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Ken Loache's film, I Daniel Blake, (Film about uk benefit regime) wins Palme d'Or.

Might go and see this on Sunday if I can find it and I'm not too Sunday black dog depressed.

Is it worthy, I hope it's not worthy. I am part of the choir. Maybe I will go and watch something else.
 
treelover said:
Some of us did a stall after a local showing tonight, some people engaged with us, took leaflets, etc, but it was clear many were distraught, some even traumatised and just wanted to get home. I think many just didn't know how brutal things are, the frightening thing is, the reality for many affected is even worse than the events depicted in the film
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For various reasons, largely health, I've been politically inactive since Christmas. Suspect I'll feel guilt tripped into doing something if I go and watch the film. I almost don't want to go and watch it for that reason. Watching something like IDB generates both anger and depression in me, suspect it's the same in others. Certainly not a straightforward 'here's something we can make a difference to, let's got on and do it'.
 
can you imagine the outcry from the right wing media, 'leftist propaganda paid for by the licence fee', hope it goes on Netflix, etc, as well.
 
Wilf said:
For various reasons, largely health, I've been politically inactive since Christmas. Suspect I'll feel guilt tripped into doing something if I go and watch the film. I almost don't want to go and watch it for that reason. Watching something like IDB generates both anger and depression in me, suspect it's the same in others. Certainly not a straightforward 'here's something we can make a difference to, let's got on and do it'.
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I should have said, plenty offered practical support, helping with appeals, etc, just the majority left quick,

btw, there are reports of people thinking it is a comedy, laughing in the wrong parts, etc, the last forty mins that changes, and there is silence in the cinema, apart from some sobs, etc.
 
treelover said:
I should have said, plenty offered practical support, helping with appeals, etc, just the majority left quick,

btw, there are reports of people thinking it is a comedy, laughing in the wrong parts, etc, the last forty mins that changes, and there is silence in the cinema, apart from some sobs, etc.
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Where are these reports?
 
treelover said:




These are some of the observations they use to assess claimants, worth circulating.
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Had similar on mine. Eejit (a physio) wrote that I couldn't possibly have short-term memory problems because I passed his "memory test" of recalling three words he'd told me, 5 minutes later. I simply re-submitted my medical evidence - that 2 two-and-a-half hour barrages of tests from a neuropsychologist proved that I did indeed have acute short-term memory problems, and that my consultant and his staff were better placed than a physiotherapist to be able to discern this.
 
Well that was a tough couple of hours. First off, it's as good as everyone says. Loach gets it spot on. I worried that it might be dreadfully earnest and/or mawkish but it's neither. Hitting the right note with this must have been extremely difficult. Second, the acting from the woman that plays Daniel's neighbour is some of the best I've seen in years. Not sure how you portay blind panic in an understated way but she can. The scene in the food bank floored me.

I work in social housing so was particularly pleased that Loach had Daniel stuck between JSA and ESA which then wrecked his entitlement to HB etc. Happens all the fucking time. The Kafkaesque Jobcentre experience was spot on, too. And the fucking hold music!

If I've any criticism I didn't think the lad selling dodgy trainers was that convincing. And the protest scene outside the dole office didn't ring true either. I think passersby would've been quicker to dismiss him as a nutter.

Minor quibbles though. It's a really powerful, affecting film that'll stick with me for a long time.
 
Just seen this, hard to describe really. I'll maybe give it a go when it's had time to sink in. Excellent film.

FWIW I thought the protest passerby bit was about right, for Newcastle and the like anyway, not the south!

I thought a couple of bits were bludgeoning the audience with the message but it didn't happen throughout.
 
Do you work with or have contact with people living in poverty?
We have over 60 tickets pledged for those who can't afford to pay go to see the film. Please pop over to the I, Daniel Blake - Ticket Pledge group, follow the instructions to claim a ticket and please share the group so everyone, who won't otherwise get a chance to watch the film, can see it. http://www.facebook.com/groups/IDanielBlakeTicketPledge/

not sure how many up against it will want to see it but its a great gesture.
 
So, I don't know. A few things stand out for me, more products of the film than qualities of it itself.

The first is that it really drives home a specific kind of failure, that of community in some sense. If you're anything like me, comparatively money and time rich, you find yourself regularly thinking, throughout the film, 'I could help here', be it cash for something or just helping an old man do a form on the internet FFS. Within or outwith the Kafkaesque system of the DWP. There are so many ways to ameliorate what happens in the story, if not necessarily fix it singlehandedly, but to make a significant difference. But in the absence of traditional community solidarity and integration, the 'service users' are directed to state systems, which have zero mechanisms or motivation to point them towards this kind of assistance, or conversely, point those willing to offer towards people in need.

