Today is when we truly remember Labour’s "scaremongering" party election broadcast …

 a con, New Labour, Orwell, PEB, Tories, YouTube  No Responses »
Feb 012012
 
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The owner of the YouTube channel I’ve embedded the video below from describes it as the “most scaremongering of all of New Labour’s election broadcasts”.

The election broadcast used a kind of Orwellian group of grey-suited state apparatchiks to frighten voters into voting for Labour.  It talked about how the Tories would cut child tax credits and other benefits just weeks after getting into power.  This clearly didn’t happen.  And perhaps it never would have done.  Even if they had won the election fair and square.


http://youtu.be/IiRhdzorfQA

But after the government decided tonight to ensure support was cut for cancer patients, can we honestly say with our hands on our hearts that the thesis outlined in the video was so very out of the trolley?

Labour got the timeframe wrong.  It got the details wrong.  But it didn’t get Tory instincts wrong.

Now did it?
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Update to this post: today, the morning of the 2nd February, the Herald Scotland website has published this damning assessment of how the political class is either looking to recreate Dickensian Britain (the Tories), is right but relatively ineffectual (Labour) or is ending up being downright two-faced (the Lib Dems).  As it so cogently summarises:

The true face of the Welfare Reform Bill is wheelchair users losing mobility benefits, terminally ill cancer patients being assessed for work and accident victims who have always worked being driven back on to basic means-tested benefits after a year. Thousands genuinely unable to work will be forced into unsuitable jobs or dire poverty. (In yesterday’s debate one Tory backwoodsman seriously described being sick or disabled as “a lifestyle choice”, to the righteous fury of Scots wheelchair-using MP Anne Begg.) These changes are being forced through without any evidence base to suggest that they will work at a time of lengthening dole queues with the long-term unemployed stuck at the back, furthest away from meaningful employment.

Well worth your time in its comprehensive description, criticism and deconstruction of the wider Tory strategy.


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Nick Clegg and his Freeloaders (or doesn’t the latest Tory PEB try and make Cameron look more and more like Clegg?)

 David Cameron, in a hole, New Toryism, Nick Clegg, PEB  No Responses »
Apr 192010
 
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I just couldn’t help thinking, as I watched this latest PEB from the Tories, how the presentational bits of the video make Cameron look so like Clegg  – that soft haircut and smooth natural lighting, for starters.  Also love the throwaway line about how politicians have been lying to the British public for the past forty years – that means not only Wilson, Callaghan, Blair and Brown but also Heath and our dearly beloved Thatcher.  Of course, what it also means is not a Lib Dem in sight.  So is this a wise thing to point out?

Oh yes.  The subtext of this is most definitely saying that Clegg might be what you think you’re looking for but Cameron is the Real Thing.  The Tories have suddenly realised that over the past five years they’ve been softening us all up for change at such great pecuniary expense – only for Nick Clegg and his Freeloaders to dramatically take over the show in the very last minute of extra time.

Remember, you read it here first.


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A glimpse of a "Kes" for the 21st century

 Kes, Labour, metaphor, on a high, PEB, realism  No Responses »
Apr 112010
 
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The new Labour PEB feels as real, gritty and metaphorical as a short TV ad can get these days.  Like, in fact, a glimpse of a “Kes” for the 21st century:

Faithfully adapted from the Barry Hines novel A Kestrel for a Knave, Kes carefully exposes the links between economic opportunity, social services, and personal fulfillment. Public institutions, in Loach’s view, carry an obligation to provide proper employment and housing to its people – without a job or home, one cannot feel safe or secure, much less happy.

And this:

Stylistically, Kes represents a significant development from Loach’s earlier work. Eschewing the handheld camera, jump cuts, and abrupt sound cues characteristic of the BBC films, Loach and cinematographer Chris Menges adopt a natural, yet controlled visual style. Shots appear aesthetically pleasing without becoming pictorial. The film’s muted color palette presents a world distanced just far enough from reality to resonate.

Representing reality, creating the sensation – the suspension of disbelief – that through artifice we can encapsulate its essence … that is the goal of all cinematographers.  This PEB does a damn good job of reaching that goal.  Does it feel like an advert for a global insurance giant as one Twitter feed remarked a short time ago?  Maybe it manages to be that as well.  And if it does, if it succeeds in being “Kes” and Axa at one fell swoop, then the achievement is all the mightier – all the more impressive.

Worthy of further and deeper analysis.

Makes me feel I’m back at uni all over again.

:-)


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