I, Daniel Blake

I, Daniel Blake   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Anti-cuts drama ‘I, Daniel Blake’ has won top gong at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

The pro-welfare polemic by social-realist filmmaker Ken Loach follows a disabled man persecuted by the benefits system. Loach used his Palme d’Or acceptance speech to attack austerity.


‘The Thick of It’, a comedy following car-crash establishment politicians and their aides, often feels painfully accurate. Especially the other day when Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was interviewed by Channel 4’s Jon Snow.

Hunt squirmed under questioning over his attacks on junior doctors. It really made my day when filmmaker Chris Presswell remixed the interview with a clip from The Thick of It. In it, the aides watch in shock as their boss messes up an interview. The remix works perfectly.

Helen Pattison