An exercise in ploddingly executed drama

Having mindlessly and stupidly watched ‘The Execution of Gary Glitter’ the verdict I have reached is that this programme should have been put out of its misery from the start. Firstly, why Gary Glitter? More controversy but without the politics…and without a decent script. Secondly, it wasn’t grounded in reality. There are better and more realistic scenarios to be had. Though C4 was being too clever by half.

It trivialises the debate around the death penalty, docudrama with added talking heads from Miranda Sawyer to Gary Bushell. The real serious issues about the death penalty were lost without trace in the sensationalism of the tabloid-esque language and stereotypes. Real questions about why people support the death penalty weren’t examined. Also, what was it meant to be? Fictionalised drama…with wooden acting, dialogue, lack of dramatic tension and a confused storyline. What was Channel 4 trying to present?

 We were spoon fed a diet of whipped up controversy and sensationalism as a distraction from the real issues which was such a shame as the death penalty debate never goes away.

I really think C4 were being too clever by half and it showed!

A wasted bloody opportunity.

Charlie Brooker is spot-on btw.

Btw: if someone from C4 is reading this then how about making a drama about the loss of the ‘right to silence’. An erosion of civil liberties if ever. Just a thought….

‘Let him dangle’

From a welfare state to society murder
Bring “Back the noose” is always heard
Whenever those swine are under attack
But it won’t make you even
It won’t bring him back.

(Elvis Costello – Let Him Dangle)

It must be around 25 years ago when my English teacher asked us 14-15 year olds to write a discursive essay on the death penalty. Before we did he asked for a show of hands of who supported the re-introduction/against the re-introduction of the death penalty. There was around 30 of us in the class and only around 8 (including myself) were against the re-introduction of the death penalty. Even the teacher was shocked and interestingly gave a long talk about why he was against the death penalty. I can’t remember what grade I got for the essay (though the discursive essay on unilateral nuclear disarmament found me in even a smaller minority…me and another girl who was in Youth CND).

But the debate about the death penalty never goes away, it comes back and forth whenever there is an appalling crime committed usually in conjunction with the howls from the right-wing populist media whipping up a frenzy, demanding vengeance. The pro death penalty brigade have been raising their ugly heads. Though this debate will be interesting:

An Ipsos Mori poll commissioned by Channel 4 found 70% of those surveyed thought the UK should have the death penalty as the maximum possible penalty for the most serious crimes.

I considered the death penalty as state sanctioned murder as a 14 year old and still hold that opinion. It is obscene, it is vengeance.

In the States there are 3,300 people on death row disproportionately Black, (it seems that support for the death penalty in the States is falling) this highlights the racism that exists within that society. And one of the many reasons I loathe Bill Clinton was of this vile political opportunistic act where he made a point of supporting the execution of Ricky Ray Rector in 1992. Playing to the ‘tough on crime’ mentality.

How many of these people on death row are innocent and have been subject to a miscarriage of justice? But then some members of the ruling class have no problem with hanging innocent people (Lord Denning on the Birmingham Six, “We shouldn’t have all these campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they’d been hanged. They’d have been forgotten and the whole community would have been satisfied.”)

I remember reading the powerful Reflections on the Guillotine by Camus as part of a series of essays written by campaigners for the abolition of the death penalty in Britain (the book had been published in the early 1950s). Camus writes about his father desperately wanting to attend a public execution, he does and he gets more than he bargained for. His father is in shock for days after witnessing the brutality and violence of state sanctioned murder.

Albert Pierrepoint, Britain’s most prolific hangman, made the point in an autobiography that people who were otherwise popular got their sentence commuted. Others who could be seen as ‘outsiders’ people with few friends, inarticulate etc ended up being hanged. And the death penalty reflects class dynamics, racism and sexism engendered in this unequal judgemental and moralistic society.

The Sun newspaper of course would love to have the death penalty back. The trial and execution would be cheap to cover but would be a cert for huge sales. Imagine being able to whip up public fury or sympathy for the convict and being able to report all that extra revenue back to Rupert.

A five-point plan and the Labour Left

I like this post by Paul over at Though Cowards Flinch.

Will write some of my own political observations from his post later as I am still well and truly bunged up due to cold. And I won’t do the post much justice if I rambled on in a cold addled manner.

Welfare Reform Bill back in the Commons this week

So it seems the Welfare Reform Bill is on course to go back to the Commons on the 10 November for consideration of Lords amendments. Changes have been made.

Others amendments to be considered include:

• ensuring that lone parents of children under five will not face a financial sanction if they fail to carry out work-related activity;
• introducing flexibility to allow lone parents undertaking work-related activity on employment and support allowance, and those affected by progression-to-work, to restrict the hours when they undertake work-related activity;
• placing in primary legislation an assurance that lone parents with a youngest child aged below seven will not be required to meet the full jobseeking conditions of JSA – for example, being available for work or actively seeking work;
• ensuring that the well-being of children is always taken into account when a personal adviser and a parent agree the steps the parent will take to prepare for and move into work when completing an action plan or a jobseeker’s agreement;
• making clear in primary legislation that in considering whether a person has good-cause for failing to undertake mandatory activity for income support, JSA and ESA purposes, account must be taken of the availability of childcare and the claimant’s health condition or disability;
• ensuring that a direction for a claimant to undertake specific work-related activity may not specify medical or surgical treatment as the only activity which is to be regarded as being work-related activity;
• introducing parliamentary control over the provisions relating to external provider social fund loans, by ensuring that details are set out in regulations rather than in social fund directions which are not formally laid before Parliament;
• giving the government the flexibility, in uprating benefits, to uprate the basic state pension by the commitment of 2.5 per cent and to uprate other social security benefits as the Secretary of State thinks fit, even though the level of prices, as measured by the retail prices index, has not increased;
• renaming council tax benefit as council tax rebate;
• introducing an automatic 13-week exemption from the JSA conditionality rules for victims of domestic violence;
• introducing powers to mandate problem drug users who refuse or are not ready to enter into treatment to agree a rehabilitation plan, which will require in particular that they attend a six-week education and motivational programme;
• inserting a provision into the drug testing provisions to enable an individual who refuses to attend an assessment because they are adamant that they are not a drug user to be offered a drug test in order to demonstrate this;
• tightening up data-sharing powers, in particular by preventing Jobcentre Plus from obtaining information about a problem drug user’s medical and social work history, and providing that information provided by the police and probation service can be used only by those involved in administering the new programme; and
• introducing a review mechanism to ensure that Parliament properly reviews the effectiveness of the power to disqualify a ‘recalcitrant’ non-resident parent from holding travel authorisation and/or a driving licence.

I will write more about the amendments from the Lords later.

Just one briefly, the amendment on domestic violence introducing an automatic 13-week exemption from the JSA conditionality rules. To reiterate what has been argued before, 3 months is not nearly enough time for someone escaping from domestic violence. It takes longer than 3 months for a woman (with or without children) to turn her life around.