The Blurt of Richard Davies

November the 4th

I should have done my dark web research while I had the chance. Now I've finally remembered to and got round to it, I find the entries in DarkWiki and the rumour mills regarding James and Mr Yu have been systematically edited. So we're left with the 'official' biographies of both of them.
Sadly I deleted the background research I'd done on IMS and James as part of my interview preparation long ago, but something is nagging at my brain; an all but forgotten fact. The trouble is it is staying all but forgotten. If I don't think about it for a while perhaps my subconscious mind will keep working on it, and the answer suddenly become apparent. Or maybe not, as it appears to stay unremembered for the moment.

I knew neither of them was spotlessly clean, but such a thorough cleansing implies a fear the Connies might go trawling in the dark world as well (as if they haven't gone dredging already) and drag up something embarrassing. Given the rumours I've heard about James' past that would be understandable; but surely his Zone backers would've done some investigation before they threw their weight behind him? So why the sudden action now? Have they discovered something compromising and decided to bury it so deep it could never be uncovered?

I'll have to try some of my more dodgy frazzling contacts and see if they can access the earlier records. No doubt if they are able to then there will be Connie sympathisers who can as well. If there is a skeleton poised to fall out of the cupboard we who are helping to run his campaign ought to know about it if for no other reason than to try to plan an advanced response if the Connies do have some dirt and decide to dish it.

I spend the rest of the day trying, and failing to think of a way of asking James about it in a chary manner without getting fired, or worse.

November the 7th

Today I spent a fruitless hour in the Portsmouth Central Community Support office trying to renew my cycling licence. It should've been a straightforward process but in the Fed you can't take anything for granted. After waiting for my number to be called I'm told I can't get it renewed here. Apparently I should've gone to my home office in Waterlooville, though it's the first time I've heard of that rule being applied.

November the 8th

So today, early before I head for Portsea Island, I visit the Waterlooville office, only to find after a thirty minute wait there they can't process my renewal and being told I should go to the Portsmouth Central office.

After explaining testily the problem I had yesterday I ask them to put their interpretation of the rules down in writing; this takes another forty-five minutes to obtain. I can see where this is going to lead; I'll be forever ping-ponged back and forth from office to office. So once I reach Media House I outfit myself with some of our covert 'cording gear and head back to the Central office once more.
Community Support Offices were another of the Council's money saving bright ideas and the replacement for the Crown Post Office network and Job Centres, now combined and renamed. They are the first - nay the only - physical point of contact for citizens to access government services. From Reassignment to obtaining the many different cards you must have to get by in the Fed, the CSO is where you have to go. If you're not feeling suicidally depressed when you enter, you will be by the time you leave.

I think there must be a deliberate policy to put people off using them. How else can the dismal, unwelcoming interiors, the overbearing entry checks, the constantly prowling security staff, the armoured glass partitions at the counters, the few uncomfortable seats, and that particular quality of the lighting that seems to stop time in its tracks be explained?

After getting a number I wait for another tedious forty minutes before being seen. This member of staff must be new, or absolutely clueless, or enjoy making her clients' lives a misery; perhaps a combination of all three because once again she refuses to accept the letter from Waterlooville. She won't even contact them to check when I ask.

This isn't helping me get a renewed licence but it will make a tasty lead tonight. A couple of Pieces To Camera outside the office; a bit of fill-in and some background research which proves that yes, a cycle licence can be renewed at any CSO, subject to the office's discretion; and the story exposing their incompetence is ready to 'cast.

Soon after the story aired the usual flood of indignant blurts from our local monitoring group began, and we received notification of a complaint having been made to the OMS. They don't like the truth being 'cast as it hurts; but why they so vehemently support the indefensible is something I don't think I'll ever understand. Apart from the work involved in fending off this abuse it's water off a duck's back to us; we're that used to it.

Among all the antagonism I'm heartened to get quite a few supportive blurts as well; many of them describing the very same, or similar problems they've experienced with the CSO. I'll look through those more carefully later; there may be more stories to be mined there. The report filters up to James who sends his congratulations on a job well done. Additionally he arranges a way out of my bureaucratic impasse. As a Zone messenger I can take advantage of my status for the Zone to issue me a new licence. It should arrive within 24 hours.

Relieved by that news and bouyed by a successful day - journalistically at least - I decide that rather than ride back tonight, as I'm not keen on riding in the dark unless I have to, I'll leave the bike in my office overnight and take the bus home.

November the 9th

This morning I find there's a reception committee waiting for me. About ten Young Communitarians with a filmscreen banner reading STOP THE LIES! are picketing the entrance to Media House. When they recognise me they start chanting the same slogan in the same shrill robotic sing-song tone of voice which they use against those who disagree with them.

