Occasional Tales

Trouble in Paradise. The climate takes a turn for the worse and the fertility of much of the land declines. A lucky ten percent have natural springs on their land and are able to produce an abundance of fruit. They get other Marjonians working for them for extra breadfruit and when the Marxist proposals, which were originally rejected, come up at the next Council meeting, there’s a bit more debate this time. Some families have lost children through malnutrition, but those who have access to springs like having the control they offer them. And even if the breadfruit was distributed evenly, there probably wouldn’t be enough. As before, there doesn’t seem much point if people are toiling to produce breadfruit without any benefit to them. The Community Council fail to reach a consensus, but the Chair of the Council thinks hardship for some is better than people being forced to do something against their will. Is the Community Council still right? That would depend on who you asked. The Ass...

And the government isn’t snooping at all. The government of Democratia passes the Data Protection Act which allows people to see what info the government has on them provided it’s not an official secret and the police don’t mind. And like any good government, it decides to collate lots and lots of information about the people in a database; and not just some girlie database – a super database. And it’s all so the government can help people. Really. (Yeah, I feel the belief coursing through my veins.) But then people start demanding access to all sorts of information, including information about politicians in local government and ministerial holidays. But should people be checking up on all this? Should the inspector be inspected? Well, yes. HMG likes to bleat about accountability, but they think that only applies to them when there’s an election. In this sort of scenario, all the activities of and information about the government would probably be labelled state secrets, sorry, a mat...

Somebody’s watching me! Ah, the noble nation of Democratia. All cameras and hi-tech surveillance, but for the public good, of course, because everyone needs to be watched in case one of the country’s twenty-five criminals commits a crime. The question is whether the government has ridden rough shod over the right to privacy or whether all this intrusion is necessary. Like China, the UK is an endemic surveillance state. Like China, one government isn’t really that different from its predecessors in its paranoia about what its citizens are doing. It’s no good saying that if you’ve done nothing wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about. The implicit assumption is that the government doesn’t trust you regardless of what you’re doing. The implication is that you have no right to privacy where the government is concerned. I tend to think that such situations don’t instil feelings of safety in society and confidence in the government, but rather they produce suspicion and paranoia. Just l...

But it's all for the good. It's a tale of whiny Sparts today. Lawrence and Lina hate the e-Ville Corporation in all its forms and join some activist group called STUMP (no doubt run by skinny boys with pathetic excuses for beards – good guess me, it seems). It's time for a little non-violent civil disobedience. Yeah, that means a bunch of dippy hippies playing guitars. If I were the e-Ville Corporation, I'd be running up the white flag so as not to suffer the horrors of guitars, caftans, and twentysomething, eunuch-like boys who strain to grow beards. The protest was a great success in that it was well managed and there was little disruption, but it didn't get much media coverage which focused on the response from the e-Ville Corporation. STUMP decides to up the ante to civil disorder (I suppose that means things like paying for something in a shop and then running away without it or the change). Lina and Lawrence are opposed to violence, but since the e-Ville Corpo...