Harry's Place

Will viewing be compulsory?

Maybe it could be screened at school in a double bill with “An Inconvenient Truth”

What meaningful connection does the Labour Party, in its present form, have with the historic Labour movement, in any case?

(Hmm, the title recalls a Phil Collins song about divorce. Funny that)

Hilarious. Even Hovis gave up on Hovis nostalgia commercials directed at C2 consumers a couple of decades ago.

Then it invokes an image of one of the WPSU militants struggling for women’s votes. Nothing to do with the Labour Party.

As for Cable Street– that was organized by the Communist Party.

Yes, this video is going to be a real hit in Stevenage, Barking, Billericay and the like. Do even better in places like Newham, Blackburn and Tower Hamlets where most of the local population have memories of how the Labour movement was just as keen on keeping control of their countries of origina as the Tories. I’m sure they’ll all feel inspired by all those faded old banners and the image of Michael Foot leading a march.

Er, Vote for Old Labour, is it? Back to the Future? Only without the whizzy magical machine that’ll get you back to the present with the aid of its Flux Capacitor. Fits Gordon Brown to a T. Makes the Bullingdon boys seem positively avant garde…

Never mind, all those core Labour bloggers will be ecstatic.
Graham of HP will be beside himself with delight. Just as well, because I can’t myself see the ordinary people of this country lining up alongside him.

RIP, sadly, New Labour….

OMG – they’ve chucked in Alex Ferguson, Tanni Grey Thompson and multi-millionairess J K Rowling as a bit of window-dressing. Do they have no idea how sick-making that is? If they wanted to highlight fighters and believers, how about – just as an example – those people caring for sick and elderly relatives who save the NHS billions every year? You know, people who have to fight not only their loved one’s condition, but their own exhaustion, frustration and sadness. People who have to fight bureaucracy to get respite care or even such a simple thing as a laundry service for their incontinent family member? People who believe in “til death us do part” or “family comes first”.

Fuck’s sake – if this is what they’re really going to screen and think is a good idea, then they’re going to face a massive backlash.

hmmm….not convinced. The reference to Cable Street is a bit cheeky given that official Labour policy at the time was to tell Eastenders to stay indoors and not get involved in protest activities against Mosley. Fortunately the ILP, the CP, local trade unions and the Jewish People’s council were not bound by this policy.

What is Labour going to do in Barking to offer a principled alternative now that Herr Griffin has announced he is going to stand there for the Boneheaded Neanderthals Party at the general election? The utterences of local Barking MP Margeret Hodge over the last few years seem to have given a green light to the anti-immigrant/anti-refugee brigade.

Good lord that is grim! I love the way JK Rowling is drafted into the great fight for political rights because she struggled on in the face of rejection driven by her dream to bring reading to young people (and not, obviously, enormous royalty cheques to her bank). Remember those awful book-free days before JK took up the sword of destiny?

The more I think about it, the angrier this makes me. “JK Rowling opening rejection letters…” as an example of “fighting”. ARGH!

Britain was a grim place indeed until J.K. Rowling was published.

Abdul:

I expect that this man’s head was less messed with by his Catholocism than by the romanticized view of the radical elements of Irish nationalism.

I grew up long before J K Rowling received her first, crushing rejection letter – how did I cope with nothing NOTHING to read?

And at the risk of being a multi-post mentalist, that Stilettoed Socialist site is hilarious. Eddie Izzard has tweeted his support!!! The election’s in the bag!

‘Against the odds’ is the right sentiment. In the political betting arean, Labour is so dead and buried (and has been for ages) the debate turned to how the Lib Dems are going to fare.

J.K.Rowling is a Labour supporter and presumably gives them a bob or two from her multiple millions. So they owe her. Doesn’t say much for the flagship Labour government National Literacy Programme’s effectiveness that they’re now claiming that it was her who brought reading to young people….

