Wild Target and Killers

This week we have two similarly themed comedies from either side of the Atlantic. Starting with the British offering:

Wild Target is actually a remake of a French film. Bill Nighy stars as the hitman hired to kill Emily Blunt, who has made the mistake of ripping off the wrong man (Rupert Everett), but instead finds himself falling for her wild and unpredictable ways. Meanwhile, Rupert Grint (Ron from Harry Potter) stars as the vaguely gormless sidekick, Martin Freeman (in his best big screen outing) is the rather creepy rival hitman and Eileen Atkins has a hoot as Nighy's mum, supporting the family business.

The result is fitfully funny - the action is generally well handled and the scenes between Nighy and Grint work well. However, when the romance takes over it feels more icky than either funny or convincing, due to the insurmountable age gap and a lack of chemistry between the leads - even Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones made a more convincing couple. At the end of the day, Blunt is just too young for it to work. Which is a pity because individually, they're both great fun to watch. The film does manage to pull things round for a decent enough finale. Overall - 5.5/10 Intermittently funny and mainly entertaining despite the questionable romance.

Killers could also accurately be described as intermittently funny. Ashton Kutcher stars as the secret agent who tries to get out of the game after meeting and falling for Katherine Heigl's normal girl. Three years later and he suddenly finds himself having to fend off numerous hitmen.

Kutcher has an acting range that stretches from lovable doofus to lovable doofus. Suave secret agent is too much a stretch for him, but he still makes a watchable screen presence, as does Heigl doing ditzy blonde again. The problem is, as above, there is zero chemistry between them.

There are some nicely handled bits of action, but the film is saved by Tom Sellick and Katherine O'Hara as Heigl's parents, who between them get most of the laughs.
Overall - 5.5/10 Also intermittently funny, with some half decent action and Bond references.

Also out:
Our Family Wedding - 4/10 a romantic comedy with zero romance and next to no laughs, also featuring the nadir of Forrest Whittaker's career, crude racial stereotypes and a goat on viagra. Less entertaining than watching England play Algeria.

Brooklyn's Finest

Antoine "Training Day" Fuqua returns to the territory that brought him acclaim. There's nothing terribly original here, but given Fuqua's forays into other genres (Tears of the Sun, King Arthur?) hardly set the world alight either critically or commercially, that's not necessarily a bad thing. This is definitely his strongest film since Training Day.

The trio of central characters are so familiar, they border on the stereotype - Richard Gere is the weary-veteran just trying to get through to retirement, Ethan Hawke is the struggling family man succumbing to temptation trying to make ends meet and Don Cheadle is deep-undercover with conflicted loyalties and wanting out. Cheadle and Hawke are excellent, Gere manages world-weary (is he acting?) but fails to convince in the character's later arc. The pleasant surprise is blast-from-the-past Wesley Snipes reminding us that with the right material, he's actually a good actor.

Fuqua handles the action well, as you might expect, and keeps all three story lines ticking over nicely, before kind of bringing them together at the end, without the reliance on coincidence that some might have relied on.

Overall - 7/10 It's not too original, but its well (if somewhat gorily done).

Some Thoughts on the Budget.

So the budget is out after all the speculation. Looking at different newspaper headlines on wednesday morning was interesting - some of the more right wing papers saw Osborne as the Messiah come again, sorting out the economy by getting tough on scroungers. The less vitriolic elements of the press seemed slightly confused. Some saw the poor as being hardest hit, other the rich, whilst still other saw it as an attack on the middle classes. There has also been a lot of debate around whether its a progressive or a regressive budget - I find this whole line of debate rather off the point and unhelpful. I would say currently that all the main parties are neither really progressive or regressive, but somewhere in the middle and overwhelming pragmatic more than anything else.

There was a certain element of poltical one-upmanship to it - Labour had budgetted to halve the deficit by 2014, Osborne goes for eliminating it. He almost certainly won't manage that, but he will, if his strategies work, exceed Labour's target. Many on the left had feared the conservatives using the current financial crisis as an excuse to bring in radical changes on ideological grounds. I don't see that in this budget at the moment. It seems far more pragmatically political than ideological.

A personal view
For me, personally, the net result will be not much change financially. I gain £200 from the raised tax threshold, lose £75 in increased NI contribution (Labour's policy, but not changed here) and the difference will probably be within £50 of the extra VAT I will be paying. The public sector pay freeze, if adopted in Scotland, will affect me, but was to be expected and to have to wait to see what happens to my public sector pension. Reform of the system is certainly needed, but I will wait to see how they go about it. As I will probably have to work to 70 or 75 before I can claim it, by which time the stress might well have driven me to an early grave, I can't say its my over-riding concern.