I don't know where that peculiar affectation originated from but it reminds me of youthful Maoist Red Guards holding public criticism meetings. At least I think that was it; I must have heard it in a documentary about those times shown many, many years ago, or something else learned but then forgotten from my school years resurfaced. What they think they'll achieve with that strange intonation I don't know; they must believe it will unnerve their opponents. It only serves to irritate me further.

Not wanting to waste my breath getting into a pointless argument I ignore them and walk on past. A cycle Compie rides by every now and then but I suspect that he's there as much to protect the demonstrators from us as to prevent any disorder on their part. Not that we're at all bothered about them. If any of them tried breaking their way in Gavin would soon sort them out. An hour later they are gone; bored probably. It's been a while since we last had a demonstration outside our door. Is this resumption of their low-level, pathetically ineffective attempts at intimidation is a sign we're getting under their skin and they don't like it? I hope so!

By all accounts our report last night has caused quite a stink. The Connie supporters are still deluging our inboxes in the hope of overloading the system, but Bippin anticipated this sort of thing when he designed Maggie, so we're able to cope. The ripples from this stone we tossed into the pond have also spread so far and wide that the local Community Support Administration have issued a 'clarification', not an apology; and said in their statement the staff in the Central office will be given 'new guidance' in the application of the rules.

It remains to be seen if they follow through on that pledge. No doubt someone will find out when the time comes to update their Food Points card, or ComCred card, or TransCred card, or Clothing Credit card, or any of the portfolio of documentation you can't seem to do without these days.
The Council have made no secret of their intention to replace them all with an all-encompassing OneCard, but they have several significant obstacles in their way. The first hurdle is the landmark judgement of Chakarabati v Rex.

Shortly after the Dissolution and the creation of the Council, a human rights group took a case to the Supreme Court. They argued that while the King may be empowered by right and custom to suspend the political system, His Royal Prerogative did not extend to the existing body of the law of the land and the legal system, which should remain unaffected by any decree. This was held to include the Fed's adherence to the existing European and international legal conventions. Surprisingly, the judges largely agreed with them.

Thanks to that ruling the Council's powers were circumscribed and they were forced to abide by the legislative process set down by the court in order for them to be deemed as compliant with the verdict. To complicate the issue still further, by the time the judgement was issued the King was incapacitated, and so unable to issue any decrees amending the law.
In any case a proposal to reintroduce a National Identity Register had been vetoed by the King a month before His stroke. He was mindful that in the past the Royal Assent had been given to many repressive laws which should never have obtained it, and didn't want His legacy to be so tainted. The fact He as a Monarch remained alive, but unable to carry out His duties; and His son and Regent didn't want to be seen to be usurping his father's power to any greater extent than necessary also muddied the legal waters; with there being no precise delineation of the powers and responsibilities of the Monarch and their Regent. This situation was unprecedented, and as with so much in the new Fed, coping mechanisms were improvised on the fly.

Another objection came from the EU. Despite the agreed distancing of the Fed for the time being they weren't keen on that temporary state of affairs acquiring a degree of permanence. The EU negotiators were far more wily than the naïve Council delegation, even when advised by the diplomatic service; and so were able to word the small print of the Treaty of Ravenna to include a ten year prohibition on the introduction of an independent Fed identity database with different technical standards from that proposed as part of the EU Joint Citizenship Register. There was a hope such a ban would ensure a smooth reassimilation of the Fed back into the fold given a Yes vote when the first referendum as to the Fed's status vis-à-vis the Union took place.

A more practical problem in selling the OneCard is seeing how the Albans were abusing the idea in practice. Despite the new obedience to authority which the Council wanted to inculcate in the population the practical example across the border of how an identity register could be misused by the state as another tool of power over the individual, and a residual dislike of the abortive scheme that messers Blair and Brown once tried to impose made any prospect of a reintroduction unpalatable. It is all just a bit too 'Scottish' to carry off for now.

But by far the greatest challenge that any system would face would be the Black Dragon. For as long as the virus exists and is able to create or delete identities at its whim, or subtly render the system unworkable in a myriad of ways a multifunctional national identity database will remain impractical: There is just too much at risk.

So for the meantime the multiple databases that exist - with their time and labour consuming files of resilient but cumbersome paper backups - will have to do. There are rumours that if, or rather when the Connies win the election they'll use the result as their mandate to push through the OneCard, no matter the difficulties it may cause or the expense involved.

But there is no overwhelming need to have OneCards: In fact it would be far easier to relax the bureaucratic stranglehold on our lives and remove the need for any of these pointless bloody cards; but with the Connies in charge that won't happen.

