David Blunkett gets a job at ID Card firm

The man who pushed violently for ID Cards during his time as Home Secretary and helped the government write a cheque for £20 billion for the damn things, is now about to earn his keep from a firm that will make buckets of money out of the scheme. Keeping up New Labour’s strong ties with Texas, Blunkett will soon be getting a paycheque from Entrust which already has done very well out of the Spanish ID Card Scheme and has now formally registered an interest in the British ID Card Scheme. Blunkett has kept himself busy since he “resigned to save his party embarassment” (twice) writing a regular column in the Sun. What might have tipped the balance between himself and other disgraced authoritarian lunatics vying for the job was an impartial piece he wrote in the Sun 2 weeks before he got the job: “ID Cards… will protect our identity from fraudsters, stop illegal benefit foreigners in their tracks…” and all the other usual drivel on why we need to give the state ownership of our identities. Clearly David’s plug in The Sun worked and he’s now off to Texas to work for American money, following the lead of Tony Blair and John Prescott.

2 Weeks to picture lock.

Yeah right. Film now standing at a whisker under 2 hours which is still too long. Really, really not keen to loose any further stories. In fact have actually added in a cheeky story that we have been chasing for ages… Riz Ahmed, actor and musician. He played one of the Tipton Three in Michael Winterbottom’s excellent film Road to Guantanamo. He went out to the Berlin Film Festival last year where the film deservedly won the Silver Bear. Anyway, Riz flew back to England and was detainted under the Terrorism Act at Luton Airport. The Police knew he was an actor but decided to cause him some grief as he had acted in a film that critisised the government. This McCarthyite incident happened last year and is just one of the tens of thousands of incidents of unwarranted Police behaviour towards young Muslim men. Riz maintains a healthy sense of humour about the whole thing, and still laughs at the irony. The incident inspired him to write the brilliant song The Post 9/11 Blues which was banned on Radio (yes another McCarthy parallel) but has got a massive following on MySpace. The video is also superb and we may be using a little bit of it in the film. Or not.

Note to self for future films, do not keep shooting 2 weeks before picture lock!

Oasis are on board! Not sure if we’re allowed to make this public yet but no doubt I’ll get shouted at if not. The Iraq War montage has always been crying out for a massive epic number. We cut it to Whatever (my favourite Oasis track by miles) and it works perfectly. Ian (our sensational music supervisor) pulled some favours and managed to get a DVD of the cut to Noel Gallagher. Noel gave it the thumbs up and the track is in the film… still can’t quite believe it. The soundtrack is shaping up really well, with confirmations from Annie Lennox, The Stranglers, Franz Ferdinhand. All the artists have agreed to let their music be in the film for basically pennies, and for every copy of the soundtrack that is sold £1 goes to Amnesty International. We are still awaiting some more confirmations, so hopefully in a couple of weeks time we can announce some more big names…

The book has finally been delivered!

Now we just have to finish the film. Not much work there then - 150 hours of footage, and countless violations of the rights of our country, all to be shoehorned into an hour and a half. Oh and it needs to be funny, informative and make people want to get up and do something about their government.

Who’s bright idea was it to make this film then?

Bollocks, that was me.

Oh, and the government decided to change the tax laws this week, decreeing that Sale and Leaseback was no longer possible and therefore wiping out half of the funding of our film (and about 50 others) with a stroke of their pen. Fortunately, one of the other films affected was Casino Royale so the Treasury got out their Tippex and sale and leaseback was back on again. Whew, James Bond saves the day again.

Altogether, a pretty quiet week.