Slashdot Mirror
British Civil Liberties Film Released
An anonymous reader sends us to a BBC article about a British film likely to attract the attention of civil liberties supporters. The film, Taking Liberties , is a documentary about eroding civil liberties in present-day Britain. It will be showing in cinemas in major cities across the UK starting next weekend. From the article: "Director Chris Atkins wants Taking Liberties to shake the British public out of their apathy over what he sees as the dangerous erosion of traditional rights and freedoms. 'This film uses shock tactics. We needed to be unashamedly populist... Once you give up traditional liberties such as free speech and the right to protest you are not going to easily get them back,' says Atkins."
...and just download this documentary. It sounds interesting.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Yes, but if you overdramatize it people will say "it's not that bad - most of those laws will never negatively affect my life" and whenever they hear about the issue in the future they'll think "Oh, I've considered that - I even saw a film about it once - but I've decided it's not really a problem".
oh, and before you ask, many of them regard themselves as 'intellectual' (a.k.a. they don't read yellow press etc.).
kinda seems like only IT ppl and civil rights activists are concerned now. and i absolutely cannot see anything that would change that.
Call me a troll if you want, but the Bush administration has clamped down hard on free speech, monitors just about everything, litmus tests public servants, puts whoever it wants on various lists, puts others in prison without charging them, declares pre-emptive war with no legal basis, and does it all while putting every citizen and their children so deep in debt they will probably never get out.
Talk about disappearing civil liberties, but this country might have well reverted to monarchy rule. It would really be tough to call it a democracy any longer.
the day they wake up is the day when more ppl are afraid of dying in a car accident than dying in a terrorist attack.
the possibility of such an event ?
...but not necessarily because of its content. No, what is interesting is how the film maker will decry the loss of liberties, the encroachments of freedom, and the institution of censorship -- in a film openly distributed and marketed to the general public, and all without the government shutting him down. Yessireee...a police state! That's what we're living in for sure. The jackbooted thugs will be here any minute now...any minute now...I'm sure they're almost here...somewhere. Well, maybe their black helicopters broke down or something, but I'm sure they're on their way!
I had recently seen to videos that conveyed messages about some current events; http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com/, and Al Gore's http://www.an-inconvenient-truth.com/.
It's interesting to me that video has become the newest, best tool to portray a point of view on an issue. Now if we could get these videos on the airwaves on a regular basis, I think the public good would be served. I realize that oil companies, tobacco companies, and other groups with an agenda might tend to drown out the discourse with their own videos. Still, these videos are better than the 30 second sound bites that we get in our broadcast TV channels.
Best regards.
"Banned in all the cinemas, NOW!"
make one for the USA?
/. almost daily points out how "they" are trying to put the screws to us?
how many different "associations" do we have in the US that
"Viva Nepal!" (sorry, couldn't help that)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I'm pretty sure I already saw this movie when it was called V for Vendetta. Or was it Children of Men?
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
So in this one South London neighborhood that I occasionally frequent, there was an armed robbery at 4 in the afternoon on the main street last Saturday. It's a quiet neighborhood, very well-balanced, well-off, so it makes sense to come there and rob people.
There was a similar robbery the previous week.
The week before that, it was on a weekday evening, I guess they had a busy schedule that week. It's the same guys each time. They live in this totally different neighborhood a way to the south, though.
And there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Nothing at all. What are you going to do? Call Batman? The UK police are very nice guys (compared to any other police force I've met) but they really can't do much in this situation.
The trouble is, this particular chunk of street doesn't have any cameras. The south half of the street near the station does, and the north half near what's called a 'roundabout' does, but there's this bit in the middle that doesn't. So all you have to do is rob people there, since nobody around here is fool enough to intervene and get jailed or killed, and there's no chance of a conviction (or even police attention) without video evidence. If you have video evidence, and there is a history of crime, and someone gets hurt, then in the end, you can get a custodial sentence passed. It's an uphill struggle, though, because there's a hell of a lot of civil liberties in the way.
If nobody gets hurt, there's nothing you can do even with cameras. Every weekend, kids come up the road from the other, nastier neighborhood to the south, and as they go they kick over stuff and pull flowers out because, well, that's the local culture. It's not a life-threatening problem -- it just means you kind of have to remember to get stuff indoors by a certain time on Fridays. And don't grow rosebushes in the front yard.
