Freedom of speech

As I've said, I've also been on JSA. Life happens and you just get on with it, as I'm sure you'd agree.

No thanks, I have no interest in knowing anything more about you daphnedill, I think I know enough.

Ana Are you keeping an updated CV for me or something? Yes, I do give private tuition and sell stuff on eBay - and I write teaching materials, if you'd care to add that to the list. However, I did write recently, although I didn't specify how long ago. As you're so interested in my private life, I don't mind telling you it was from 2010 until 2012, so I witnessed for myself some of the early changes to the system. The whole thing was a nightmare and I'm only here today, because I had a fantastic doctor and mental health team (alas, now disbanded). If there's anything else you'd like to know about me, it might be best to PM me, because I don't suppose anybody else is interested. There was nothing unrealistic in the film.

Powerful post daphnedil

I was on JSA about 20 years ago. I had a very helpful, older adviser at the Jobcentre and was never made to feel demeaned in any way - I certainly didn't feel angry. Why should I? People lose their jobs for all sorts of reasons.

I've been on both sides of the desk, daphne. When I was signing on to collect benefit, I couldn't believe how angry I was at having to prove what I said was true. That was thirty years ago.

Films such as Daniel Blake may not change government policy but they may make some people re-assess their views on certain matters. In seeing the plight of individual people being depicted, rather than reading about something that is happening to thousands of "faceless" families, people have the opportunity to get some idea of what it feels like to be poor and powerless - and, perhaps more importantly - the powerless are given a voice.

Films/plays like Boys from the Blackstuff, The Naked Civil Servant, Spotlight, To Kill a Mockingbird, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, etc., etc., have given people an opportunity to view certain issues from a different perspective or shine a light on issues that some people would prefer to be left unexplored.

As others have said, there are many works of fiction and dramas that have influenced opinion and, ultimately, policy. Professor Erica Ball wrote about the 1977 mini-series Roots on the We're History website:

"Ultimately, Roots was a cultural production that recast the way that Hollywood represented, and Americans understood, slavery. In the process, this seventies television series invited Americans in that era to reconsider the history of the nation, and the place of black Americans within it."

Although there was subsequently much controversy as to whether the characters were real of fictional, many believe that this did not detract from the intrinsic truth of a slave's experience or the importance of the series in terms of the impact it made on both black and white people.

I was tired. I know. Sorry. Not sure I want to try again. But if you really want me to, I will. Or a part of it.

daphnedill, I thought you gave private tuition and had a sideline in selling on ebay.

Ankers, that last post of yours was absolutely incomprehensible. And I don't know why I even bothered pointing that out...

Typo alert! stronger not stringer. Ooops!

I've seen the film and I've also been recently unemployed and in receipt of JSA for almost two years.

Admittedly the characters in the film are fictional, but the situations aren't. Making a documentary about a real life Daniel would almost certainly be quite boring, which is how a fictional account produces a stringer message.

I felt extremely uncomfortable when watching the film, because it brought back the whole nightmare. Anybody who dismisses the film as just fiction really does need to spend a few weeks or months on the other side of the desk from the Jobcentre officials. Hopefully, it has opened a few eyes, but evidently not all.

You could say the same about Dickens, Stowe and Kingsley among others then, Ankers a widely disseminated film like a bestselling book brings an acutely observed situation to a much wider public. And no, I don't think too many people would have watched such a film with equanimity as "just" fiction".
Yes there are and have been some very hard hitting and influential documentaries, which is what you seem to be counselling film makers to stick to, but the authors I quote and there MUST be others , knew what they were about.
And please do not bring "fake news" into,the equation, it is irrelevant in this instance.

What he has done, by ignoring the aspect he was asked to comment on, was to represent a government that feels it is above the people who use the service

I think this is like the "anniebach phenomonen" if she doesnt mind me saying that.

That of, real life[in her case things that happen when she canvasses] doesnt seem to matter or be taken account of, when there is a piece of fiction, which is going to trump real life.

But a piece of fiction[personally from the sounds of it, Ken Loach would have been better off either doing a factual film or fiction and not try to marry the two, nas who then has any idea as to which bit or part is which[disclaimer I have not watched the film]] is basically totally fact!

