It's Good To Be The King

I wanted to tell you all about my commune.

Things were getting out of hand, so we decided that order needed restoring. It took a while but we are all sorted out now.

First, we needed to decide who would be in charge, so we had an election. It used the first past the post system, and somehow, I won. I'm in charge for a maximum three year term. After that I am out, unless the system is changed. I didn't want to seem too greedy so I set my own pay level. It isn't the highest salary in the village but I can make up for that after my term of office. Besides which, I don't really use my own money for anything. I just use funds from the community jar.

I sat down and wrote a load of rules for the villagers. Since there was no real opposition, all of my rules got through the process I had mandated. It was simple stuff: taxation, for instance. I decided that I would take half of everyone's salary. I needed some enforcers so I wrote an entry test that would weed out all but the seriously deranged. Sure, they were hard men and women but I didn't need any shrinking violets in case things got nasty. I set the speed limits on all roads. If these were transgressed, the enforcers collected the fines. I think I made good choices because the villagers are terrified of the enforcers. Once, one of the enforcers killed a villager but I knew that if he was punished the other enforcers would ease up. They would refuse to tase the children, or stop beating up the women in the gaol, and we simply can't have that. Since then, a couple more villagers have died suddenly, and a couple have ended up in wheelchairs, but the villagers, bless them, continue to turn a blind eye. Some even agreed that the transgressors deserved what they got.

The education system was in a mess. The village school said prayers at morning assembly so I put a stop to that. If a child fell over in the playground playing "tag" and hurt himself, the teacher supervising would hug and soothe the child. I stopped that as well. Imagine if someone thought the teacher had sexual desires for the child? No, it had to be stopped. In fact, I stopped the games as well. The children, often excited at their short bursts of freedom from lessons, would run around like demented chickens. It was only a matter of time before one of them fell over and scratched a knee, or worse. No games in the playground. Then, a new boy, Mohammed, joined our small community. As soon as I found out he was a Muslim, I made sure that Christianity was never mentioned in the school again. I took a look at the dinner menu and I was horrified! None of the meals were halal. They all are now. Also, we discovered that little Jake's parents had split up. Jake's dad, Simon, is a gayer, and his partner Jeff had moved in when Jake's mum left. So I immediately banned all references to "mum" or "dad", so that we didn't emotionally damage little Jake.

I was forced to make changes down at the GP's surgery too. Steven (the village GP), is an old friend and I had sounded him out prior to the election. I told him that we had to control peoples behaviour so that we weren't forever paying for healthcare. He agreed to make stuff up about drinking, drugs, smoking and most of the foods the villagers liked eating. We constructed a chart concerning body-fat which meant that anyone over border-line anorexia was classed as seriously morbidly clinically obese. So if they got sick-it didn't matter what the ailment was-Steven refused treatment or charged them a small fortune to hand out generic (but clearly unsafe) medicines. The odd villager or two died because of Steven's ineptitude, but we covered it up.

I had checked out Justin prior to the election as well. He and I thought alike. I am pleased that I appointed him senior judge. Like me, he agreed that juries were a waste of time, money and effort. For high profile cases we had decided on a system of "volunteer" jurors. We would simply send them a letter telling them to report for duty and if these volunteers failed to show up, we would get the enforcers around to their homes and we would gaol them for non-compliance. I am glad I picked Justin. One of the villagers had decided that parting company with half of his wages every month violated his "rights" in some way. Now, I freely admit that we did scribble some nonsense down about human rights before the election, but hell, it was purely a PR exercise. Anyway, he hadn't paid for a while so we wrote to him, politely demanding our money or we would send the lads in. He didn't pay so I gave the boys a green light. They dragged him to court and Justin was embarrassed by the mans behaviour, shouting about this right and that right, so Justin cleverly ignored him, imposed a fine and sent the chap on his way.

Before the election I had made a string of promises to the voters. Now that I was in I realised that, being in charge, I could just pretend I hadn't made any promises at all. Besides, I needed the money for other things. One of the chaps down at the club told me about a brilliant computer programme that could predict where birds would sit in the trees. As an avid twitcher, it was a simple decision. The judge, the doctor and at least two of the enforcers had a mild interest so we went for it. It cost a fortune but I felt that it was good for the community to know where the birds were sitting. Well, the software didn't work for the longest time, and there were several budget over-runs. I just jacked up the taxes on petrol. In the end it didn't work at all, but we learned some lessons. I had to ignore the petitions from the nay-sayers when I made the initial announcement about the Bird Spotting Programme, and their complaints were getting on my last nerve, so I outlawed petitions. They were muttering about me in the village pub so I had Steven produce some horror stories about alcohol. That sent a few scurrying home but the damn smokers were still gathering and still muttering. I jacked up the tax take on booze and fags but that didn't work. I banned smoking within five hundred feet of any living thing, but they kept on smoking! Unbelievable. Steven made up even more outrageous "facts" about smoking, but, and there was no way I could have foreseen this, smoking rates went up! Still, every cloud and all that, we ended up with even more money in the jar.

Anyway, there were a thousand teething problems with the new system, but we persevered. The enforcers eventually got help from those villagers who don't mind telling tales about their neighbours, and thanks to some intensive indoctrination at the school, we soon had the children reporting in on their parents activities. Naturally, we tap every phone line, and we track and trace all emails to and from the village. Our camera system cost a fortune but you know what? I think the villagers feel safer with the street cameras. They baulked a bit at my BedroomCam and BathroomCam incentives, but they got used to it in the end. Those that didn't were picked up by the enforcers and we just tagged them with GPS bracelets. So it all worked out in the end.

I had to change that ridiculous "maximum three year term". You couldn't get enough done. I have now been in charge for fifteen years. I am a multi-millionaire. My team are all well compensated too. The villagers aren't too happy, but, it's a hard life. Happiness isn't everything, is it?

It is good to be the king though.

CR.