{"id":1554,"date":"2021-04-17T11:04:56","date_gmt":"2021-04-17T08:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/?p=1554"},"modified":"2022-03-08T15:53:41","modified_gmt":"2022-03-08T13:53:41","slug":"ken-loach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/ken-loach\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Loach & Paul Laverty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ken and Paul\u2019s view on postcapitalism. – A contribution to m\u03adta.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following is an excerpt from the screenplay of the film \u201cSORRY WE MISSED YOU\u201d<\/em> written by Paul Laverty and directed by Ken Loach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liza Jane, aged 11, is in a delivery van with her father Ricky. It\u2019s a Saturday and she is giving her father a hand deliver the parcels; during the week Ricky is back so late from his work he hardly sees her. Ricky considers himself to be an \u201cowner driver franchisee\u201d; in other words a self employed van driver, master of his own destiny. [Liza Jane is fascinated by the shiny black HAND HELD DEVICE which is used to scan every parcel. She fidgets with it as Ricky drives the van.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIZA JANE
<\/strong>It can text, phone, photograph, scan, contact the customer\u2026
anything else?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RICKY
<\/strong>Bloody well bleep! I hear it in my dreams\u2026 bleeps if I am out of the
cab for more than two minutes\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIZA JANE
<\/strong>So they know where you are?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RICKY<\/strong>
To the exact metre\u2026 and they can track each parcel\u2026 to the back
door to the garden shed\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIZA JANE
<\/strong>Boing! Bouncing of a satellite\u2026 right here into this wee black box\u2026 amazing isn\u2019t it? Spy in the cab\u2026 [She mocks speaking into it]<\/em>
Hello\u2026.Liza Jane here\u2026 I like bananas! Ricky chuckles.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RICKY<\/strong>
Working out the exact route\u2026 the traffic\u2026 the weather\u2026 estimated
time of arrival\u2026 and cuts out if you arrive early! In case there is a preciser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIZA JANE
<\/strong>But why do they need it to the exact time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RICKY<\/strong>
What the big companies do now\u2026 order it online before midnight\u2026 guarantee it the next day if they pay a bit extra\u2026 within the hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIZA JANE
<\/strong>But it means you have to go zigzagging all over the place, out of order\u2026 do they know how late you finish?
Ricky glances at her.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RICKY<\/strong>
You\u2019re full of questions darling\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIZA JANE
<\/strong>But who puts it all in here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RICKY<\/strong>
What do you mean<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIZA JANE
<\/strong>Somebody must think about it\u2026put all the information inside\u2026somebody must have done that\u2026[tapping the device]<\/em> I mean really put it in\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RICKY<\/strong>
Must be a robot, or an app, or a programme\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIZA JANE
<\/strong>But somebody must feed the robot in
the first place\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RICKY<\/strong>
Some specky geek I suppose\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIZA JANE
<\/strong>Who never goes to the toilet. [Ricky looks at her] <\/em>Well, they
measure everything else\u2026why not time for the toilet?
Ricky chuckles and shakes his head.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RICKY<\/strong>
Didn\u2019t get those brains from me.
[SORRY WE MISSED YOU – SCENE 19]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During lockdown I met a driver on my street in Edinburgh who was finishing off a 14 hour shift. He often worked between 12 and 14 hours a day. His eyes were sunken, and his skin was grey. He reminded me of one of the drivers I met while carrying out research for the above screenplay who told me \u201cI feel like a tube of toothpaste\u2026 all squeezed out.\u201d I asked him how he was; it seemed like the final blow and it looked like he was about to burst out crying. Some child\u2019s Dad, somebody\u2019s partner, and bogus self employed driver, key worker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here we are, 2021, homo sapiens, manacled to an app, delivering our hearts desire to the doorstep at break neck speed with mind boggling efficiency while the driver is pushed to collapse in a shift that would shame the Victorians, but not Amazon. The word algorithm has a long history and can be traced back to a 9th century mathematician. In those days slavery flourished. It does today too, but the shackles come dressed up to our front doors in a shiny hand held device; from the same doors that the public applauded key workers so enthusiastically but without the curiosity of a child like Liza Jane, who tried to make the connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Ken Loach is an English filmmaker. His socially critical directing style and socialist ideals are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as poverty (Poor Cow<\/em>, 1967), homelessness (Cathy Come Home<\/em>, 1966), and labour rights (Riff-Raff<\/em>, 1991, and The Navigators<\/em>, 2001). Loach\u2019s film Kes <\/em>(1969) was voted the seventh greatest British film of the 20th century in a poll by the British Film Institute. Two of his films, The Wind That Shakes the Barley<\/em> (2006) and I, Daniel Blake<\/em> (2016), received the Palme d\u2019Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making him one of only nine filmmakers to win the award twice. He is a member of DiEM25\u2019s Advisory Panel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul Laverty is an Irish-Scottish lawyer and scriptwriter, born in Calcutta, India, (1957). He studied Philosophy at Gregorian University, Rome, and Law at the University of Glasgow, and received the Fulbright Award in 1984. In the mid-eighties, he traveled to Nicaragua, Central America, and lived there for almost three years. He worked for a Nicaraguan human rights organization. During this time, he traveled widely in Guatemala and El Salvador which were both in a state of civil war. He has remained keenly interested in Latin American affairs ever since. After his time in Central America, Laverty made contact with the director Ken Loach and since then they have been working in constant collaboration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Filmmaker\/Screenwriter <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6532,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-parts\/content-board.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_events_control_status":"","_tribe_events_control_status_canceled_reason":"","_tribe_events_control_status_postponed_reason":"","_tribe_events_control_online":"","_tribe_events_control_online_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advisory-board-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1554"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6539,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1554\/revisions\/6539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}