Views on the Budget
Taxes - I would wholeheartedly support the increase in capital gains tax and the raising of the tax threshold ( two concrete things in the budget from the Lib-Dem side of the coalition). On reflection, I think the increase in VAT is also something I'd be broadly in favour of. Our economy has been too driven by (at times rampant) consumer spending which is both economically and environmentally unsustainable. Taxing spending rather than income seems to be one way to start to re-dress this and maybe it will encourage people to re-use, recycle and repair more. The freeze on council tax is less positive for me. I don't think its achieved much in Scotland except further strain already stretched local government budgets. The amount of extra money it gives people is really not that siognificant. In other words, the move is little more than a populist gimmick.

Cuts - the full impact of the cuts will not really be seen until the Spending Review in the autumn, but as far as the changes to the welfare system go, the changes in the child benefit/tax credit system go - they do seem to be cutting payments wealthier parents who don't need it whilst providing more to those who do need it. I haven't seen any hard figures for what the net result would be for a poorer lone parent, for example, but it seems fair.
My main concern with the budget is the proposed changes to housing benefit - the proposed cap levels would make it impossible for many people to stay in private housing in many areas, whilst the social housing sector is already overloaded and run down in many places following two decades of underinvestment. Further cuts in housing benefit for those on Job seekers allowance for more than 12 months seem unnecessarily punitive and built on the naive assumption that there will be jobs available (which is in itself, dependant on many other factors). There is certainly a trand of thinking amongst the Tory front benches that people should be more willing to move areas to find work, but this seems rather destructive to ideas of family and community and social cohesion. This is the one area of the budget that I have the most problem with.

Business - Again, the decisions here seem more broadly sensible to me - the bank levy could maybe have been slightly higher, but the encouragements to small businesses in certain regions are welcome.
Pensions - and again, the moves to protect pensioners seem reasonable.

Overall - a cracker of a budget?
So, overall its not as bad as it might have been. Its reasonably fair, but could have been much better. The housing issues are going to be one to watch I fear and my own feeling is that the cuts maybe go further than is needed and this might have a detrimental effect on employment, the economy and therefore ultimately hinder cutting the deficit.

The very rich will probably come out best - they always do, they've not been hit as hard as they could affiord and probably have the resources to find loopholes anyway. The very poorest will also be the ones to suffer most through cuts in benefits and services and will be the most affectec by the VAT rise. The middle I think will be squeezed, so those at the top of the poor and bottom of the middle will be brought closer to those above them by the raised tax threshold and those at the top of the middle will be brought down towards those just below them by the increase in CGT, etc... So the shape of the budget is a christmas cracker - those on either end of the scale pulling or dropping away from a squashed together middle.

What difference with AV?

In a recent online discussion somebody made the very valid point that people advocating different voting systems see elections as serving very different purposes. Those advocating a proportional system see the purpose of elections as producing a result which reflects the views of the electorate, whilst advocates of FPTP see elections as there solely to pick a winner. I'm not sure what proponents of AV see as the purpose of elections.

When I posted a few weeks back and mentioned estimates from a daily paper on the differences AV would have made in May I was challenged over how accurate these were. So over the past few weeks in spare moments, I've been having a look at things myself to come up with my own results. But first the challenges of working things out.

The problems of estimating vote re-allocations

Party-by-party some of the issues faced:

Lib-Dems - are perhaps the easiest party to figure based on the fact that there are polls among their supporters about who would they would have liked to be in coalition with. This would indicate second preferences of roughly one-third Conservative to two-thirds Labour. I would guess that these figures are roughly right, but what's less easy is how these balance out across the country. Are Lib-Dems voters in Scotland, for example, more left-leaning than those in the South-West. The MPs certainly seem to be. The other thing with Lib-Dems is that their voters are possibly the most likely to indicate second and third preferences, by nature of their political position.

Conservatives. Conservative voters are possibly (my own opinion) the least likely to express second preferences. There's also a bit of guesswork as to how many would go Lib-Dem to keep Labour out or how many would prefer just to switch to Labour. Election results would indicate that many voters do switch from one to the other and are actually very dsmissive of the third party. In Wales and Scotland the picture is even more complicated - who would unionist Tories prefer in contests between the Nationalists and Labour.

