Two years ago, when I was in Okinawa, so around Jan/Feb 2011 I started writing something set in a present-day Britain but more dystopian and in which there is a character who, being unemployed, basically receives credit on his Jobseeker Credit Card (which he has to pay back when he is in work/exchange for community service hours) and which gives him access to a limited number of prescribed foodstuffs and essentials which he can only purchase from the approved Jobseeker Credit Stores, Tesco. Of course it is arranged in such a way that he is in increasing debt at the end of every month and so his Community Giveback hours increase exponentially. He worries that the fact that he has bought a copy of the Guardian rather than the approved newspapers might bring him unwanted attention next time he goes in for an assessment etc.
Of course at that point this seemed like a kind of nightmare exaggeration of tendencies in the present that wouldn't actually come to pass.
That was, in retrospect, rather naive of me.
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