In the meantime, all that prevents our partial ownership by the state becoming total are a hastily negotiated, badly drafted treaty; the garbled wishes of a slowly dying king; and an artificial form of cyber life which is still trenchantly fighting a long finished war. Such are the times we are living through.

November the 16th

The paperwork has finally come through formally declaring Media House to be a part of the LEZ. As such we're now largely exempt from most local police powers of entry and search, and entitled to require Compies to leave our premises on demand, with the power to remove them - using 'reasonable' force if necessary - should they fail to comply. I bet Gavin or Terry would be only too eager to try that provision out.
So another small piece of former Federation territory becomes free again. I wonder if it isn't a surreptitious plot by the Zoners to annex the Fed one piece at a time? The thought of the diehard Connies being squeezed into ever decreasing parcels of land is one that pleases me.

November the 22nd

I'm back within the inner core of the Column as part of a group discussing the best means of attacking the Connies' record in office. Our professor is here to advise us, but it is we who need to come up with a strategy to defeat the buggers; and it won't be an easy thing to do. The prof's analysis may well be correct, but those of us who aren't university academics have a hard time grasping the complex sociology of his reasoning. I'm not dumb but it is quite a mental exercise to understand his argument. If I've got it correctly it runs something like this.

The Connies actually have a considerable support base. Yes it's crazy, but it happens to be so. By now many people have a vested interest in the Consensus government continuing; the system they have created ensures power and pelf from those sitting on the Council all the way down to the local Compy who supplements their meagre income with the ComCred they receive from the issuing of spot fines or items 'confiscated' in random searches.

Not only have people become accustomed to living this way, they are so conditioned to it they can't imagine living in any alternative manner; and there are many who actually derive a perverse pleasure in seein the lives and bodies of others bent to their will. It has become more than just a struggle to survive and prosper within the system; it is now a way of life. But how could such a system develop in what was - at least in theory - one of the more liberal countries in the world?
The answer is rooted in the ante-Crises culture which predated the Federation and Council; one of economic insecurity and snide jealously inflamed by the many diverse fears concocted by a sensationalist, judgemental media. This led to a people feeling so anxious and fearful they judged the quality of their own lives in regard to that they perceived others to have; whether those perceptions were accurately based on first-hand observations or influenced by the constant hatemongering propaganda.

Over the years this bred a culture where not only was it considered socially acceptable to inform on a case of suspected wrongdoing - jumping to conclusions before knowing all the facts; it became actively encouraged with grass-in TV programmes not only providing prurient entertainment but hotlines to do so, giving those with a generalised or specific grudge an easy outlet to anonymously express their suspicions. Snitching was not only an exciting and satisfying way of enhancing your self-perceived status by doing your fellow strugglers down; it could on occasions be lucrative.
With so much of the work having already been done in advance the Council found it easy to shape the pliant clay of the populace to their design. Divide and Rule had always been a favoured means of control with the psychologically shocked, disoriented and malnourished people of the immediate post-Crises Fed being prime subjects for manipulation.

They wanted relief from the poverty, the conflict, the uncertainty. They wanted someone with a vision to lead them along a route out of this mess, and the Council offered them one. The radical communitarians in the vanguard of the Consensus movement being most in agreement with the hijacked views of the Royal Commission were used to acting assertively and taking leadership roles, so they were the first to insinuate themselves into the new power structures and as a result direct the policies of these new organisations to their way of thinking.

With increasing rapidity the state has ingratiated itself into peoples' lives as a result of the work and social services it dispenses. A thankful nation now conflates the Council and the organisers of those semi-voluntary services driven by the new ideology of collective self-improvement and reform into a single entity.

Given a sense of purpose again, goals to aim for, hope for the future, and a sense of self-worth, a new social movement has emerged from the state organised reconstruction efforts. Just as puppies eager to receive rewards and favour, a servile public delivered from a far worse fate set out with grateful enthusiasm to do their masters' bidding.

Totalitarians of every hue have dreamed of an indivisible fusion of state and people. In the creation of the Fed it finally appears to have been made real and workable. There is a place for everyone, and everyone in their place; whether they like it or not; with just the right combination of carrot and stick to sustain the system. In this brave new market collectivist world we all move forward together - well, most of us - while occasionally jostling against or trampling each other in our struggle to get slightly further ahead; to be seen to be doing that little bit more in the eyes of our new overseers. With the new state having greatly increased powers and control over the distribution of the means of life, as well as the will to use that leverage against its new serfs it has been easy to lead, and occasionally prod, a bovine public onto their new pastures.