Labour. Instinctively, I feel Labour voters are more likely to switch Lib-Dem to keep the Tories out than the other way round. Of course, there are still some who might switch Tory, but I'm guessing most who are likely to do, did so at this election (Outside Scotland at least.). Many Labour voters are maybe aready tactically voting Lib-dem - under AV these votes would come back to Labour on the first vote, before switching back to Lib-Dems on second preference. (Interestingly, polling just prior to the election indicated that this time round the Tories were going to be the main beneficiaries of tactical voting - presumably either from UKIP or right leaning Lib-Dems wanting to get Labour out.)

Nationalists. Theoretically, both SNP and Plaid Cymru are Centre-Left party, making their second preferences likely to tend that way. Certainly in urban Scotland the SNP seem to be competing for votes with Labour in the poorer regions. However, in some rural areas their supporters perhaps have more in common with the Tories.

Greens. The Lib-Dems are theoretically the most Green of the big three and there did seem to be a correlation between Greens doing well and Lib-Dems doing badly. Norwich South disproved that with Green advance being almost exclusively at the expense of Labour. Their policies are more left than right, but many Green voters might otherwise be Conservative, who are probably a toucher greener under Cameron than Labour.

UKIP It appears a no-brainer that most UKIP voters would go Tory on second preference. But even here there is a counter-argument that if that was the case, in situations where Euro-sceptic Tories faced tough opposition, why haven't they already? Some argue evidence from doorsteps in South-West that many UKIP supporters would be Lib-Dem if not for policy on Europe. Other than Europe, UKIP policies are a bit of a hotch-potch of progressive and reactionary, so difficult to call.

BNP Although a far-right party, BNP voters almost exclusively come from white working class areas that would traditionally support Labour.

English Democrats _ i really don't have a clue about where they get their votes from.

The impact of AV itself. AV, as already mentioned, would see an unwinding of tactical voting in the first preference, but those votes would end up back where they started on the second preference. Similarly, I would expect to see a first preference boost for the Greens and maybe other small parties, before again those votes ended back where they started.

All of which makes it rather hard to calculate, except there are a huge number of seats where the winning candidate got over 50% or close enough to 50% with a large majority that no change would be possible. Of the other seats, I reckon that, if I've got it wrong, its more likely that less would change due to voters not expressing a second preference than that more would change.

My estimate of the results under AV:
(I've not attempted to look at Northern Ireland)

Labour - 275
Conservatives - 273
Lib-Dems - 74
SNP - 5
Plaid Cymru - 2
Greens - 1
Independant - 1

To summarise, I think the system would help Labour to hold onto a large number of (mainly Middle-England) seats that they ended up losing to the Tories by 5% or thereabouts (such as Bedford, Carlisle,Colne Valley, Hendon, Ipswich). They might also have held ARfon from Plaid and re-taken Dundee East from SNP and held the Lib_dems off in Bradford East. The Conservatives on the other hand are the big losers, the only gains I see for them might be Wells from the Lib-Dems and Walsall South from Labour, with possibly Mid-Dorset as well. The might also have failed to take Wyre Forest from the independant. For the Lib-dems, they might have held on to few seats they lost to the Tories (Falmouth, Oxford West, Camborne) as well as coming through to take the likes of Bristol NW, Watford and St albans. But they actually benefit more against Labour in urban areas, taking seats in the likes of Swansea W, Rochdale, Sheffield C, Oxford E, Oldham, Newport, Hull and Edinburgh South.

Of course, even if AV does come in for the next election, its likely to be accompanied by boundary changes, larger constituencies and who knows what impact the coalition will have on all the parties fortunes.

4.3.2.1.

Noel Clarke (Dr Who and Centurion star, writer-director of Adulthood, award winner) is clearly a very promising talent. 4.3.2.1. is a change of direction and a more challenging project than the grittily urban Adulthood. He moves into more fun territory, toying with the heist movie genre and an interestingly ambitious (if not totally original structure).

The film follows four female friends over 3 days and 2 cities. It starts at the end, before going back to the start and taking each of its central characters through the 3 days to show how they got to that end point, before rewinding and following another one. Thus the story builds up bit by bit and we learn more of what's really going on. Has Clarke bitten off more than he can chew? The answer would have to be a qualified no. On the whole he handles the direction and the script with skill, although there is a tendancy (common among new directors) to be a bit too showy at times. It also feels a bit long, with maybe too much padding in one or two of the sections. Some of the big name cameos (Michelle Ryan, Kevin Smith, Eve) feel a bit like stunt casting. In Eve's case it really backfires as a bit which should be humorously punchy, feels just clunky, but we'll forgive Kevin Smith's presence as he's hilarious.

