February the 2nd.

Last month it was the undefined 'shirkers' who were the subject of public opprobrium; now it is the turn of the spivs, despite it being nearly impossible to obtain certain things without their pricey help. "Spivving's not a living - it's a crime!" runs the latest official campaign. The slogan appears nearly everywhere you look; as well as being the subject of numerous PushCreds; a constant reminder of the near dominance of the state in all areas of life and its one-way communication with its subjects.

There is bold talk about how "Together we'll smash the spivs!" along with reminders of the many and varied ways of grassing them up. In reality the junior players trying to climb the slippery ladder of the black economy will continue to lurk near store entrances; waiting with practiced patience for the doors to open. They probably don't know what they are going to rush in for the chance of getting; just a rumour of something temporarily available, or even the rumour of a rumour is enough. They gamble the long wait is worth the risk of a speculative shakedown by bored or curious ComPigs; that at the end of it there might be something worth buying and selling-on at a premium.

It's almost become a full-time way of eking out a living. Almost; but not quite yet, though it is bound to become so as the supply chain problems and shortages worsen in what used to be one of the most advanced global economies. We're promised once the OneCard system is in operation it will provide the means to eliminate the practice once and for all; but with the opposition it faces, and the inevitable technical problems I don't see it happening anytime soon. And wasn't ComCred supposed to stop spivving and hoarding? Yeah, right!

Though few people will actually realise it, this campaign is in reality an admission of failure. After all, if the 'temporary' problems with our semi-planned economy have been fixed as has so often been claimed there would be no space or rationale for the black marketeers.

Give it a month and the focus will move on to another marginalised group deemed deserving of the state's focused hatred. Meanwhile the dodgy geezers will continue their business as usual out of sight of the dim-witted pols, if a bit more carefully for a while.

February the 5th.

I always run out of food just when I need it most or feel even more peckish than usual. No, there's no avoiding it; I'll have to go shopping.

I hated shopping before the advent of the Crises; now I dread it. The local Community Co-ops aren't too bad; though they are quite expensive, and my local one knows me well enough to barter if needs be; but it's the larger stores that do my head in.

Shopping, like so much of our lives, is very different now. The majority of the supermarket chains we knew before the Crises survived in some form, but they had to radically alter the way they did business.

As part of the Consensus' unremitting obsession with reducing peoples' non work related travel, they began to pressure the supermarkets to close down their larger, more distant stores and instead continue further along their path of wiping out any independent competition by opening smaller stores in almost every neighbourhood.

At first the mega grocers were reluctant to do so; but given the stick of nationalisation and the carrot of cheap assignee labour, vacant high street or corner shop units at knock down rents, as well as a virtual monopoly they soon came round to the Connies' way of thinking. Besides, they realised that with so many products banned for health reasons, declared to be unnecessary 'luxuries', or likely to be unavailable for the forseeable future due to the ongoing effects of the Crises, their big shed stores were redundant; there would be so little stock left to fill them. So the deals were done, properties swapped, a cosy relationship re-established, and everyone was reasonably happy; apart from the employees who as so many others before them were quietly dismissed and re-employed into the permanence of inescapable benefit slavery, and we the consumers who - as usual - had been stitched up.

Yes, there are state price controls; though it seems to be easy enough to get approval for a price rise, but going to a local mart makes me feel as if I've been robbed by the time I leave. At least you don't have to endure piped music any more; in one of their more rational moments the Consensus banned it. Now and then even they do something right.

These days you don't just go in and pick what you want off the shelves. No; with so many people with so little do around and available for peppercorn wages the stores now resemble the grocery counters of yesteryear. Now you queue and ask the assistant for what you want; they either weigh out the amount or hand the product to you. It's eliminated a lot of shoplifting at a stroke.

A shopper from the past would be astonished at how little there is available now. With us all being so much poorer and unable to afford frippent luxuries, the shops sell only the basic food related fare. The frugality also extends to the packaging; the sly little tricks the manufacturers used to make their products look bigger now rendered obsolete in these asetic times. What you see in the plain, minimalistic wrapper is what you get; and you don't get much of it for your money.

Once you've toured the various departments and been served, you'll need to pay for your goods. Those fantasies of checkoutless shops full of RFID enabled products paid for by a wireless deduction from your account as you walk out of the door remain just pipe dreams; the Dragon saw to that. And fortunately those irritating self-service checkouts which addressed you in the same patronising tone a parent uses to their young child are also things of the past, it being cheaper and more resilient to have humans ringing-in your purchases as well as checking your Food Points card; despite it having been checked before when you were served.

This time the shelves appear to be reasonably full, with fewer out of stocks or yawning empty spaces;, even if there are only the usual limited variety of items available. This relative bountifulness is just another aspect of the cynically planned temporary bubble of munificence in advance of the election. Though I think I'll pass on the limp looking veg and tiny roots which seem to be all they have in stock at present; especially at those prices. I also wonder if my eyes haven't taken a sudden turn for the worse because the packages seem smaller and further away than I remember. I'm concerned for a while until I realise the portion sizes have shrunk yet again.

Having bought only the essentials I can afford I leave. One of the ever hovering security guards looks as if he intends to pull me aside for a bag search, despite him having seen me go through the checkout, but I give him one of my 'just don't try it...' looks and he thinks better of it.

February the 7th.

All day we've had to run an annoying PushCred explaining how well the economy has been doing. Obviously the thinking is if the Big Lie about the Recovery is pushed often enough, eventually the dolts will believe it to be the truth. And of course there are the statistics to prove it...

