Libertyland

ID cards goes against all that is English: liberty, justice and freedom.

Libertyland



I�m a TV star. A feller seen on the little screen. A man, called Stan. An idol, surname Cole. Imagine my face across a million screens. And all I did was walk to the newsagent for a paper after fighting through FHM grabbing teens. After a time, in a fashion, fame looses its allure. Now, as I trundle in the sun or trudge in the rain, I no longer wave to my legion of fans. Indeed, I just give my lazy loopy signature without even looking.





Of course, there have been times where hiding seemed like a good idea. However, it is like looking for a twenty-something year old without furniture from Ikea. Trying to outsmart my voyeurs and Reality TV aficionados has never worked. It became so much one time down Silver Swan Lane that I broke down in tears, talked to a ginger and white cat called Dennis about his chickens. Ratings Winner! Another time they saw straight through my Harry Enfield style homage to Liverpool. Therefore, I have learnt that in a world where fans own their celebrities there is no escaping operation Channel 4.





China, Japan and Korea all have words for the number 4, which are identical to their words for death. In turn being caught these days does not lead to death. Yet perhaps it leads to something worse. Gaols used to be full of plop buckets, Hard Cons without the C, stonewalls and soap for fun. Now we have Secure Sedation Units (SSU), which, is known to the rest of us as Nanneries. Now we have cotton padded cells and mummies to care for us and not a bandage in sight. Instead of punishment, you are kept warm and safe in an understanding environment from which no one returns. And yet the crime rate did not begin to fall at all. Quite the opposite. This was not because the druggies, wise guys and thugs wanted to be at their mother�s breasts again. It was because the law was no longer an a*s; it was a hydra. For every addict who hung up his needle and inner tube two fresh crimes were created. Banana curvature regulations were just the beginning.





I, myself, have broken multiple laws. Once as a teenager, my father�s friends had passed round a sheet of A4 paper with a list of crimes. Each one of them would tick any crime they had committed and tot up the total at the end. It was all minor stuff. The list barely got halfway down the second side of the paper. One of my friends suggested we do the same thing thirty years on. Thirty years of red party lines. However, we gave up on the list without a single tick as we exhausted his Woolworth�s Big Pad. Afterwards the rest of us, feeling guilty, clubbed together a tenner for a new one.





The long and the short of it is that the crime rate has soared so high that government statistics now talk about the falling non-crime rate. That is to say, those they have failed to ensnare into their system, state dependency or prison. Indeed my father is in a prison of sorts now, though, it is not a Nannery. First a bit of background to his punishment. The few of us who had not converted to The Cult of Celebrity, Consumerism, Materialism or Zombieism, were shocked to see the government adopt some of the tactics of the Russian tyrant. Suddenly Putin was cool. My dad refused to give up using imperial measurements and was sent to a mental asylum called Nu-Bedlam. All he had done was tell a doctor he was six-foot tall. There is no group or organisation that does not wear red ties these days. Now my father lingers in the gulag just outside of Ebbw Vale.





While my father is insane, I am a genius. I graduated school at 25 with two dozen GCSEs, 5 A-levels, A BA in Golf Management, a Masters in Putter or Wedge Economics and a PHD in Caddy Fashion Tips. And despite all that, I know diddlysquat about anything. I can barely spell. In fact, the only reason you can understand this at all is because my Polish friend Piotr is transcribing it into classical English of the 1990s. Cheers Piotr. How did I get so many qualifications? Well, the government wished to end discrimination and humiliation within the education system so they reduced the pass mark to zero. However, zero was deemed offensive by the Political Correctness Oversight Council. Therefore, they upped the pass mark to 1. You could get 1 point for writing your name, later they changed this to entering the exam room, then finally they settled for 1 point for waking up with the intention of taking an exam. Eventually higher education just became a version of the Boots Photo Department, give in the forms, pay the money, wait an hour and hey presto a new qualification.





The one day came a call from my Swedish girlfriend. Of course, girlfriend is a politically incorrect term and also a euphemism. Just you imagine Shakespeare writing a sonnet to his �Potential Life Partner.� Not that she was that either. After putting down the phone, I changed into some warm and moderate clothing, trimmed my compulsory Leftie beard and put on my sweater. Then I turned off the TV. To be honest I have never really watched the TV, just the sports channels. It all began when the PCOC changed Bravo�s flagship programme title to �Above Averagely Sized Mammary Glands.� And, I won�t even mention �Playperson.�





Upon leaving my house, I waved to the Garden Security Camera and weaved my way through the dozen or so compost bins checking each one as I went. All good. The government had enforced a law saying that all households should use compost for their own organic food waste. Yet there was more waste than a single compost bin could take and so we ended up replacing gardens with compost bins and so had nothing to do with the compost when it was ready.



After closing the gate and checking the mailbox, I walked down the path past the Path Security and Poop Scoop Checking Cameras to the steps. There the Icy Step Security Camera checked my progress. However, the birds were singing their songs in the birch and beech trees and I soon forgot all those cameras watching me. I forgot the fans in their CCTV Action Centres.





Once down the steps I stuck my hands in my pockets and walked head down to the Train Station. The building itself had once been a magnificent Victorian masterpiece of brickwork. Now, it had been modernised and replaced with yellow and pink sponges in Picasso-esque formations. Once inside I bought my ticket for Colchester at the counter and proceeded through the ticket gates to the platforms. Soon (four hours later) the Re-Nationalised Solar-Electric train sighed into view. I�d half expected a donkey drawn cart for my first train ride since 2007. I hopped on and found a seat all for myself. There was even a free copy of the Guardian to read. Unbiased reporting. It was though, all a little too easy.





The train began to trundle though the husk of the city to the leafy green housing development dominated countryside. Not wanting to look at such raping and pillaging I turned to the Guardian Sports pages. Apparently, Brooklyn Beckham had earned a new contract with Oldham Athletic with a 12 million Euro bonus if he passed the ball to a teammate. Technically, we still have the pound. The sports pages were as banal as ever and my team was a mediocre as ever. They just couldn�t match the spending power of giants like Oldham Athletic.



The journey was quiet and even a tad pleasant. Indeed, at one point I helped myself to a slice of vegan quiche and a GM Tonic. Whilst tucking in with the freebie safety and biodegradable cutlery a shadow passed over the carriage. I turned and saw a giant man standing in the doorway. He wore big black boots, black leather trousers with stab pads on the thighs; he wore thick black clothes and a black stab vest. On his head, he wore a kind of black gas mask with a tube extending over his back. Around his belt hung a number of weapons, a pair of pistols, a scanning device and things I didn�t recognise. On his stab vest was written a three-letter word, �War.�





Then he began to clunk and creak into the carriage. He turned to the first people he found, an elderly couple in pale pastels. Straight away, he took hold of their bags and began to rummage through them. As he did, words came out of the train speakers. They were words that sent the train quiet and sent shivers down my spine. Again and again, the words echoed from the speakers as the man tore through bag after bag in the first row of seats. The rest of us were in a collective state of terror. How ironic. Then he stopped and pulled out his scanning device. For a second I thought it was his pistol. At last, I saw his back. There were three more letters written in white. They read �den.� Then the words came again�












End of Part 1.




�All passengers must show their train tickets and�


�their I.D. cards.