The main cast are pretty good. Shanika Warren-Markland's Kerrys carries the main emotional weight of the film. Ophelia Lovibond and Tamsin Eggerton are good (the latter surprisingly so for those who have seen her in the St Trinians films). If anything the weak point is Emma (niece of Julia) Roberts, who seems to be too obviously acting and making speeches at times. There is one moment where you'll really be wondering why the bad guys don't just shoot her.

Clarke also pretty well achieves his stated aim of combining something for the boys - attractive scantily clad girls and decent action - with a female empowerment message. Then, as in Adulthood, he kind of fluffs the ending with an unconvincing, wishy-washy sentiment followed by a blatant sequel set-up.

Overall - 7/10. Entertaining and Ambitious. On the whole well-executed and confirming Clarke as a talent to watch, if not quite the finished article yet.

Looking forward to Holyrood '11

A poll in the Herald this week gives the first indication since the General Election of voting intentions for next year's Scottish elections and the news is very good for Labour. These figures on a uniform swing would give Labour around 60 seats to the SNP's 37 with the Lib-Dems on 16 and the Conservatives on 14 with 2 Greens.

For Labour there should be a reality check that they are probably receiving a boost from having no leader to attract negative coverage and from a negative reaction to a Tory government in Westminster. In fact, they are doing so well on these figures, that in most regions (except Highlands) their supporters would do more damage to the SNP by switching their regional vote to either the Lib-Dems or Greens, depending who they fancied as coalition partners. This would be the dilemma for Labour - do they try and form a new coalition with the party they probably feel snubbed their offer of a "progressive coalition" or go the minority government route pioneered by the SNP with issue by issue support from the Greens (who prefer to operate that way rather than forming a coalition).

For the SNP it shows that they face a real challenge to hold onto government against a Labour party who are now in opposition UK-wide. Unhappiness with the UK-government will no longer play in their favour, nor will "Time for a change" slogans. They might be able to make some political capital out of opposition to Coalition cuts, but even there, the delay in application of those cuts might play against them and this is a card that Labour can now play as well.

For the Tories a drop in their regional vote from where they get most of their seats could spell bad news and see them drop into 4th place behind the Lib-Dems again. For the Greens they seem to be treading water, but a rise of 1 or 2 percent could see them regain 3 or 4 regional seats that they lost last time. Crucially for them, if Labour do perform this strongly this could be enough to see them holding the balance of power and able to exert some considerable influence.

For the Lib-Dems their constituency vote is down, but the regional vote is slightly up which means they will lose seats to Labour, but win them back from the list. The interesting thing for them would be if labour did approach them for a coalition and we were faced with a Tory-Lib-Dem coalition in Westminster battling at Labour-Lib-Dem coalition at Holyrood. Interesting times indeed.

A challenging role

This week Lib-Dem veteran Simon Hughes was elected as deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats. I remember Hughes from when he was a fresh faced young politician in the 80s. I've always had a lot of time for him and felt he spoke a lot of sense. And now he finds himself in a position that is possibly the most challenging of his political career.

I think he's the right man for the job. Whilst I believe that both candidates were strong (Tim Farron obviously has done an amazing job increasing his vote in his own constituency, producing a huge swing from the Tories against both national and regional trends) and if the party had been in coalition with Labour he may well have been the better choice, but with the current coalition the Lib-Dems need a deputy leader on the left of their party, where Mr Hughes proudly proclaims himself to be.

Whatever the real reasons for Vince Cable's resignation from the position, it has proved a smart move for the Lib-Dems. With Nick Clegg firmly ensconced in the government, they need a deputy who can be more challenging towards the government and maintain the party's own identity and challenge to their coalition partners in forthcoming elections. So the challenge for Mr Hughes is to provide constructive opposition from within the government, to develop policies and a standpoint on issues (such as tuition fees) where the Lib-Dems differ from their coalition partners and to do so without either splitting the party or the coalition. That is a very difficult juggling act and if Mr Hughes can manage that, he may just end up doing more for the party than any of its leaders ever have.

