An ill wind ....

Shivering in the cold gloom of the January morning, Jake closed the kitchen door behind him. Friday at last he thought. There had been no wind for a few days which meant no electricity. No hot drink or toast for breakfast. Only one house in the road showed any lights. It was where the Community Observation Officer lived. It was very dark, all street lights had long been abandoned. The posts were all still there though as many of them carried cameras.

He opened the garage door to get his bike out. One good thing about the lack of wind, he thought, was that it meant his fifteen mile cycle to work was easier. He sensed the camera across the road turn towards him. He assumed that it had night-vision lenses fitted, and wondered who was watching his departure. The guy in the house with lights almost certainly. He made sure that his panniers were on the bike as his wife had asked him to do some shopping. Using so many carbon credits last weekend precluded the use of the car for shopping for a week or so.

Jake and his wife Mary had considered moving nearer his job. But they counted it good fortune that the village house they had bought cheaply ten years before because of its proximity to some council houses meant it was classified as being in an area of deprivation. It should mean that there was a much better chance of their older son getting a place at a decent university. The trouble, Jake thought ruefully as he pushed hard on the pedals up the slope to the main road, was that a degree counted for less and less now that so many had one.

He pedalled hard for just over an hour before he arrived at the secondary school where he worked. He chained his bike in the staff bike shed. His last bike had been stolen. He even knew which pupil was now riding it, but a report to the principal had merely brought the response that nothing could be proved. Notifying the police had been useless. For the last six months they had been undergoing investigation themselves. Although the investigation was officially reported as 'administrative irregularities' word had it that they had falsified their gender equality audit.

Only half the lights were on, making his office gloomy. It brightened up a bit when he switched on his computer. He still missed being able to check his favourite sites before starting work, but the only outside site he could visit was the Department's. He checked his emails. There were the usual requests for information from the Department. He always left them as long as he could. Very often they would get forgotten when a new initiative was announced.

The office window looked out onto the kid's entrance. Some were starting to drift in. They all did the same, pulling faces or making gestures to the cameras as they put their hands into the fingerprint scanner which operated the automatic door. Two private security guards stood ready to ensure that the children only entered one at a time. The guards had stood there ever since the drug dealer episode last year. He had managed to crawl in beneath the camera's gaze after his brother, who was a pupil, had opened the door with his fingerprint scan.

It was only by chance that he had been discovered by a cleaner, running what amounted to a daily drug stall in a storeroom. The cleaner had sold her story to the local press before notifying the head, who was dismissed. Jake wished the old head was still there. One of the old school, he had always put the kid's education first and had been popular with the staff. Paying for the subsequent security had meant that the staff numbers had been reduced to stay within the budget.

The sacked head's replacement was a Moslem. The staff muttered that she had only been chosen to hit the ethnic target. Jake wasn't so sure. Few had applied for the job and most of those had withdrawn their applications when they had visited the school for their first interview. Most of the white parents accepted her appointment with sullen resentment, although nearly erupting into active protest when she proposed to celebrate Ramadan equally with Christmas. The governors however had prevailed on her to see sense and things had gone relatively quietly since.

Jake's morning went smoothly. One or two of the secretarial staff dropped by with bits of paper, mainly invoices for payment. He was the only member of the administrative staff who could understand the school accounting software and was duly treated with some respect. The head had meetings all morning and had left him alone as well. Her understanding of his job was even less than that of the other staff. She merely got irritable when he told her that there was no money in the budget for any of the well publicised government initiatives.

He felt a bit sorry for her in some ways. She actually believed the PM when he announced to press and cameras the latest scheme to improve education. The truth was that funding followed results. A school such as this was damned from the start because of its catchment area. Bussing in pupils from out of the area had been tried in an attempt improve the raw material. All to no avail. Ambitious parents soon got wise and either appealed incessantly or just moved away into the catchment area of a better school. Quite a few moved abroad.