But all is not lost. Armed robbery generally *does* mean someone eventually getting hurt, and next year there will be cameras for that bit of street, yay! And none of this is really *Real Violent Crime* such as you might find in south chicago; it's just that there's no reason *not* to mug people or kick stuff over so it just becomes the normal expectation that those things will happen.
The thing about 'omg they are taking our libertiez!' is, Civil Liberties in this sense aren't as important as for example the liberty to *not* be mugged or the liberty to *not* have your stuff smashed or the most important liberty of all, the liberty to *not* have the nature of your life dictated by the whims of thugs. The liberty of not being recorded on camera is actually pretty trivial by comparison.
So install some more freakin cameras. Create new powers to stop 'public nuisance', use electronic tags, maybe suspend habeas corpus or something. Take away more civil liberties. Here, have some of mine. I'll expect them back when I leave the UK.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I'm in the US, so things are a bit different. Apathy is the same. Here, we have our rights enshrined in a Constitution. In Britain everything is based on tradition and the consent of the Crown rather than a written document, unless you go back to the Magna Carta. I could be wrong on that so flame gently if required.
Nevertheless, when the most sacred and cherished documents in history are trashed by a government of men (British or American) over a period of years, apathy sets in the longer it goes on without anyone doing anything about it. When the key documents are shat upon, I, for one, lose respect for every written rule, law, regulation and contract. Writing isn't worth the paper it's written on.
I don't go around breaking contracts because I believe a person's word is their bond and carries honor. Everything else, however, is debatable IMO.
Who's going to go watch a documentary about civil liberties when Big Brother's on TV?
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security.
It is intresting because the words in bold are not usually included. Watch the excellent british series "yes minister" ("the right/need to know" I believe) for why these words are so fucking important.
In that episode it is the word "significant" wich is added to a sentence to make it into weasel language.
Yes, if this quote above is correct, then Benjamin Franklin was a weasel.
After all, just what do you classify as essential or for that matter tempory. The right to travel outside your own country is hardly essential for the majority of us, and if a sacrifice would grant you a million years of security by the age of the universe that would still be temporary.
They are weasel words, words that can be used to, well weasel out of commiting yourselve to anything firm. Franklin by including these words could always claim that he never meant for something to be considered an essential liberty or that security measure in his eyes was not temporary.
The world changes. Take travelling, pasports have been known for a long time and used to be documents that merely asked of friendly powers to let this person pass unharmed. The dutch pasport at least still has text that asks friendly powers to allow the owner of the pasport to free passage and any aid or assitance necesarry. Officious language from an age when the vast majority of people never travelled from their place of birth.
Nowadays you can easily find a job were you pass several borders each and every day. Taking a long weekend on the other side of europe is common as hell and airports handle millions of people everyday.
Obviously then a passport today is much different then it once was. More and more info linking the intended owner to the document is included. Loss of an essential liberty? Providing temporary security OR the price for a liberty that gives us some security. Discuss, but know that Benjamin Franklin's famous quote does NOT take a firm stand against any amount of biometrics to be included on your pasport, not even if it was to be injected in your body. "Essential" and "temporary".
Liberty is a noble goal. Just go ahead, disable the traffic lights on a busy intersection, see how well people cope with liberty. The simple fact is that for instance speed cameras do have a positive effect, areas known to be heavily controlled show a drastic reduction not only in the speeding itself but also in accidents. The essential freedom of being able to speed sacrificed for the temporary security of not being killed by some idiot who thinks he is Michael Schumacher?
Play an MMORPG for a while, say WoW and see what a world looks like when the police and the state are essentially absent. It ain't pretty. Yes it is freedom, but at what price?
We should always be wary of what is being done in the name of security, but next time someone quotes Benjamin Franklin and leaves out the two weasel words take note of it. These words were included by a smart man for a good reason, why did they choose to leave them out?
