancunian (and Man Utd fan), Kris Hitchen is often somewhat reminiscent of Steve Evets in Looking for Eric, but despite his character's story being necessarily central to the film, he's often less interesting than Honeywood's Abbie. As the pair's oldest child, Rhys Stone is very good at portraying the sarcastic and truculent adolescent with an answer for everything, but he is less assured in moments that require him to bond with his on-screen family. The subplot involving his love of street art and his little crew of graffiti artists, unfortunately never really gets off the ground and I'm left unsure as to just what it was Laverty and Loach wanted to say here.

But Loach and Laverty are on much surer ground with the main thrust of the narrative, which you find yourself fully swept along with almost without noticing. As the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune beset the already struggling family you find yourself raw with their pain and angered by a system of employment 'rights' (or rather lack of them) that would make the Tolpuddle Martyrs wonder just what has actually changed in the 180 or so years since they were unfairly transported to Australia. It's here too that I have to take umbrage (as I often seem to do) with the Guardian's reviewer, Peter Bradshaw, who says;

"And here is where my qualm arises. Many people will see this film as a portrayal of real issues facing people – not silly old Brexit, which only worries people in the London bubble. Does the director himself feel like this? I don’t know. But I can only say that the European Union is the modern-day nursery of employment rights, and outside it is where working people will find more cynicism, more cruelty, more exploitation, more economic isolation and more poverty."

So Bradshaw feels that Loach's film needed to somehow factor in an  argument for Remain because it is only within the EU that we can enjoy employment rights? That would be an effective argument that I would be more than willing to get on board with where it not for the fact that Sorry We Missed You is casting a light on the kind of unfair and exploitative working practices that we, as a EU member, are already experiencing. I completely agree that Brexit will isolate us further and mean even less employment rights, but this is already happening and it's happening right now. We have long since been on the slippery slope and, frankly, it worries me that it has taken Brexit for those like Bradshaw in their 'London bubble' to realise this, if indeed they have. As far as I can see, the only solution to this problem of the gig economy is a Labour government.

Loach may be getting on in years, he may have scored a massive hit with his last movie, I, Daniel Blake, but make no mistake, he is not one to rest on his laurels. The cardboard may be off the concrete as the heartless, self-confessed hard bastard Maloney demands it, but Loach continues to hit that very same concrete running. He is no less angry here than he has been at any other point in his career and I hope that what he has to say reaches as wide an audience as possible. He doesn't reserve his anger just for his films either, look at his appearance on Victoria Derbyshire this past week where, in just twenty seconds, he nails the utter contempt the Tory government has for ordinary people. Watch the fat Tory twat roll his eyes when Loach mentions Grenfell, and it tells you all you need to know about these people.

One thing is for sure, Sorry We Missed You will make you reconsider the people who hand you your latest DVD or book purchase from Amazon. Be sure to smile and ask them how their day is going next time eh?