NHS Cuts - The Blame Game

4,000 jobs are to go in the NHS in Scotland. This is a measure which will undoubtedly have a large impact on frontline services and patient care. In Holyrood, the SNP and Labour seem to be locked into a confrontation over who is to blame.

The SNP say that this situation is caused by the previous Labour government at Westminster and their mishandling of the UK economy. Labour counter that the job losses are down to the SNP's decisions in what to prioritise within the health service. To some extent, they're both right - the cut in the health budget was a decision made by Labour in response to the horrific financial predicament they found themselves in after having to bail out the banks. This resulted in a budget cut in the money available to the Scottish government. On the other hand, that government has decided to continue pursuing policies (worthwhile at the right time) such as free prescriptions, etc... which have budget implications. Re-prioritising could almost certainly have saved some of those jobs.

Meanwhile, the Tories and Lib-Dems sit quietly on the sidelines, knowing that next year it will be Coalition imposed cuts that are causing the job losses. Enjoy the breathing space while it lasts. The Tories are busy trying to re-brand themselves into credible Scottish political force and the Lib-Dems are probably pondering the great mystery of how the Coalition will effect their electoral share and awaiting the next attempt by the Daily Torygraph to force them out of government.

The Losers

The Losers gets out into cinemas ahead of this summer's A-Team adaptation and covers pretty much similar territory - a bunch of elite special forces operatives are framed for things they didn't do, have to fake their own deaths and then battle to get their lives back.

The film begins well, even if it offers little that's really original. The characters are sharply drawn (if a bit stereotypical), the actors cool and on top of their game, the dialogue is witty and the action well handled. There's even the freeze frame nods to the graphic novel source material (ok, we've seen it before, but it still works). The villain (Jason Patric enjoying every minute of being unlikeable) is suitably nasty and heartless. It looks like we're in for a thoroughly entertaining ride.

And then the MacGuffin is introduced - the sonic destruction device or some such - a concept that make's last week's sands of time look thoroughly plausible with dreadful effects shots to match.

It is a credit to the cast - Chris Evans, excellent as always, an underplaying Harry Dean Morgan and The Wire's Idris Elba, together with flavour of the moment Zoe Saldana - a script that refinds its feet quickly and action sequences and set-ups that on the whole work (although the whole plane-motorcycle thing stretches it a bit too far) that this returns to be a highly entertaining action flick.

Overall - 7/10 It's not good enough to blow The A-Team away before it even arrives, but does set the bar for that film pretty high. Its never exactly original, but mainly very well done and entertaining. With a better central plot-device it could have been really good.

A Promising Start

Amidst all the comings and going of the coalition last week, a truly historic moment in UK politics almost slipped by unnoticed. Our first ever Green MP gave her maiden speech in parliament last Thursday. You can find the full text of Caroline Lucas' speech here.

I've got to say that I was impressed, almost inspired. I think it was a very promising beginning by a woman who is clearly determined to use her position to the utmost. There was fitting recognition of her predecessor and of the traditions of parliament, a willingness to stand up for her constituents and then she really moved into gear:

"

Now, after nearly four decades of the kind of work on doorsteps and in council chambers which I am sure honourable members are all too familiar, we have more candidates and more members, and now our first MP.

A long journey.

Too long, I would say.

Politics needs to renew itself, and allow new ideas and visions to emerge.

Otherwise debate is the poorer, and more and more people will feel that they are not represented.

So I hope that if, and when, other new political movements arise, they will not be excluded by the system of voting. Reform here, as in other areas, is long-overdue.

The chance must not be squandered. Most crucially, the people themselves must be given a choice about the way their representatives are elected.

And in my view, that means more than a referendum on the Alternative Vote - it means the choice of a genuinely proportional electoral system."

A very clear and persuasive statement. And given the fact that support at this election (despite a supposed squeeze of the smaller parties) combined support for the big two was lower than at any election since 1918, UK politics is going to have to adapt sooner or later to the changing face of politics and will be the richer the sooner it adapts.

Ms Lucas goes onto talk about what she can do as lone MP in terms that make it clear that she intends to use her position to the utmost. The fact that she uses this speech to raise the Trafigura issue demonstrates that she is not going to shy away from hard issues. She finishes the speech on her home territory, so to speak, with calls for cuts in carbon emissions.

All in all its a very promising beginning and the voters of Brighton Pavilion have every reason to be proud of their new MP. Hopefully she will be around for many years to come and be joined by colleagues from her party at the next election.