...but not necessarily because of its content. No, what is interesting is how the film maker will decry the loss of liberties, the encroachments of freedom, and the institution of censorship -- in a film openly distributed and marketed to the general public, and all without the government shutting him down. Nice strawman, but he was warning against the destruction of civil liberties, not claiming that Britain was a police state yet."Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
they'll be too busy watching the blockbusters that are stacked up for showing over the next few weeks... the only way to get a real audience would be to show it before the main feature or else in primetime on the main channels... but there's no way the main broadcasters would shift their soaps for that... 'tis weird that the really good programmes get shown opposite the cruddy soaps...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
So all you have to do is rob people there, since nobody around here is fool enough to intervene
Ahh. there is your problem. People in that nieghborhood don't give a shit. How did nieghborhoods ever have low crime rates before CCTV? Because they stood by their nieghbors and acted in their own best interest by actually doing something about it themselves. By hiding behind closed doors pretending not to see, they are getting the shitty neighborhood they deserve. Act like a victim, get treated like a victim. I have more than once come out of my apartment into the street and made my presence known, when there is a disturbance on my street.(I live in New York City) Guess what happens when I walk out and look them in the eye? Well usually it's some arguement that is starting to turn physical, but when suddenly there is a witness threats go back to being just words. The one actual mugging that I encountered the guy just ran away.
We are all just people.
The world used to be so simple, when I was young primates had a male leader who had beaten the previous male leader in a fight and replaced him. Younger males could live under his care until they became too dangerous to his rule and were forced to live outside the group, were natural selection would make on of them the next challenger.
It all made sense, was simple and that was how the monkeys lived and in some way so did humans.
Turns out that is not the case at all. The male leader may very well win temporary control just by beating the old leader BUT if he then acts like an asshole to his new harem of females and is too rough with their young then he might just learn that a dozen pissed of female monkeys can seriously hurt one male leader, especially one not smart enough to have a second in command.
So in one docu the old leader is replaced by a new upstart, the females don't like his attitude and give him a near lethal kicking and the old leaders second becomes the new boss with the old leader now being the second in command. So the females really decided who they wanted after all. Revolution in the monkey world.
Note however that at no time did the monkeys bother with election or trying to correct the behaviour of the hooligan monkey. He died of his wounds. Execution.
Yet for the last couple of decades both left and right wingers have toned down the element of punishement for crimes in our own society, the left because they are bleeding hearts and the right because they are to cheap too pay for prisons and other essential tools of a justice system.
This leads to repear offenders by wich they don't mean people who are commiting their second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eight, etc etc crime but people whose offences are in the triple digits, and still are getting non-sentences that are often not even applied.
What does a sentence forcing someone to do a few hours of community work sentence but a clear message that working is a punishement (how would you like to have a job to wich other people are sentenced) especially if people then can use excuses like actually perfoming this sentence would place an undue burden on them.
Note that both the left and the right are to blame for this. The left because they believe the softly softly approach will work despite several decades of failure and the right because they think you can keep cutting costs and still get the result. It is odd that right wingers are all for locking people up for life and executing them but when you ask them cover the cost of the bullet they can't be found. Just as odd as the left wingers who shout the hardest never ever seem to live in the areas affected by their social experiments. Odd eh.
The situation you describe is the end result of years of mis-management, were rights granted to combat excesses were taken to far and now create just as much problems as they were supposed to correct.
I do not think it is right childeren should be sentenced as adults. HOWEVER that does not mean that kids under a certain age cannot be touched by the law. There are criminal gangs that use children because they know the police does not have any power to stop them. A kid who commits a crime knowing he cannot be punished is a sign that things have gone to far to the other side.
Perhaps a person needs a second chance BUT at the moment the system seems to be more like a person needs another chance, and another and another and another add infinitum.
I take public tranport in amsterdam, holland as an example. There used to be conductors on the trams. They were removed. The left thought the people could police themselves, the right wanted to cut staffing costs. Problems encurred, were muffled over by both sides until finally the problems became just too big, too many people not paying and security problems. So now we have both cameras and the conductor back. One huge failure of a social experiment but does anyone bother to interview the people t
You know my grandfather used to say you can't comment on something you know nothing about. I was just glancing at the comments to see, if anyone has actually seen this movie, and what they thought about it. I noticed people going off about propaganda before they gave it a chance. A free society comes complete with propaganda. An educated individual views all media as propaganda of one kind or another, then views it with an open mind and draws conclusions thusly.
