Film director Ken Loach appeared on BBC Question Time this week. And in just 96 seconds, he tore apart the failed political and economic decisions which have created the appalling living conditions captured in his latest film: I, Daniel Blake.
Last night on Question Time @kenloachsixteen brilliantly exposed Tory austerity #BBCQT #WeAreAllDanielBlake pic.twitter.com/n4epQ7oEIt
— Momentum 🌹 (@PeoplesMomentum) October 28, 2016
Loach was asked for his view on Prime Minister Theresa May’s sweetheart deal with Japanese car manufacturer Nissan, likely the first in a long line of companies queuing up to profit from Brexit. Loach said:
We’ve heard political jargon and no substance.
…there’s clearly a subsidy promised; assurances are nothing without money on the table. If there’s an assurance, they’ll have some money attached.
How strange, then, that we have no money to rescue social care for people who need help, that we have no money for our cash-strapped NHS?! So the doctors have to work even harder for the same amount of money. Plainly won’t happen. Plainly the NHS is being driven towards privatisation.
But how about if we look at the economy from the other end up? How about the economy for the people who are on zero hours contracts? How about the economy for people who work for agencies, and they’re rung up one day and they say ‘yes, you’ve got work today’, and they ring up the next day and they say ‘sorry, no work today for you’? And they can’t plan their lives. They can’t start a family. They can’t buy a house. Their lives are in chaos. What’s the economy like for them?
I’ll tell you someone who it is good for. There’s one CEO working for a big multinational company. He earns in 45 minutes what the average worker will earn in a year.
The economy is good for him. It’s not so good for everybody else.
In a Britain where the Trussell Trust network of food banks is delivering over a million food parcels a year to people who otherwise couldn’t afford to eat, where a million people are working on insecure zero hours contracts, and an end to the economic and social policies which drove people to these conditions is nowhere in sight, we need more people like Ken Loach – who are willing and able to defend those who cannot defend themselves.
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– See more from Ken Loach at The Canary.
Featured image via screengrab