The Priests of The System

I spoke to someone more scary than London's Dictator Sadistic Kahn, a low level Transport for London call centre manager who thinks he's saving the planet.

I drove into central London recently to spend the evening with some of the best freedom loving company one can fit around a table — Abi Roberts’ Kitchen Table. You can watch the episode here.

I knew I was driving into occupied territory — central London’s buildings peer out at you from under the various flags and billboards of occupying ideologies (ideologies that can generate no cultural, intellectual, spiritual, or financial resources to build anything that is good, true or beautiful, and so they lay claim to things built by people of the past that they seek to delete). All the road furniture, paint, signs and speed limits say “you made a mistake coming by car, you’re not welcome in our new world order”. Much like driving into the fiefdom of West Oxfordshire District Council (see my podcast rants about reds in the weeds and disconnected Park and Ride schemes), the oppression of officialdom and bureaucratic monitoring and control of everyday life activities —like movement and thinking —is palpable. But I was heading to a gathering of freedom fighters so this journey was about striking a blow to tyranny in occupied territory.

Now, nothing that happened four days later will surprise you. We live in a world where everyday behaviour is trained by penalty charge notices through computer surveillance and sanctioning systems. These systems increasingly determine the flow of our lives. They are bigger than any of the individuals who serve them as the human spokespersons for their dictates and decisions. This is one of those small stories about falling victim to an immovable computer and a gleeful priest of the system.

I copped a double penalty charge notice for late payment of Ulez and Congestion charges: the computer wouldn’t see reason and its minions gleefully embraced both their own powerlessness and the mission of the system.

I drove into London on a Saturday and then, four days later, sat at the computer to work out my bill and pay the charges. It turns out that the system times-out after three days. I was a day late in paying. I missed the deadline (you know, the deadline “around time” sort of deadline). How was I to know that? The three-day time to pay period is not mentioned on any signage. You only discover it when trying to pay or if you go looking for it as a specific policy. It is buried in the website. If you miss the payment date you get a penalty charge notice.

I decided to call Transport for London and point out that I was willing to pay but they were at fault for not advertising the three day pay period for their toll¹.

On the first try a recorded message on the phone number advertised on the TfL website told me that the line was no longer connected to Transport for London, but —wait for it— if I stayed on the line I could hear about the history of that phone number! Well, I quickly got some popcorn and settled in for the evening. I then remembered this was a premium rate line and got on with my life. Seriously, who are these people?!

I found the new number and got through to a call handler. She told me there was nothing I could do. She wouldn’t take payment over the phone, the system wouldn’t allow it and I would have to wait for the penalty notice. I asked to escalate it to management, she told me there was no one higher up who could take the payment, the system wouldn’t allow anyone to take payment past the three-day period, but she’d get a manager to call me.

So, I waited for the call. In the meantime, I posted a complaint through their website with the following:

Nowhere on your road signage - which is the first indicator to the driver that they have passed into a toll zone - does it say you have three days to pay or risk a penalty charge. People should not be expected to visit a website before travel to find, hidden in a nest of menu options, a three day payment limit. Freedom of movement requires that people are able make spur of the moment decisions (without first consulting a website) to enter a city. The burden is on the city to make its tolls and payment methods known to the traveller AT THE POINT OF ENTRY into the toll zone. Otherwise this is a form of entrapment. I planned on paying. I sat at the computer online, card ready to pay, totally unaware of the three day limit. I'm now awaiting a threatening penalty charge letter.

I'd like to pay the Congestion Charge and Ulez charge. If the system is unable to cope with this, then I want the penalty fee waived because the fault is with Transport for London, who failed to make the three-day limit known where it matters — on entry to the toll areas.

The manager called. I explained the situation. He agreed that there are no signs on the road indicating the three-day period to pay, but advised me that on reading the Ulez zone signs I should have gone to pay on the website. I explained that this is what I did but that, unbeknownst to me, I did it outside of the hidden payment window. I said it was Transport for London’s responsibility to advertise the payment terms on their signs. In a deadpan, “computer says no” voice he responded that no one could do anything. So I asked, “can any of you there at TfL do anything other than what the system says?” I said “this is Sadiq Khan’s communist agenda designed to restrict freedom of movement”. He pointed out that the system predated Kahn. I pointed out that wasn’t the point, we now have a system that entraps people and fines them for movement, and, that BoJo was another green ideologue.

He started to argue that the scheme had reduce pollution and the statistics couldn’t be argued with. He also said, in a tone that barked “get with the program”, that the scheme was coming to “towns and cities” all over. He mentioned towns before cities — that’s telling! I said statistics can be argued with. I asked him if he believed in climate change ideology. He said he wasn’t going to argue about it and that I needed to wait for the penalty charge notices. I said “thanks for this useless call” and hung up.