So for would-be volunteers, there's no idea how to effectively direct their efforts except in a diluted, belated/reactive way (like food bank contributions) that gets spread across an entire population. That the state process and individual public charity/goodwill can't be easily married up is, to me at least, desperately depressing. I realise that in many ways this is an upside down answer to the wrong problem, but nonetheless, there it is. I also realise that there are auxiliary services in place, like CAB, but what I mean is - as well as effective integration with those - a direct exchange of individual needs & means.

The other thing is the underlying real life case history. I've posted on here for ages, I've seen the threads and lists of people who have died in a way linked to the failure of the benefits system, and I've read plenty about the system. I don't doubt the veracity of any of that information but it's data that lacks the miserable and horrifying context brought to life by the film, even if fiction this time. I don't know what if anything can be done about that, as it's into the realms of propagandising real life suffering and also the notion that it doesn't count unless it's a well told story. But at least in terms of the film, if you think it's a heavy handed exposition of the obvious, perhaps consider that that's because you have lived it or around it - without that, it's a valuable one.
 
Good post, Kens film has indeed made the invisible, difficult to conceptualise, visible.


The main thing i have heard after people seeing the film is that 'they must help food banks more'. But that is what the Gov't would like, though some do offer to help with appeals.
 
DotCommunist said:
not sure I really want to for this reason. I'm not doing as dire as some, and thanks be I don't have to raise children either. But I don't think I really want to see this. I will at some point no doubt and I hope it gets seen by people who haven't met the DWP before.
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I said to Mrs E that I'd half-thought about going to see it while she was away, and she was quite disappointed that I hadn't: she is adamant that she won't see it when it comes out here. I have some idea what to expect, as quite a few of my surgery clients have been on the receiving end of DWP's tender mercies, and it obviously isn't going to be a nice watch, but I'm definitely going to see it.

ETA: only fair to Mrs E to say why she won't see it: she thinks it will be "too distressing", it's not that she's a secret fan of IDS, DWP, and all their works...
 
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I'm planning on going to watch this film tomorrow. I am really looking forward to it and hopefully Ken Loach can shine a light on the cruelty of the welfare state under the Tories and the current benefit sanctions and assessment regime. I have read many horror stories about people docked benefits for missing a job centre appointment despite having a hospital appointment or seeing to a dying relative, not too mention stories of people who have died of a serious condition after being found fit to work.

I feel quite strongly that work capability assessments should be scrapped, as surely it should be a doctor or other medical professional who decides whether someone is fit to work, not some agency appointed by the government to tick boxes designed at ensuring that people pass the "assessment." I also feel the current target-driven culture in the DWP is also wrong. Staff should not be rewarded for sanctioning x amount of people and it should not be at all about trying to catch some of society's poorest and most vulnerable people out.

We need to have a far more personalised person-centric welfare state that treats human beings with compassion and as individuals, not almost as sub-human and as a figure on a sheet of a paper. Fat chance of this happening under this Tory government.
 
 
One particularly worrying statement is “No one wants a system where people are written off and forced to spend long periods of time on benefits when, actually, with the right support they could be getting back into work.” Which we feel means they plan to scrap the Support group.

This would certainly fit in with the announcement on October 1st when Damien Green announced there would be an end to repeat WCA assessments for people with permanent or progressive conditions. There was little detail on the announcement with more questions being raised that answers given (such as which conditions would be excluded from repeat assessments) The DWP promised to release guidelines to clarify exactly what this change means – to date no such clarification has appeared.
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I have thought for a while they might try to scrap the support group.
 
Saw it tonight; still digesting.

a) Katie saying she had had food earlier on
a) Katie at the food bank ... apologising over and over
c) Dan!
d) Completely silent cinema audience
e) Silent exit; by all
f) Many, many people crying
 
mauvais said:
So, I don't know. A few things stand out for me, more products of the film than qualities of it itself.

The first is that it really drives home a specific kind of failure, that of community in some sense. If you're anything like me, comparatively money and time rich, you find yourself regularly thinking, throughout the film, 'I could help here', be it cash for something or just helping an old man do a form on the internet FFS. Within or outwith the Kafkaesque system of the DWP. There are so many ways to ameliorate what happens in the story, if not necessarily fix it singlehandedly, but to make a significant difference. But in the absence of traditional community solidarity and integration, the 'service users' are directed to state systems, which have zero mechanisms or motivation to point them towards this kind of assistance, or conversely, point those willing to offer towards people in need.
Click to expand...

I don’t see the film showing a failure of community. Daniel helps the single mother and Daniel is helped by his neighbour for example. Daniel is also shown staying in touch with his old workmates. So there is a community there. The problem is that its one with little power in our present society- the working class.

A theme in the films of Loach is that of solidarity. In Looking For Eric, as an example, he deals with it in a humorous way. This is not about improving how the state functions. Its something that comes from ordinary people. In that Ken is an optimist.
 