Jake decided to go shopping in his lunch break rather than delay his arrival home by going after school. He walked the few hundred yards to the local Tesco. Banners outside announced Tesco's new partnership with the government. It was the first time that Jake had been shopping since the 'Fair Food for All' campaign had been launched under the guise of a government and private enterprise partnership. One of the national dailies had suggested that the supermarket chains had been forced to co-operate by the threat of withheld planning permission for new stores. The editor of the paper was accused of sexual harassment a couple of weeks later and forced to resign.

Jake got a trolley and walked into the store. Have your ID card ready, the signs admonished. New barriers had been erected. 'Insert your ID card' said the sign beside the barrier. Jake put his ID in the slot. The barrier didn't open straight away. After the short delay his card was returned along with a ticket the size of a till slip. It carried the instruction that he had to include at least one item of fruit and two of vegetables for every £10 that he spent. Jake didn't mind too much, it was mostly vegetables he was after. He walked round picking the items on his list, adding a couple of packs of beer and a bottle of wine. They wouldn't be going out over the weekend and it would be a bit of a treat he thought.

He went and queued at the check-out, noticing that the operator had a new scanner near the till into which she placed each person's ID card before starting to check the items through. There was a delay when the woman at the head of the queue had an argument with the operator. Jake paid little attention, patiently waiting his turn. When his wait was finally over, the checkout operator asked for his ID card. He passed it over, not expecting any problems. The girl started processing the contents of his basket. The last items were the packs of beer. As she passed the first pack across the barcode reader there was a buzz from the box where his ID card was sitting and a red light flashed.

“Can't have those”, said the checkout girl.

“Why not?” Jake asked .

“Dunno” she said, “I just do what I'm told. I get fined if I let anything through when that thing tells me not to. Could lose me job as well”.

Jake knew better than to argue. This was almost certainly part of the government's latest 'Beating the Booze' health campaign. He'd seen the posters going up over the last few days. Should pay attention to the news more, he told himself. Trouble was since the setting up of the England First news agency by the government, it had all become rather boring. Just lists of government achievements and announcements of the next campaigns. It didn't matter which channel you watched it was all the same.

A government spokesperson at the time had said it was necessary to ensure that everybody had equal access to the good news about the government's progress in the fights against ill-health, poverty, inequality and global warming. Jake wondered what the rest of the world thought about what was happening in England. At one time you could find out by going to American or Australian internet news sites. Since the setting up of the web regulator Intercom however he could no longer log on to them. One or two friends had hinted that there were sites where you could really find out what was going on. Jake was worried though that they may just be honeypot sites so that the government could discover its enemies.

Back in the office there was an envelope on his desk. He recognised his monthly pay statement. He took it out and checked it. The income tax was the figure it should be. He scowled though at the item labelled 'ORF'. It stood for Olympic Regeneration Fund. It had been introduced in 2010 accompanied by promises that it was a one-off and would be withdrawn after 2012. It was two years after the Games now and everybody was still having to pay it. The government was now promising that it would go soon. Jake was sceptical.

The afternoon went quickly. The school shut at three so as to conserve electricity and keep heating costs down. Jake had to work until four. Out of the window he watched the children drifting off. The teaching staff, who either walked, cycled or came by bus, always waited for the children to disperse before venturing out. There had been too many incidents in the past of stones being thrown at cycling teachers. He saw the head leave. She was the only one who came by car. Apparently she was disabled and received additional carbon credits. She always walked with a stick around the school, but Jake had seen her one afternoon as he cycled home and she had been walking perfectly well without it then.

Five minutes before he was due to leave, the premises executive came round and asked him to go. Jake seethed inwardly. At a higher level now than Jake, his job had been upgraded following the latest equality review. Jake gathered his shopping and went and collected his bike. He just managed to get all his shopping into the pannier bags. He cycled as fast as he could to get out of the area where the school was situated. You could never be too careful, he thought. Soon he had left the town and was out in the country. The wind had picked up during the afternoon and was now blowing strongly at his back. As darkness fell he saw lights starting to come on in the villages he went through. Jake's spirits lifted. If this wind kept up it should mean electricity all over the weekend. Hot meals and a warm house. He cycled on towards home.