There is literally no one I don't hate right now.

[notplaying]

Toby was in the council office. He had the door propped open with stack of his least favorite books, and numerous stacks of paper neatly set out in equal intervals around the table with chairs in front of each. He was at what he counted as being the fifth one. The order was: Council Parameters, Grievances of Property, Grievances of Person,

Comments

[dogbitesman]

"I do like an open door," William said, stepping carefully around the books propping it open and peering at the piles of paper on the desk. "Good morning, councillor."

[notplaying]

"Good morning, editor," Toby returned, not ceasing the ball throwing, but, and this was a good step with Toby and the press, not aiming it at William, either.

"How goes the next edition?"

[dogbitesman]

"It's coming along," William said, stepping closer to the table and picking up the first page of Council Parameters on the basis that if he wasn't allowed to read it he'd be told to stop and probably would get a fair sense for what was on this page (and the one beneath it as he put it down) anyway. "Things happen, I write them down, I set them in type. Same as at home, there's just less to write. How go the laws?"

[notplaying]

"They go," Toby said, landing the ball against he wall with a particularly hard thok! before catching it back and sighing, leaning back in his chair.

"With varying degrees of success and dispute. So, like normal, really."

[dogbitesman]

"At least it means people are thinking enough to argue about them," William said, sitting down and taking out his notebook to lay beside the pile. "How is it decided what constitutes an emergency? Who decides that?"

[notplaying]

"The situation, so far," Toby said, "and whoever recognizes it first, populace, IPD, council. Something immediate that proves a danger to the population. We're not talking about something like moral decline, we're talking about dinosaur rampages, epidemics of disease, the sudden appearance out of the jungle of an army with weapons, God only knows what else. The weekends things go...wrong, those are emergencies, because though plenty of us are acclimated at this point, plenty of new people arrive all the time and aren't, and they provide opportunity for people to get seriously injured either by their own panic or their... ridiculous Halloween costume they can't get off."

[dogbitesman]

"So you would classify emergencies as situations that present an immediate or incipient danger to the physical wellbeing of the island populace?" William said, rapidly transcribing Toby's words into shorthand. In the interests of clarification, naturally.

He liked that Toby specified that moral decline would not be included.

[notplaying]

"Yes, thank you," Toby said and jotted that down, then, because it sparked something else, got up and moved on to another chair, starting to jot something there, as well.

"The council's duties as they are layed out and will be ratified will lie in the realm of service to the public, same as the IPD, same as the clinic staff and IBI. Not by imposing standards the council has arbitrarily come up with but by supplying standards inspired and implemented, ultimately, by the population itself. It's easier the other way," he muttered, "I understand the appeal of a dictatorship. From the dictator's point of view, anyway."

[dogbitesman]

"A dictator doesn't get to say, 'Yes, but you voted me in,' though," William said absently, still making notes. "How far does that go? I note that while laws need to be ratified, it says here that the council defines harrassments, offences and crimes?"

This was, to William, interesting. On the one hand, you'd expect that criminals, for instance, would probably vote against whatever it was they did being a crime. But then if the majority of people voted that way, that meant the majority of people were okay with it, so was it really a crime?

It is to the percentage of the population who didn't vote for it, William thought.

He didn't envy the council the task of figuring this out, really.

[notplaying]

"That's a privilege of the council because because they were voted in by sheer popularity, and are allegedly representative of the island's wants and view points. I say allegedly and there's more on that in that pile," he said, nodding over to where he'd stuck all his notes and proposals on election reform, "but basically... I haven't met anyone insane on the council yet. Eccentric perhaps but not unstable. As such, because we were elected by popular vote, for this thing to get off the ground we have to assume that we have a ballpark idea of what the population thinks is right and wrong, and that we have more than a ballpark idea of what is dangerous to the majority of the population. One of the council members is a Roman general. You're not from Earth, but I've heard your... Discworld, has some parallels so stop me if this is familiar. Rome was the second society to be a true pinnacle of law and justice. On paper. In actuality, it was ruled by thugs. Extremely well educated, high class thugs. Murder was a punishable offense,

[dogbitesman]

"That sounds like Ankh-Morpork before Havelock Vetinari," William said, thinking. "With the caveat that while murder was punishable, as you say, by public execution, you could only commit murder if you lived below a certain income bracket."

Which was no longer true, because Vimes would arrest anyone.*

He made a note. "It does make a certain kind of sense. I imagine people would get sick of voting on every decision every week, and if everyone but those who are passionate stopped bothering to vote..." He shook his head. Passion was all well and good, but a government being operated on the say of extremists was not a nice image. "Of course, if people continue to run without platforms or any idea of what they stand for, it's hard to say that we've elected them for their opinions and that they represent the populace at large, wouldn't you say? Currently we're not electing people based on what they represent, but on competence and personality. And given how overcrowded the field has been the last two times, memorability is probably a very

[notplaying]

"I know. I think it should take a minimum of seven or ten signed constituents for a candidate to be able to run, a primary election to eliminate two thirds of those eligible, and then a final election from which the council is elected. It would makes things substantially more manageable, not to mention give a better idea of exactly what you were voting for. But I also think an election of that magnitude would warrant longer terms than six months."

[dogbitesman]

"Six months isn't a lot of time to get certain things done, all considered," William said, nodding first in acknowledgement of the points Toby was making and then to the papers strewn across the desk. He flipped a page an titled it in notable letters Elctn Rfm? "I mean, I imagine you were hoping to have this completed in your current term, for instance?"

[notplaying]

"You'd think, given that there's nothing going on really, six months would be enough time. But yes. Yes. I had planned on having these done and ready for ratification by the public two months ago. Even with teaching at the school and private tutoring for advanced classes and writing my own book and-" he made a slight gesture that stood for losing the woman I love again, "-personal...setbacks, I should have had all this done, run through the wringer of the council's spectrum and ready for to be presented to the public two months ago."

[dogbitesman]

"Everything seems to take longer when you have longer to do it in," William said, with a faint frown. "Do you think it will be ready for the wringer soon, then?"

[notplaying]

"It's already been through once. Now I'm expounding upon things that aren't exclusively how the council works, and then they'll go through again, and of course I'm always hoping more of thee public will wander in and complain about something so I can fix it on paper before it gets put to them. As much fun as it is," Toby said, sighing and moving to another chair, to The Book, "cornering people and surveying them individually, I mostly just stay in the one place. Or the school house. I'm easier to find than everyone else. I think, at least."