Once you give up traditional liberties such as free speech and the right to protest you are not going to easily get them back,' says Atkins
We've never had them in the first place, Mr Atkins. In order for there to be inalienable rights like freedom of speech, there must be constitutional limitations on the power of the state, legislature and judiciary, all three of which needing to be subject to the rule of law.
WE DON'T HAVE SUCH A DOCUMENT. WE DON'T LIVE IN SUCH A STATE.
We never have.
Therefore your film about rights we've never had is as useful as a chocolate teapot.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Furthermore, not one British citizen on 10,000 would want anyone to have such a right. the other 9,999 are 100% behind the full enforcement of 7 years jail for anyone posessing a weapon, legally or otherwise. The American right to bear arms is seen as the reason why American deaths from gunshot wounds run at around 100 times the rate here, adjusted for population size. In short, almost everyone in the UK sees weapons as the problem, and none see them as the solution.
A few criminals have guns, and probably a similar number of country dwellers have them, and perhaps a few who shoot competitively as a sport, but carrying guns is not something many in the UK would consider. Those with a sound legal reason for carrying a gun have very little support here.
Our police dont normally carry guns, but have still managed to shoot more innocent people than guilty ones. Each time a policeman is shot by a criminal, there is a clamour to arm the police, but I do not recall any incident where this would ahve prevented the policemen being shot. AFAIR 75% of American polise shot are shot with their own gun, or by a colleague.
How about a right to bare breasts? Now that really would be popular!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
We in England have never had the right to bear arms, nor the right to arm bears.
:rollseyes: right now.
No more than you have the right to free speech, etc. etc.
Your last vestige of the right bear arms was taken away, and in short order you see your other rights sliding slowly away. And there's no correlation.... Slashdot really needs to implement smilies, 'cause I really need to use
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
http://www.fcn.ca/Gwen.html
Few women do so, but I've seen women sunbathing topless in the park south of my house in the summer(grassy area, near Lake Ontario). It's not really made a huge deal of, at least that I've seen. The women have no shirt on, and neither do the men. They get a tan and then go home. *shrug*
A boob is just a boob, not anything to get TOO frantic about.
There is one: "America: Freedom to Fascism" Full movie here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-165688030 3867390173
site: http://freedomtofascism.com/
We in England have never had the right to bear arms,
Not true, in fact archery practice was mandatory for quite some time, and in some border towns killing Welsh people was regarded as a public service. If by "never" you mean "in the last 100 years" and by "arms" you mean "guns", I think you'll find that the restrictions were very different pre-WW2, definitely pre-WW1.
How about a right to bare breasts? Now that really would be popular!
Hrm. Maybe. Depends on the breasts.
What would Lemmy do?
"We in England have never had the right to bear arms"
I suggest you check your own history, paying particular attention to the 1689 Bill Of Rights, which (among various other things) gives the right to have armaments for personal defence.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
We also don't see mandatory quarantine for anyone entering hospital, or the kind of tough cleaning regimes the food industry has to deal with in hospitals. What we do see is emails being intercepted, computer seized, stop and search and a whole raft other measures to prevent a minor problem.
If you can read this you've gone too far.
There isn't that correlation in the US. In fact, gun groups like the NRA are usually at odds with civil liberty groups like the ACLU. So if anything there's a reverse correlation in the US. Can you back up your thesis in any way? Because it seems to me that the erosion of rights in Britain has more to do with the so-called "War on Terror" than gun issues.
I just got done sitting on a jury for a drug trial. It was a frightening experience. The evidence was so weak and indirect that I couldn't even believe they had charged these two people with a crime. One of them was a transsexual prostitute who was clearly (to me) just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, when the jury started to deliberate, there were four of us who all thought it was going to be an open-and-shut not guilty verdict, but we ended up with a hung jury, 8 voting guilty and 4 not guilty. This is the kind of offense that can easily land you in prison for life under California's three strikes laws. And no, you don't have to be a career criminal to fall under three strikes. The prostitute was charged with three felonies from the same night, and that's enough. There's a guy who's in prison for life under three strikes for stealing four chocolate chip cookies. After the trial was over, I visited the place where the cop claimed he'd conducted surveillance from using binoculars. Well, you absolutely cannot see the stuff he claimed to have seen from that location. There are buildings, trees, and walls in the way. I hope these defendants don't have to go to trial again, because next time they might be unlucky in the jury they get.
