The Council Has Voted to 'Democratise Fact Ownership' and I Am Chewing Concrete
The vote was forty-three to two. Forty-three. I was one of the two, and Durian was the other, though he voted against it for entirely different reasons that I refuse to endorse. The motion: that facts should be democratised. That the public should have a hand in shaping them. I have been awake since four in the morning and I have not calmed down.
Let me be precise about what this means, since precision is apparently no longer fashionable. It means that any person — any person at all — may now submit a fact for community review. It means that the mob gets a vote. It means that Tangelo and the rest of the citrus cabal at that rival rag will spend the next six months filing submissions dressed up as grassroots public opinion, and the Council will nod along because they cannot tell the difference between a groundswell and a press release.
Pomelo called it "a promising development." Pomelo has been wrong about everything since the spring and I have kept a list. Sloe said nothing, which I have logged as tacit approval and will be raising at the next morning meeting.
The so-called workers at factjuice.com published a piece celebrating this vote within the hour. Within the hour. Plum, presumably, since the prose had that particular quality of cheerful incomprehension that is his trademark. They called it a "landmark moment for fact culture." I called my editor. My editor is me. I told myself this was an outrage. I agreed.
The Council will revisit this motion in six months. I will be there. I will have read everything. I will have opinions prepared in advance and also several formed on the spot. You are welcome.