Having gone ‘ouch’ a few times after daring to venture a peek at the bad reviews on amazon and elsewhere, I’ve been having a little think. One of the main criticisms of The Departure seems to be the ‘political diatribes’ (or in one case ‘Thatcherite propaganda’) in my chapter starts. Admittedly I should have attributed them rather than let them stand, since some of them are from subnet bloggers and some from govnet bloggers. Anyway, that’s beside the point. I decided to do a little experiment with one of them by just changing a few words. This first one is directly from The Departure (shortened a little):
Once the Committee had firmly tightened its grip on Earth, it distributed wealth only on the basis of its own survival. In the beginning, ‘zero asset’ citizens received just enough to keep them fed, clothed and housed, whilst ‘societal assets’ could receive considerably more, calculated on the basis of their use to the Committee and how much more of a contribution could be derived from them by allowing them more. But the Committee itself sucked up the bulk of world wealth through building the infrastructure of utter control, and by maintaining its upper executives at a level of luxury never before witnessed on Earth.
And here’s another version:
Once the corporations and bankers had seized control of Earth from democratically elected governments, they distributed wealth only on the basis of their own survival. In the beginning, unemployed citizens received just enough to keep them fed, clothed and housed as a ‘labour pool’, while those employed in the corporations could receive considerably more, calculated on the basis of their usefulness and how much more of a contribution could be derived from them by allowing them more. But the corporations sucked up the bulk of world wealth through building the infrastructure of utter control, and by maintaining their upper executives at a level of luxury never before witnessed on Earth.
It would take me at best a week, mainly using find-and-replace, to completely flip this book over into the realms of ‘acceptability’. Sad but true.