Find free books.
Really? You want to back up the assertion that the NRA are at odds with civil liberty groups like the ACLU?
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
I'll let you do the endorsement research. Let's just say they don't often concur.
"If by "never" you mean "in the last 100 years" and by "arms" you mean "guns", I think you'll find that the restrictions were very different pre-WW2, definitely pre-WW1."
You're pretty much correct. The first British gun licensing laws were enacted in 1870, but they were essentially a revenue generation tool. You had to pay ten shillings for the right to carry guns around in public places, but could keep as many at home as you wanted without one, and the licenses were handed out at post offices to anyone who could pay for them. The first actual control legislation was in 1903, when certain classes of pistol could only be sold to people who produced a valid game or gun license, although once again such licenses were extremely easy to obtain, and any other sort of gun could be bought without them. True gun control didn't happen until 1920, and was largely a reaction to the 1917 Russian Revolution, where private gun ownership played a significant role in overthrowing the Czar, and the British government feared that the millions of recently demobbed (and therefore extremely cheap) weapons from WWI would be used to start a massive armed revolt.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Neither do the ACLU and the World Wildlife Fund. Doesn't mean they're at odds, just that they're working on different things.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
The right to bear arms is a universal right not given by men, as are all the rights described in the original ten Amendments to the Constitution. They are inaliable rights. That's something almost everyone (particularly and sadly, Americans) forget or have never been taught in the first place.
I think cameras would be a good idea if their use could be properly regulated. There shoud be strict limitations on the period that recordings are kept, like perhaps 2 weeks, after which they must be destroyed, unless there is an incident and a specific portion is copied off to an evidence archive or something. So if there is an incident, such as a mugging and it is reported, the cameras overlooking that section is noted, and the recording is found and copied, and in the two weeks after the incident, the recording would be gone.
It should not be trivial to 'save' video footage. There must be a good reason for it, and the footage must be incriminating.
But we all know that authorities will find reasons to keep footage for 3 years or more.
England isn't down-town Baghdad. Even if we had the right to bear arms there's not a single person in this country that would risk getting themselves killed to try and claw back their civil liberties. It would have to get a whole lot worse before it got to that point, so bad in fact that any gun law would be irrelevant anyway, because the people would be arming themselves in the same way the IRA did - through backchannels.
The right to bear arms with the aim of fighting back against the goverment is rather irrelevant in todays day and age, the difference between civilian arms and the military they'd be fighting against, assuming the army backed the goverment is too big for people to give their lives unless things got so bad that people felt their lives had already been taken. Of course the more realistic scenario is that the army wouldn't back the goverment, why? Because even people in the army are better educated than they were, back when these ideas of being able to bear arms to rebel against the goverment were introduced, soldiers themselves are citizens who'd have to be willing to be supressed, if the goverment gave them special conditions and more rights over other citizens then there's still the soldier's families the soldiers are going to care about, and friends of the soldiers family and on and on.
The only thing the right to bear arms does realistically is make American citizens think they're in control, when the reality is quite obviously the opposite, the cost of this false security they have is many countless unneeded murders and accidents caused by the plethora of available firearms.
The comparison with environmental matters is a good one; but the connection is not film. It's that in both cases, people in the know have long been aghast that the public and politicians are oblivious to the issue. In the case of the environment, the niche interest has finally spouted into the public arena. I'm desperately hoping that privacy will also reach such a tipping point and we'll suddenly find that general apathy and disinterest turns into sudden and serious action (although leave cookies alone!)
The problem with that is, if President Bush is cracking down on freedom of speech, then the speech he cracks down on will probably include speech saying that he's cracking down on freedom of speech. America prides itself on its First Amendment, so violating that amendment has to be done discreetly.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Gordon Brown is now talking about having a written constitution for Britain. It will be interesting to see how it skirts around all the infringements to our rights that have been passed under the Labour government. We had a million people March against the war and the government reacted by effectively banning protests within a half mile of parliament. They tried to pretend it was about removing Brian Haw but that was a pretty lame excuse.
Since when is armed robbery a minor offence?
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
What does the american constitution have to do with this issue?
Apart from nothing at all, that is?
