The Last Enemy is all getting rather bloody. An experiment to create the ulitimate ID tag - in people’s blood - is killing them. Those excluded from the ID card state are selling their blood to survive. A disillusioned official blows his brains out in a gallery full of paintings done in the artist’s blood. And our hero and his brother are wondering if blood is indeed thicker than water.
A wonderful song and video here, from the US folk singer, Neal Gladstone. Appropriately for a Gladstone, his song’s called “I’m a Liberal”. On the eve of Lib Dem conference, this should get all of us in the mood…. Thanks to Paul Johnston of Aberdeenshire for the tip.
Has Ken Loach lost the plot? I heard him on the Today programme this morning. Loach, famous for his radical left-wing views, is calling on people to stop giving money to Shelter, because of an industrial dispute among its employees.
Shelter is a national charity but one in which I have a strong local interest. Shelter is based in my constituency, in Old Street. And Loach’s docu-drama, ‘Cathy Come Home’, which led to the creation of Shelter, was filmed partly in Popham Street, Islington; just across the road from my home.
The film’s tenements have been cleared long since, and the modern Popham Estate is in their place. The nature of homelessness has changed; instead of families on the streets, we have the hidden homeless, three or four generations of families squashed into one flat, because there is nothing like enough affordable housing to go round. So Shelter’s work is still desperately needed.
Shelter staff are as entitled to fair pay and to take industrial action as anyone else. But the idea that donors should cut off funding to the charity in response is just barmy.
Ken Loach is one of those left-wingers who seems to think any industrial dispute is worth supporting, no matter who suffers. It’s the kind of view that led me to leave the Labour party for the Liberals nearly 25 years ago.
But it gets worse. Loach argues that by taking contracts for Government work, something Shelter has done since the 1970s, they are somehow compromised in their independence. In fact, as Shelter’s Chief Exec Adam Sampson made clear, they are as outspoken as ever; his last appearance on Today was attacking Housing Minister Caroline ‘heart of’ Flint’s policy of evicting the unemployed. She’s demonstrated that new Labour is no more attractive or reasonable than the old hard left.
Loach then went on to say that Shelter should not take work from the Government, because the Government was ‘part of the market economy that causes homelessness in the first place’. What is he proposing? I thought state funding was the left’s holy grail to avoid dependence on the market? And what about corporate charity donations? Does he want Shelter to reject those? Many donors will be pleased to know that Shelter’s admin costs are kept under control, so the money goes to those most in need.
I should declare an interest: I’ve been a Shelter donor, through payroll giving, for many years. So Loach’s piece was aimed at me. I’ll certainly review my giving to Shelter as a result; it’s about time they got an increase.
Maybe I was only half-awake but I felt a bit frustrated by Ed Davey’s comments on the Today programme this morning re the Lisbon Treaty debate. Normally Ed is excellent at getting the key message out of any story. This morning he was up against a Labour Euro-sceptic backbencher and managed to sound as if he was defending not only the Treaty - Ed made good points on fighting terrorism, crime and pollution - but also the Government’s handling of it.
In the same way that all quiz questions are easy when you’re at home yelling at the TV, I found myself thinking of my ideal response.
There are things in the Treaty that are in Britain’s best interests, so we are voting for them
However there should be proper debate; this arrogant government won’t even listen to its own backbench MPs
In fact we need a real debate on the real issue: Europe in or out, and let the people not just MPs have their say. Is the Government listening? Don’t hold your breath.
Just seen the first episode of ‘The Last Enemy’. Sunday night drama has a tradition of being bland, cosy stuff to soften up the wage slaves for the week ahead. Not this. Genuinely thrillling, well-acted and well-written. A challenging drama, not plot-on-a-plate.
‘The Last Enemy’ is set in a dystopian near-future, high-security surveillance society. The security is partly in reaction to a recent atrocity - a major bomb at Victoria - but like other bits of the story, that emerges rather than being presented from the start. Illegal immigrants, CCTV, ID cards, mystery viruses, assassins, Afghan refugee camps, dodgy database consultants and dodgier politicians; all at breakneck pace. Tracing online replaces chasing on wheels. We see the world through the bewildered but intelligent eyes of Stephen Ezard, an OCD-suffering mathematician returned from self-imposed academic exile in China for his brother’s huggy humanist funeral. And locations looked like real London too - wasn’t that the New Orleans estate? I loved it.