They are freely available to anyone who can be bothered to look them up, though few take any notice of them, and fewer still believe them. As with all official Fed statistics they are utterly meaningless. The New Pound has been 'revalued' so many times as to render any comparison with the statistics of twenty years ago - dire even then - null and void. Instead of concerning themselves with figures which are a combination of lies and wishful hoping, most people are too preoccupied getting by from month to month. Only the Connies are convinced not only has the situation stabilised, but based on the new foundations they have laid things are poised to really take off.

Such delusions are powerfully infectious; we had one of these short-lived outbreaks of optimism last year. Somehow the idea emerged the Council planned to ease the regulation of the housing market; controls on rents and house prices would be lifted with costs being allowed to find their own market level. Anyone with a basic understanding of fedonomics should've realised the idea was a non-starter, but that didn't stop some starry-eyed would-be capitalists investing in property Ponzi schemes which promised to make them rich overnight - and losing what little they had when reality finally broke through into their dream world. House price speculation was one of the reasons the pre-Fed economy crashed, not just once, but many times over when the inflation it generated ran out of control. More former greenfield sites may now be covered in homogenous swathes of impermanent looking housing, but everything is kept firmly under state control. No one, not even the more woolly Connie elements, would allow themselves to fall for the siren calls of those claiming the economy can be reflated on the back of a property bubble. We've all been stung too often before to allow it to happen again; haven't we?

The cynical exploiters of the would-be entrepreneurs - smart enough to start the speculation or jump off the bandwagon in time - did well enough collecting the small amounts of money pledged in hopeful expectation to emigrate to the EU or beyond. The mugs who fell for the scams still plaintively call for the state to investigate and pursue the guilty parties abroad; as well as expecting to be compensated for their stupidity: Dream on suckers!

You'd think people would've learned their lesson by now, but give it time and there'll be another brief burst of speculative optimism. It might be growers' co-operatives next time, or investing within the Zone, or the latest renewable energy scheme, but the result will be the same depressingly predictable bust. In a stagnant, hopeless economy all people have left are their fantasies of joining the elite either by finding that one niche opportunity, or winning the lottery.

Though I'll be glad when we can delete the 'Cred, it has inadvertently given me an idea for a means to attack the Connies' record: If things are going as well as they say, then why is it so many people are still going through the Assignment system; having to top up their meagre part-time earnings with an even more risible partial dole and credding in order to reach their subsistence level? Explain your way out of that one!

February the 16th.

I came close to resigning from the campaign group today; nearly chucked-in the whole fucking job I was that angry. I'm still feeling resentful about it now.

It all started with a confidential blurt from James describing some of his policy proposals. Far from the sensible libertarian ideals I thought he and the NRP stood for, these latest notions apear to be only a mildly watered-down version of Consensism. I didn't find them in any way at all inspiring and told him so. By return blurt I was told in not so many words to hold my peace and just get on with the job I was doing.

That to me was like a red rag to a bull, so I called him and let him know I wasn't happy being treated this way, and maybe the time had come for him to look for my replacement on the campaign group. It was the closest I'd come to having a steaming row with him; that fact alone seemed to startle him; in fact he began to row back a bit suggesting his proposals were a only a basis for discussion, a possible way of transitioning from Connie rule back to a free society and economy in stages in order to minimise any disruption whch a sudden change would cause. I remained unconvinced, not least by the lack of reform envisioned for the OMS, and it must have shown because in a marked change to his usual 'my way or the highway' demeanour he almost pleaded with me to take some time to think about it before making a final decision. Things would all become clear soon enough he promised.

My curiosity whetted as to what was going on, I agreed to delay making up my mind for a few days. Not that it took that long for James' ulterior motive to become apparent; a day later the story broke.

It emerged I wasn't the only one to get a provocative blurt from James; everyone in the campaign group did, but not everyone kept the contents to themselves. One of the draft policy documents was leaked, and the Connies made hay with it. They claimed the NRP's timidity in proposing so few changes to the system the Consensus had put in place was an inherent admission they had been right all along. Their glee was cut short when James revealed his real motive behind the proposals.

It turned out to be a cunning plan to expose the Connie agents James suspected had infiltrated IMS. By giving each member of the group their own individualised document it would be possible to find out by our reaction who was true to the cause, and who; given a plum story to leak and discredit the NRP, couldn't resist breaking cover. Once James publicly announced his turning of the tables the Connies at first denied infiltrating IMS, then went silent with embarrassment.

The next meeting of the campaign group was strained, to put it mildly. In addition to the two former employees who had been found out and summarily dismissed, another committee member decided she'd had enough and stepped down from the group. The rest of us were in a mutinous mood as well; we made it clear if James ever tried a repeat of that stunt we'd resign en-masse. Faced with a tide of resentment he apologised for going too far, and promised if any further security issues arose he'd deal with them in a far more conciliatory manner. That got him off the hook for the moment, but the ill-feeling remains and I must be one of the most aggrieved people still working for him. He knows that the next time - if there were to be a next time - would be the last time; I won't have my integrity questioned in such a manner.

The upshot of it all was by the time our ruffled feathers had been smoothed the day was wasted. I'm sure the Connies would be pleased if they could only see the self-inflicted damage just the fear of their pervasive espionage has caused. As for the public impact of all this; who can say what effect it will have? Ten years after politics as we knew them were officially abolished a lot of people have no interest in them at all and don't want to see them return: They'd rather watch the latest heat of Dance Together!