But there is also profit to be had in widespread environmental awareness. Until the UK or the US starts nationalising major corperations, there isn't much monetary profit to be had in protecting freedoms. People are so used to making themselves vassals for a paycheck, that if there is no corporate sponsored awareness TV campaign, there will be no mainstream call for severe political reform.
We are all just people.
I can see this being like Moore's film in the USA. A leftwing fool criticising the government and posing an equally restrictive alternative. Not to mention that he will probably avoid the fact that that most of our liberties were taken by the EU, who are unelected. But that's lazy journalism for you.
the full enforcement of 7 years jail for anyone posessing a weapon, legally or otherwise.
The above doesn't seem to make sense.
"Seven years jail for anyone possessing a weapon, legally or otherwise" = "it should be illegal to possess weapons, and anyone possessing them should get seven years in jail."
This can cause problems for certain definitions of "weapon." Is it legal to possess huge knives? Chainsaws? Can a world-class boxer keep his powerful fists? What happens to karate blackbelts?
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Only the other day, I was modded into oblvion for commenting that the present UK goverment has been given a pass on its assault on civil liberties.
I am glad that others see my viewpoint, since I think it is probably one of the biggest factors that will shape UK society and the UK's economic position in the world.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
that could it be.
I thought it was written in the First Amendment that there would be no law abridging freedom of speech or the press (or of assembly). The amendment carries no qualifications whatsoever.
The main places where Americans classically expect the government to interfere with free speech are IP rights (if the copyright owner complains) and shouting "Fire!" in crowded theaters that aren't on fire (or equiv. clear and present dangers), and those exceptions are somewhat controversial.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Living in a place where they have to make a new law before shutting you up is vastly preferable to living in a place with no such requirement.
You also forgot the "and" clause, which enumerate the specific reasons for allowing laws that limits freedom of speech, such as "national security". It looks like anything can be put under these items, but nonetheless Danish courts have overturned Danish laws by referring to this convention. So they must represent some strength. Danish courts never overturned Danish laws before EU, our own constitution is written, but extremely weak. The freedom of speech clause in our constitution boils down to that the state cannot prevent stop you before you publish, but can punish you after publishing.
Most of this is 100% true, but just to be pendantic, the right to bear arms was enshrined in law in Saxon and mediaeval times, I believe, but as it became less necessary and more archaic it pretty much vanished.
We want more cameras where I work (a hospital).
In fact, if people thought that they were to be cut back, I could imagine the nearest to staff unrest you would get around here! Happily, I belive that we will be getting more & better equipment - all depending on when we have the money...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
The rights in the first ten amendments to the Constitution were given to us by James Madison writing in his Virginia home, not passed from God to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Liberty and responsibility are the same thing, and these days people don't want to be responsible. So they give the responsibility to someone else, and their liberty goes with it.
Deleted
Oh I love it when people use facts :-)
Another Point worth Discussing.
The problem is, the source you protest believes that it isn't "just one speech"--that Moore blended different NRA speeches by Heston together in that clip. The overall opinion Heston expresses may be real, but it doesn't correspond to any one actual speech--in particular, not to the one speech given after the Columbine shooting.
Trust me, speeches can be blended like that. Two of my McCartney concert films (covering '89-90 and '93) have concert footage spliced from many different concerts. You know they aren't all from the same McCartney concert because his costume changes (among other things), but there are no breaks in the sound--and the clips are spliced together mid-song!
So the problem with modern documentaries is that there are film equivs. to Photoshop, and it is not always easy to tell when they are being used.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
I watched the film last night.
It was presented in a straightforward manner, and with a good sense of fun.
They picked clips which were
-dramatic such as police horses charging over polltax protesters (polltesters?)
-amusing such as the seller of 'Bollocks to Blair' t-shirts describing the police action (for wearing the t-shirt) against a girl who he described as 'Rather lovely'
Most of what I saw was material I already knew about, so I'm fairly confident that what was presented was truthfull. Packaged up in a dramatic film (this is no dry documentary) it brought laughs, tears and shock. I think this is what the author meant by 'unashamedly populist'.
It is a strong statement - and one that I think is needed to shake the British public out of our complacency.
Watch the trailer - you'll get the idea.
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
'A brief history of time' is populist physics - it isn't just for physics nerds
'Taking Liberties' is populist civil liberties - not just for for civil liberties nerds
-yes, I have seen it.
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android