So interesting that the “Red Rose” and “Things Can Only Get Better” Labour commercials of the past had old monochrome invocations of postwar austerity changing decisively to scenes soft focus colour as the message. Whereas this makes it look as if the colour scenes are simply a continuation of the old world.

And have you noticed that the black people shown are grateful little child recipients of Gordon Brown’s aid largesse in Africa –plus Mandela, safely in South Africa.

There is one black child shown in the background of the school scene. All the workers–including the hospital workers, miners, dinner ladies are white. As are all the sports people. How very typical of Britain today.

Tells you everything about who this video is really aimed at.

The voiceover sounds like the old Hovis commercials, too.

Ultimate cynicism? Or just reduced to weeping over the stale beer, dreaming of past glories?

Labour would do well to stop daydreaming about its past and get down to some pretty serious questions about its future, such as, is there any alternative to Lord Mandy becoming the next leader of the Labour party? And if not why not?

Hilarious. Even Hovis gave up on Hovis nostalgia commercials directed at C2 consumers a couple of decades ago.

The Hovis Ads were filmed in Shaftesbury (Dorset) which is about as far as you can get from ‘oop north’ (& a tory stronghold) without hopping over the channel.

Labour are fucked – I’d be more inclined to vote for them if they played short clips from the simpsons in lieu of proper PP Broadcasts.

Ultimate cynicism?

Yep. Well, you did ask.

I’ve done Hovis a disservice. Clearly I don’t watch enough mainstream commercial TV. They did this ad in 2008, and I think the Labour ad is an umistakeable very obvious lift from it. The same concept of a whiz through recent history–including some very similar refs to suffragettes, WWI soldiers, defiant bombers flying over, flags waving, football triumphs. Only they left out the bit of Churchill broadcasting his “fight them on the beaches” speech via the radio, and the Asian family in the northern backstreets.

The old Hovis commercials I was thinking of were actually made by Ridley Scott in 1973, accompanied by Dvorak’s New World Symphony. And the Labour broadcast invokes their spirit rather than the 2008 version.

The real 2008 Hovis commercial is brilliantly done and unmistakeably of the present, including the high-tech multicultural, individualistic present, whereas the Labour clone is so obviously stitched together from the ghosts of past Labour shibboleth images….

Desperate and embarassing. Perfectly appropriate for today’s desperate and embarassing ‘Labour’ party, then.

They did this ad in 2008, and I think the Labour ad is an umistakeable very obvious lift from it.

Yep, this televisual concept didn’t exist before Hovis did it. I’ve only ever seen it done by various car manufacturers, Heinz beans (other beans are available), Woolworths (RIP) and countless others. There’s a insurance advert right now with a guy hopping over a wall wearing fashions from the different decades going back to the 50s.

All these Hovis allusions indicate a suppressed recognition that this Labour Party promo is in fact the best thing since sliced bread.

Judy: “Clearly I don’t watch enough mainstream commercial TV.”

Yes, that’s what it is. That Hovis commercial, here in the real world, has been running almost continuously for around a year on both mainstream and non-mainstream channels. Very, very hard to miss.

As for nostalgia – it’s simply one of many ad campaigns that has tapped into that recently: Persil, Sainsbury’s, M&S etc. It’s the in thing and something that can be expected during a recession. It gives people a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. No mystery there. Thus no mystery why Labour are doing something similar.

Wonderfully terrible.
A nice history lesson until, halfway through, Brown appears and then it’s downhill all the way.
Reminding people of the existence of Neil Kinnock – excellent.
JK Rowling – eh?
All we needed was Michael Foot’s donkey jacket (or did I miss it).

Still, it’s not about the swing voters, is it?
They’re lost for sure.
It’s about trying to prevent the core from simply staying home.
Good luck.

See Kinnock here at around 7mins 22secs.

A pretty good summation of what the Labour Party is or ought to be all about.

Still, ginger and Welsh, eh? And Michael Foot wore a donkey jacket. Highbrow political discourse indeed.