Gramsci said:
I don’t see the film showing a failure of community. Daniel helps the single mother and Daniel is helped by his neighbour for example. Daniel is also shown staying in touch with his old workmates. So there is a community there. The problem is that its one with little power in our present society- the working class.

A theme in the films of Loach is that of solidarity. In Looking For Eric, as an example, he deals with it in a humorous way. This is not about improving how the state functions. Its something that comes from ordinary people. In that Ken is an optimist.
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That's not what I mean by community in this context. All the good in the film comes from people helping each other, and it wouldn't be much of a film without it. So that's community.

But, with the exception of the food bank, and possibly his mate at the joiners, it happens by chance encounter and chance discovery. So people get helped by occasional good luck, which is not good enough.

The main go-to point of contact and assistance is the DWP, and they very obviously fail to fulfil the responsibility that this bestows on them.

So that, and the absence of an alternative support structure, is a failure of community.
 
mauvais said:
That's not what I mean by community in this context. All the good in the film comes from people helping each other, and it wouldn't be much of a film without it. So that's community.

But, with the exception of the food bank, and possibly his mate at the joiners, it happens by chance encounter and chance discovery. So people get helped by occasional good luck, which is not good enough.

The main go-to point of contact and assistance is the DWP, and they very obviously fail to fulfil the responsibility that this bestows on them.

So that, and the absence of an alternative support structure, is a failure of community.
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Yeh, the same community which has been attacked for more than 30 years. don't say a failure of community, say rather a success of government.
 
mauvais said:
That's not what I mean by community in this context. All the good in the film comes from people helping each other, and it wouldn't be much of a film without it. So that's community.

But, with the exception of the food bank, and possibly his mate at the joiners, it happens by chance encounter and chance discovery. So people get helped by occasional good luck, which is not good enough.

The main go-to point of contact and assistance is the DWP, and they very obviously fail to fulfil the responsibility that this bestows on them.

So that, and the absence of an alternative support structure, is a failure of community.
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I think you're kind of homogenising what "community" can mean. Bear in mind that any geographically-located community tends to be comprised of smaller "sub-communities", some of which (like our small local Somali community) already have their own support networks in place, some of which don't. I live in a community where "informal" help to people filling out benefit forms, and navigating the DWP and local authority bureaucracies is the norm, and some of us put our names out there so as to be a "point of contact" for that sort of thing (because our local councillors sure as shit don't help on those scores!) in our communities, but communities can only work with the information and resources they have, and guess what? For all the talk about "empowering communities", it's something VERY low on the list of priorities of our local authority, so we can only do what we can do, and we thank fuck that (and I'm not a believer) our local churches do foodbanks where you don't require an official referral, just a referee who already uses the foodbank.
 
That was a bundle of fun

All the jobcentre stuff was not as overexagerated as people might think. I've managed to get an easy ride recently but the first stint after uni was really like this

especially the bullshit cv cources.


i also worked for years doing jobcentre training. One of the first jobs was how to use online sites to bullshit the job application minimum requiermewnts.
 
John Rees(ex SWP Central Committee) just did a talk after a book festival showing of IDB, tell me what his ex party ever did on social security matters?
 
treelover said:
John Rees(ex SWP Central Committee) just did a talk after a book festival showing of IDB, tell me what his ex party ever did on social security matters?
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Well, it's a start. Perhaps he's starting to get the message.

It's a feature of human thought that we tend to respond more positively to positive messages, and negatively to more negative ones. Encouragement works better than criticism.

People sometimes aren't clear what the purpose of what they are saying is, like here: are you trying to encourage more people to see the iniquities of the DWP's systems, or trying to reinforce your own value by pointing out, by implication, where everyone else is falling short?

You put a lot of effort into your advocacy, treelover, which is laudable, but a lot of it is couched in extremely negative terms. That's fine if you're just trying to point out to us how shit everybody else is, but if you are genuinely trying to make a difference, I think you could achieve so much more by dialling back on the fingerwagging, and emphasising the positives.
 
existentialist said:
Well, it's a start. Perhaps he's starting to get the message.

It's a feature of human thought that we tend to respond more positively to positive messages, and negatively to more negative ones. Encouragement works better than criticism.

People sometimes aren't clear what the purpose of what they are saying is, like here: are you trying to encourage more people to see the iniquities of the DWP's systems, or trying to reinforce your own value by pointing out, by implication, where everyone else is falling short?

You put a lot of effort into your advocacy, treelover, which is laudable, but a lot of it is couched in extremely negative terms. That's fine if you're just trying to point out to us how shit everybody else is, but if you are genuinely trying to make a difference, I think you could achieve so much more by dialling back on the fingerwagging, and emphasising the positives.
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Treelover hates socialists
 
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