Or to sum it up bluntly; feed someone who is hungry and they will be thankful enough to love you, as well as doing what you tell them to do.

This 'Stockholm Syndrome' in which those held hostage begin to submissively adopt the views of their captors is the underpinning of the Fed: A Consensus of Council, state, and people in a newfound unity of purpose.

We'll have to confront and defeat this culture in order to win the election. Given such a legacy of doe-eyed, fawning gratitude for what the Consensus has done in dragging a broken nation back - but not as far back as they would have us believe - from the brink of disaster, and an organisation which has had the best part of a decade to become such an integral feature in the fabric of most peoples' everyday lives; breaking their stranglehold on the electorate is going to be difficult.
At the end of his lecture there is a silence of contemplative thought and an awkwardness of not knowing how to respond. But a half-thought out idea of mine wrestles it's way to completion, and I break the silence.

"So if I understand you correctly, we're trying to defeat all that the Consensus is, and ever has been; their legacy in fact. That's a lot of a point to get across in one go, and perhaps it isn't possible to do." That prompts some startled looks. "But maybe we don't need to. Perhaps we're going at this the wrong way? If we can't attack the Connies and their record as a whole, then we could identify specific issues we can target - such as that hassle I had last week in the CSO - and use those as touchstones of discontent. I had a lot of positive feedback from people who suffered the same problems as I did, and I believe there is a lot of unexpressed resentment at the way things are.

What we could do is to somehow separate the Connies of the past and their legacy, put that to one side, then concentrate on attacking their recent record. I believe they are vulnerable on that score, and we can really hammer them in the here and now while they try to bask in their past glories. It's what people remember at the moment that will make the difference. We have to concentrate on the reality of the mess they've made of our lives now, and if we do then I think we have the basis of a winning strategy."

I can see the light of hope and understanding switching on in the faces around the table. Something has clicked and once it does the mental block we had been labouring to move out of the way vanishes, leaving our road clear. Of course it won't be that easy, but I feel as the meeting winds to its close I've been able to contribute something constructive to it.

While my stock is high I think now would be the time to broach that delicate matter to James. As the session breaks up I manage to arrange a few private moments with him in another office and as diplomatically as I can, explain my concerns.

"There's something on my mind I need to discus with you. As you may have noticed this afternoon, I'm taking my work on this campaign very seriously. As part of that I've been trying to put myself in our opponents' flacks, and consider the strategies they might use against the NRP in general, and you in particular as its leader. I think if they could dredge up any personal dirt to use against you then they wouldn't hesitate to use it, moralistic bastards that they are. So I followed that line of thought, and went trawling through the rumour mills of the dark web to see what they might find.

Whoever has been cleaning up behind you has done an impressive job, but what struck me is the extent of the sanitising. It's so large and widespread that I can't help but wonder what exactly has been erased. I know your private life is private, and none of my business, but those people in that room are devoting a great deal of their time and energy to your campaign; not to mention putting themselves at some personal risk. It would be a shame to see all that good work come to nothing because we were blindsided by a Connie ambush."

James looks temporarily taken aback but instantly regains his composure. "I appreciate your candour Richard, but I assure you, everything has been taken care of. All you saw is my legal team making sure all the false rumours and slanders were removed. We don't want to waste our time in the heat of the campaign dealing with nonsense and falsehoods so we're acting on it now. You've got a train to catch soon haven't you? I wouldn't want you to miss it."

The way he answers, and attempts to dismiss me begins to raise my hackles; but it would be extremely counterproductive for me to have an argument with him.

"Well as long as you're happy. I'm still concerned they're probably several steps ahead of us, and been anticipating your moves in advance. Let's face it; they're holding all the cards at the moment, and if I were them I'd have begun digging a long time ago. Any recent whitewashing won't have affected what they may have been able to find and archive in the past." Again a flicker of uncertainty, or was it guilt? flashes across his face. "All I'll say is that if there's something that may compromise the campaign, and you don't want to tell us, which is quite understandable; at least consider how you will respond if it does go public. You owe that much to us. We're all putting in a great deal of work on your behalf, and we don't want to see it all blow up in our faces." I see annoyance flash in his eyes. "But as you say, I've got a train to catch so I'd better leave now; all I'm asking is that you consider what I say." And with that I turn and leave as calmly as possible: There's no point in riling him any further.

I think I've given him pause for thought. I hope his annoyance will pass, and he'll understand my reasoning; I'll be deep in it if he takes permanent umbrage. But my overriding thought as the lift takes me down is his lack of denial, and the tacit admission of the clean-up. I wonder what exactly is it he felt he had to bury? I'm even more curious to find out now.