JK Rowling – “the dream of bringing the pleasure of reading to our children”

Highbrow indeed.

Oh no – why didn’t anyone read my blog post about why ‘Against the Odds’ shouldn’t be used as a PPB? I don’t mind being ignored most of the time but on this occasion I must protest.

“J.K.Rowling is a Labour supporter and presumably gives them a bob or two from her multiple millions. So they owe her.”

Yes she did. And they have rewarded her by putting Harry Potter onto the curriculum, thus ensuring massive royalty earnings as schools buy massive numbers of copies of the books – hand’t you heard? :)

Actually it isn’t at all bad – it is just a pity that whilst in power Labour have removed compulsory history lessons for over 14’s. So most young voters won’t have a clue what they are on about.

” is there any alternative to Lord Mandy becoming the next leader of the Labour party?”
*sigh* i am sure I have addressed this here before.

Mandelson canot become leader of the party as he sits in the House fo Lords.

tis has been fairly well established since Lord halifax declined to put himslef forward for that reason after neville Chamberlain resigned.

Oh the irony!

But it is bad.
No, worse.
It is dreadful.
Dreadful, self-indulgent (the old bits), idiotic (the JK Rowling bit) rubbish.

So, please, show it as much as possible!

‘Risible’ is the understatement of the week! They cannot possibly be seriously contemplating putting this on TV as a PPB – or can they? It shows only too clearly the depths to which they’ve sunk. NOBODY would believe it!

NOBODY would believe it!

Which bits do you mean? Are you suggesting Labour isn’t repsonsible for the creation of the NHS? That it didn’t bring rights to workers? Didn’t introduce SureStart and a minimum wage? Whcih are the really incredible parts, Rosie?

Point proven, I think.

Core Labour will love it.
Everyone else, not so much.

Well if it has done nothing else it has flushed out the bile which drips down Harry’s Place’s back stairs. It is instructive to read through the posts and consider again what small minded and the semi-educated people reside in the Tory Party, natural home of dunces and gutter patriots, like dirt under fingernails.

What a daft piece. A triumph of miserabilism So bad it’s good. Votes for wimin – practically all upper middle-class “fighters”; “they said the son of a miner couldn’t be a minister” – or, presumably, e.g. a multi-millionaire, but a quick couple of minutes’ trawl of extant ones gives Alan Bowkett, Morris Gibby, Kevin Keegan, Paul Sykes, Les Eyre, John Bloor et al. In the non-socialist USA there will be many thousands of miners’ descendents who are multi-millionaires and/or in high positions throughout industry, commerce, arts, culture, judiciary, government..; the skirmishes in Cable St had nothing to do with Labour. Whatever happened to Our Finest Hour -a conspicuious omission in a film abt “fighters” – but to be expected, because that had nothing to do with Labour, either. And they should have gone for an SA clip sans the murdress Winnie “Necklaces” Mandela. And who are the “fighters” among the multi-millionaires Rowling, Ferguson, Kinnock (et Famille)? It’s a pathetic compilation. Preaching to the converted – who will pronounce it excellent. It won’t get a single person to change their vote. “I’m a fighter – not a quitter” – Ld Mandy

hahahahahaha

Howling at the moon

Keir Hardie, my old school at Easington Colliery with Shinwell thumping Ramsay MacDonald, Clem’s great victory, our Nye and the Health Service … it looks as if we are going to get our Labour Party back after all.

You may be.
Fortunately not the rest of us though.

…Didn’t introduce SureStart…

Something used mainly by middle class women as cheap child care, apparently.

Graham @ 16 November 2009, 5:13 pm

“Actually it isn’t at all bad – it is just a pity that whilst in power Labour have removed compulsory history lessons for over 14’s. So most young voters won’t have a clue what they are on about.”

When do you think compulsory History lessons began and ended for over 14s?