Penalty charge notices for doing ordinary things is an increasingly common occurrence, nothing worth writing about perhaps, but as I’ve reflected, two things struck me:

1. We have normalised the reach of machinic digital authority into the minutiae of life through accepting surveillance and self-reporting technologies. We don’t pause when asked to enter our registration number into a website in order to pay a toll for driving up a road before the camera, that recorded us days before, triggers a penalty notice. That is government surveillance answered by self-reporting, and this is somehow normal: “We know you were there, tell us yourself and pay up or we will penalise you”. We’ve come to live with the idea that you are, at all times, likely to be breaking some local law or rule or policy that we have no idea about, and that a machine is ready with unimpeachable authority to slap a penalty charge on you. Living before the permanent gaze of technological authorities, in a set of nested and unseen regulations over ordinary life activities and offering up “digital confessions” in order to be a responsible citizen, is a set of themes I want to think about some more.

2. I realised that I had come upon a sinister creature; a man who has no autonomy or authority in his role and who is dedicated to his position as defender of a machine — because the machine will save us. As he said, with a strong hint of self-satisfied warning, “it’s coming to every town and city”. Where the machine goes, its priests go too. I couldn’t help but hear his implication “people like me are coming to every town and city”. I know they are already there, waiting for a chance to serve for the “greater good”.

I spoke with a man who speaks for the machine, has no authority or will to override it, delights in its inevitable roll out everywhere and believes the lies.

The point he made about the system predating Kahn is actually key to the bigger point I was trying to make; you can replace Kahn, but it’s the minions like this manager who are the problem. They are the work force, the priesthood, the guards, paving the way to our technocratic imprisonment under the fanatical belief in the climate dooms day cult. They speak as if the rest of us are being tolerated for a period of time, but eventually we will have to get on board or else.

With the belief in the fantasy that access to data and information are the same as wisdom, the “decisions” of AI driven systems will be worshipped as unimpeachable —we are at the mercy, not of dictators like Kahn, but of the minions who give up their own authority and judgement with zeal to the computer.

I’ve heard the argument that so much data is collected by modern SMART systems, cameras, Alexa devices and smart phones that it’s all white noise, there is too much to process so no one can really listen in. But that assumes a surveillance model based on the old spy movies, with one person sitting on a phone tap; they would be overwhelmed with 8 billion connections. However, AI is able to sit there and monitor and sift according to algorithms, automatically apply rules, come to “judgements” and apply sanctions.

AI itself is not a problem for the reasons many fear; AI can’t become sentient, the metaphysics just don’t stack up. Rational creatures are rational souls (body and spirit). Spirit and soul can’t arise out of electrical patterns governed by 1s and 0s. However, AI will be a problem if humans treat it like a god, believe it too have ultimate informational authority (all knowing) and deploy it to do surveillance and sanctioning work, while they defend its decisions and processes. Thats the old fashioned problem of idolatry, attributing god-like powers and authority to man-made objects. That is what I encountered in the call centre manager; a lowly priest of the all-knowing immovable system who believes the roll out of that system will save us all from environmental disaster: When his god rolls into town and further into everyday life, movement and thought (with its electronic eyes, unimpeachable judgements and sanctions and demands to self report our movements and thoughts when it says we must) he’ll be a happy priest.

Add his ilk to the screaming trans-activists (you know, those that just scream or chant into microphones in public institutions, rather than make rational arguments — they are all over youtube) and you’ve got your apocalyptic, mindless and yet driven, zombie army coming for civilisation. These are the prison wardens, the snitches, the camp guards, the pen pushers of tyranny. They will scream, “for our safety the computer says no!”

We need to reach them. I doubt they will listen in their work places where they are pushing the cogs of tyranny, but they may be open at home when off duty, when a fine lands in their inbox. We can only hope.

However, as Solzhenitsyn taught us, under the tyranny of Communism the faithful happily entered the Gulags under state written confessions and lined up against the wall because, to succumb to the belief that the system was wrong was a cognitive step to far: Death was better than the truth —that is where idolatry gets you.

I come back to thoughts of the place where I was headed to in London — a table for conversation and fellowship with freedom fighters in occupied territory — and I’m reminded of the resources available to keep us sane and to get us out of this mess: recovery of friendship and conversations in real life among people with different perspectives, a moral compass, discussion about the history and consequences of ideas, knowledge of history, truth, goodness and beauty (and great nibbles).

Ta ta for now

Jonny

1. The Dartford Tunnel screams the payment deadline at you on multiple signs driving up to and away from it.