Future dream

I don’t do fiction, but this has run around in my head for a few days now so I had to write it down.

I woke up at 6AM; it seemed to be getting a little earlier everyday as the spring sunshine came through the widow, just another day.

My routine was still much the same, have a cup of tea, followed by another and another, greeting members of the family as they ventured downstairs.

Check emails, read blogs and the news, and most importantly the local web portal to see what was going on in our community.

The big news for the end of the quarter was that we had generated a good amount of electricity in recent months thanks to the good weather, and the community council was already considering increasing the number of PV panels that we have, there was also a suggestion that we should make the move to hydrogen production with the excess power that we generated and run our own fuel cell for the lean times. I added my thoughts to the monthly discussion document that was available to all within our mini society and moved onto more immediate things; after all it would be the end of the year before any big decision would be made.

There were no new supply opportunities, but then most of these were negotiated the year before, but there were two new applications for new business. Cheese making (another one!) and a cobbler. I whole heartedly supported the latter as it was still hard to get a decent pair of functional boots rather than some imported, stylised, flimsy junk that lasted a few months before they had to be broken down for recycling. Better to have something that could be repaired and someone who could repair them. I added my approval to the community loan that would be granted if the application was given the green light.

I wondered if my arteries could support another cheese maker.

The usual notices; births, deaths and marriages, and register of visitors. The latter, now somehow redundant, was one of the reminders of harder times when local borders were created to stop the mutating virus from spreading. Movement of people was tracked much like the movement of animals, which kind of made sense if you remember the foot and mouth crisis that hit the UK early on in the century.

I had laughed at the UK slogan “lockdown locally, live longer” I have no idea who came up with these slogans, but they were crap!

It was during these localised lockdowns that community devolution was created. Initially it was by town or city, and then expanded to rural communities, especially as there had been a mass migration back to the countryside as people fled to apparent safety. This turned out to be the turning point as the city folk spread the disease far and wide, and as the borders went up, although only virtual, you now had to register your movements. If they put you in a different location for more than a week (increased from a day), or if you planned to move somewhere on a permanent basis then you now had to seek permission from the community you wanted to live in. I think some people were quite happy with this as it meant that money was no longer a passport, although it had to be said it created a new set of problems, but then what system doesn’t?

I think we all expected the government to keep hold of some of the temporary powers that were granted during the pandemic, just so long as they had a soft approach to enforcement then only a minority seemed to care. We all seemed happy enough for Google, Apple and Facebook to track our movements so passing that power to the government wasn’t that much of s stretch, knowing that you could ditch your mobile if you wanted to appeased the naysayers and conspiracy junkies. We may well have taken a step closer to the Chinese model, but it seemed to be one that worked so why not?

Perhaps surprisingly this changed the demographics of the cities, towns and villages as the young migrated to the higher risk, higher paying, metropolises and the old(er) folks headed for the less populated areas. A sweeping generalisation of course, but it was certainly a trend.

With the demise of many of multinational service industries such as MacDonald’s, Costa and the like, small independent enterprise was rife and the only competition they faced was from their neighbour, which I have to admit seemed fair to me. The little guy was no longer forced out by the giant who could run at a loss to kill the completion. At least on the few occasions that I did travel to a city I was guaranteed a different experience in each of them, not the same photocopy high streets of old. A multitude of independent shops now crammed the huge vacant spaces that used to be Next or HMV. The big guys still existed of course, but many had shifted entirely online to cut costs when fearful customers changed their shopping habits, and only a few had gone back to the old model.

Maybe this played a part in the collapse of the financial system as investment groups (landlords) lost a big part of their income stream?

But I think it was introduction of a universal basic income was the real game changer. After the collapse of the financial system, which everybody feared as in meant that everyone’s pension was up the spout, something had to be done to stop a civil war similar to the one that had happened in the USA.

A revolt that was only quelled when the president of the time was killed by a stray golf ball, by all accounts struck by Chinese guest staying at the Mar a Lago estate.

The UBI was quite simple, or so they said, I never quite got my head around it, but it worked so happy days. It certainly changed peoples approach to work as they invariably followed their own path rather than having the system force a low paid, stimulus free, career upon them. Jobs began to mean something to people again and although you could probably survive off the handout, if you wanted to buy something beyond the basics then you had to find some way of generating money, so work still played a big part in everyone’s lives. More importantly it pretty much eradicated poverty and deprivation overnight, as well as making a big dent in the crime statistics.

I could go on of course, but goats don’t milk themselves, maybe I’ll dream more in the future.