The last new drama series I saw - ‘The Palace’ - turned out to be a crass disappointment, not worth blogging about at the time. The young Prince of Wales, suddenly King, is having an affair with the PM’s married chief aide, and no-one knows? Yeah, right.
‘The Last Enemy’ also has a high-powered PM’s PA, actually a senior spook, but that somehow seems more realistic. Or maybe it’s just that this is very superior tosh. Certainly, my Sunday nights are booked from now on.
The plight of Sayad Parwez Kambaksh is attracting some international attention, including the obligatory Facebook group, but not as much as it should. Kambaksh is a journalism student who downloaded material from the internet which was said to offend against the rules of Islam, although there seems to be confusion about exactly what law has been broken. What is known is that Kambaksh has been hastily tried and sentenced to death.
This reminds me of the case of Farzad Bazoft nearly 20 years ago. He was the Iranian-born journalist who was arrested for spying while working for the Observer in Iraq. He was arrested and executed, at a time when the West still saw Saddam Hussein as a useful bulwark against the Ayatollah in Iran and the Soviet Union beyond. I was one of many people who sent protests calling for Farzad’s realease, all brutally ignored by Saddam. The West’s failure to deal more firmly with Saddam then was, in hindsight, one of many steps on the way to the disaster of the Iraq war.
President Karzi is no Saddam Hussein, on the contrary he has spoken eloquently on the subject of freedom. But in the West’s commitment to support Karzi and bring peace to Afghanistan, we must not let basic rights be undermined. Sayad Parwez Kambaksh must be released. Or else what are we fighting for?
Another kiss and tell story in the papers, with a rejected partner revealing all. Who’s described as a “very hard person to work with”? Who is a “lightweight”, “a ditherer” and “tormented”? Who “did … cannabis”? And who’s doing the hatchet job? All is revealed here.
I’m excited that I’ve been asked to blog regularly for the Guardian, sharing my views and experiences from the campaign trail.
I grew up with the Guardian and of course the paper’s HQ is based in Farringdon, so it’s a great pleasure to be writing for them now. Both the Guardian and Islington have their fair share of stereotypes, so I hope to challenge some of those. Not least the idea that either ‘Guardian reader’ or ‘Islington resident’ is a synonym for ‘Labour voter’.
In the late 1980s I studied Information Science at what was then North London Poly, based in Highbury Grove. We campaigned for Freedom of Information, and wrote about using computers to improve access to information; all this at a time when the college computer was a monster in the basement, taking up more room than the average student bedsit.
Now we finally have a Freedom of Information Act and are living in a Web 2.0 world; but too much political communication is still one-way.
Websites like Guardian Unlimited have done a great job in opening up debate to everyone. So I hope my blog will be a real two-way experience.
Anyway, it will be appearing every Wednesday and you can read my first blogspot here.
The wonderful Tom Mannion was a guest star on Casualty last night. It wasn’t exactly a speaking role - Tom’s character was incoherent, apparently drunk, but actually suffering from a brain tumour - but fantastically acted. If you missed Tom on TV, you can catch him in Metamorphosis at the Lyric in Hammersmith; the production has just had extra dates added to its run, before going on tour.
I should declare an interest: Tom is a fellow member of St Mary’s church Islington (which may come as a surprise to people who saw him with Billie Piper in ‘Diary of a Call Girl’). Indeed, when I first went along to a service there, back in 1992, the service sheet announced ‘Music by Tom and Gerry’. Irresistible.
I always enjoy ‘Saturday Live’ on Radio 4, but there was a real laugh-out-loud moment this morning. The show’s started doing lookalikes, which is a funny enough concept for radio. This week someone suggested Mr Data (of Star Trek TNG) and David Cameron. I’d not seen it before, but now? Can’t get it out of my head. Although I suspect the real lookalike may be Data’s twin, Lore, who had an inferior ethics program… I’m going now, before Richard starts yelling ‘Trekkie’ at me. Judge for yourself here.