I am beginning to think and wonder,and come to the conclusion, that if something, be what it may [fact, fiction, even fake news], suits some peoples' agendas then that is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!!

Jen, you only brought attention to Flynn asking sbout the about the film, you must have thought this the most important question

We're still talking about poverty, homelessness and prison overcrowding more than 150 years after Dickens wrote about them. Quite depressing really.

POGS, that's not all Flynn asked him about.
He asked about the fact that Devereux got a £20,000 bonus, more than a family on benefits. That's rather relevant as well.
Robert Devereux mentioned a little local knowledge. I doubt he's been anywhere near a jobcentre in the North East. I didn't understand who was to be allowed a little local knowledge, himself or Loach.

I agree with Rigby; he probably has seen the film but daren't say so.
I didn't understand

It may be a good film but it's still a film, and the surprising thing is that Flynn is citing it as Gospel.Couldn't he have asked more fact based questions, there must be info out there that he could easily have brought up.However, it's hardly worth us arguing about.

for groupong read grouping - but there again...!

I think it's all to do with the 'a bit sad' party groupong GraceGranMk2 was on about POGS.

One group sees the interview in one light etc. I'm sure GracesGranMk2 is in a group too...

... and Jen 18:20:53. How do you all type so quickly?

Why should he watch the film?

Sorry but I don't understand the thought that some have Ken Loach can do no wrong and I certainly do not comprehend why a politician who sits on a Select Committee asks inane questions.

Paul Flynn could have made his point, certainly gave his question more credence, if he had used a more intellectual reference to the issues he wanted to raise.

x point MawBroon - I don't type quickly enough Great examples.

"Cathy come Home wasn't about influencing votes - it was about influencing housing policy. Policy can be influenced whichever party is in power."

You are so right Rigby. There is still a lot of old party politicking on here while it is changing all around us. If you say exactly the same thing about someone a group on here don't like and then about someone from a group they do you will get a negative response re the first and a positive one re the second - a bit sad really.

Good (or bad) policy can come from any party or from elsewhere. I certainly think there are dramas and documentaries which stay in the cultural memory for decades and do influence change.

I believe Harriet Beecher Stowe's book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was very influential in the anti slavery movementt and Charles Kingsley's "Water Babies" highlighted the appalling plight of child labour (forcing little boys up chimneys to sweep them)
It is very possible and not at all uncommon to use fiction to draw the attention of the general public to extreme social ills.
I dare say others will come up with other examples.

Dickens wrote fiction based on reality. He changed people's ideas on poverty, gave an insight into prisons and workhouses.

Strange how people are still saying it's just fiction.
Many of the actors in I, Daniel Blake were real people, not actors and Loach interviewed many jobcentre staff, many of whom had left because they did not like what they were being asked to do.

"Loach cites testimonies he and the screenwriter Paul Laverty took from current and former jobcentre employees. He said: “Many of [them] walked away from the jobcentre because they were disgusted by what they were being asked to do. They left because they didn’t want to be part of something they believed to be wrong. Steve [McCall] has obviously chosen to stay.”

The jobcentre and Department for Work and Pensions employees Loach refers to are thanked in the film’s closing credits but were too scared to be named individually for fear of retribution, Loach said.

“They told us that jobcentre employees understood they were working in a bureaucratic trap that had been built with the intention of catching people out,” he said. “They told us that people working at the jobcentre were given targets when it came to how many people they were expected to sanction. There is no doubt in my mind that, if a random cross-section of people went to the jobcentre every day, did everything they were asked to do, dotted every ‘i’ and crossed every ‘t’, some of them would still be sanctioned.”

Loach is backed up by Amanda Payne, who worked at the same Newcastle branch in a number of positions, including as work search assessor and hardship allowance officer, before leaving in 2015. She was cast in a small role in I, Daniel Blake."

Yes mcem - if it doesn't prick consciences and raise awareness, it's unlikely to influence policy. That's why I think fiction can be so helpful - people will watch a film or tv series when they wouldn't perhaps watch a documentary or read a report - then the person in the film makes the issue real, brings it alive and hopefully this may influence change. ( well we can dream)