I have a disticnt memory of having to choose between Geography and History at that age. I didn’t spend long making a decision: some of Geography was about the society I lived in; History was about little more recent or influential than the Norman conquest.

Of course, at that age I though the modern world was created in six years when Clement Attleee was Prime Minister.

I love Larkers’ comment. Fantastic stuff. HP really does get a shittier class of snide right-wing wanker these days.

I like it – and it is a salutory reminder of good things the party has done, and it makes the implication that a glorious past can be indicative of a future too, which is a necessary reassurance in these dark days. None of the “hard” factual stuff is untrue, despite the shrieks above. Tell you what, maybe a few more amnesiac Tory cunts could be induced to splutter on this thread if Against the Odds included some more negative choice stuff about 80s Tories sliming up to Botha and De Klerk and saying Mandela should be hung. Wankers.

However, whilst I understand it worked very well at Conference, I am not totally convinced it’s quite right for a wider audience as it is designed to press activist buttons just before Brown gets up to make his speech rather than appeal to the centre ground.

But that would just put me on the same side as all the eejits above, so, nah, it’s great.

Alan Ji : history is hopefully a little more interesting now.

Anyway you are right – it was the tories who dropped compulsory history – but Labour could have helped themselves by bringing it back.

I thought the bit were Michael Foot won a fitted kitchen from his libel compensation went down well, the y could relate to that. You either win the lottery or get compensation and hey presto your there!

What Larkers said.

Good idea Gordon – label anyone who thinks this film is shite “small-minded and semi-educated”. Next up – “denier”

Did Gordon obtain a CRB. to sit with young children like that?

Are you suggesting Labour isn’t repsonsible for the creation of the NHS?

Labour, yes.
The current lot have nothing whatever to do with either Labour or the creation of the NHS.

Well if it has done nothing else it has flushed out the bile which drips down Harry’s Place’s back stairs. It is instructive to read through the posts and consider again what small minded and the semi-educated people reside in the Tory Party, natural home of dunces and gutter patriots, like dirt under fingernails.

The pathological, small-minded and bilious hatred which informs every word in the above is exactly what informs the so-called ‘Labour government’ we’ve had for 12 years, in reality a bunch of knaves and idiots who have nothing whatever to do with Labour’s historical ideals and who are far to the right of me. And it’s also the reason why the decent people of this country have become sick to the backteeth with this crooked bunch and why true Labour voters will be voting for someone else in May or June 2010.

“J.K.Rowling is a Labour supporter and presumably gives them a bob or two from her multiple millions. So they owe her. Doesn’t say much for the flagship Labour government National Literacy Programme’s effectiveness that they’re now claiming that it was her who brought reading to young people….” – Judy 16th November 2009 1.53 p.m.

Lord Ashcroft?

“And it’s also the reason why the decent people of this country have become sick to the backteeth with this crooked bunch and why true Labour voters will be voting for someone else in May or June 2010.” – Gordon Bennett 17th November 2.07 p.m.

Whenever I read anyone claiming to speak for the “decent people of this country” I recall all those dimwit gutter patriots of the Right admirably sent up in Mr Al Murray’s ‘Pub Landlord’ sketches.

Old Labour, New Labour or Sentimental Labour but anyway Labour. That’s me. The sheer nastiness of recent Tory attacks on Brown have been confirmatory of one thing. Whatever charm the old Etonian Dave Cameron has he still leads what is at root a nasty spiteful party, people who nurse their personality distorting discontents for decades. In short, the Stupid Party.

I have met at least one person in recent days who is also so disgusted he is considering switching his vote, so well done you.

Mrs A says

Abdul I’m thinking of voting BNP.

After all our local MP is a man not of good character and though I am ashamed to say it from our own dear sub-continent.

Let’s give these fascist boys a chance this time.

Im glad to see white children in this movie Abdul. I thought they’d disappeared from Political Broadcasts altogether.

Peace be upon all white kids.

“And together, we will continue to secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”