NHS Face Removals (1977- )

While some children were born without faces simply because they didn't deserve them (see the Scarfolk Annual 197X), the government became increasingly concerned about citizens who did have them. They found that people with faces are more likely to have personal desires, hopes and dreams, in short: a will and ideas of their own. 

Such idiosyncrasies were not only thought of as needlessly self-indulgent, they were also deemed inconsistent with the smooth running of a successful society. Scarfolk's was the first council benevolent enough to offer face removals on the NHS.

In 1976, the council trialled face removals on stray foreigners, prisoners, children nobody wanted, unsuspecting people who were picked up leisurely walking in a park after sundown and volunteers (see leaflet above). 

When the full scheme was rolled out in 1977, the council soon lost track of which faceless citizen was which. By 1978 a new law was passed which dictated that all faceless people were required to have a tattoo of their old face over their lost one to make identification easier.

National Security Ear Grafts (1975)

Click to enlarge

When compulsory surveillance ear grafts were introduced in 1975, many Scarfolk citizens resorted to non-verbal forms of interpersonal communication to avoid the attention of government eavesdroppers. This in turn prompted a ban and users of sign language, mime artists and even fans of the party game charades suddenly found themselves on the wrong side the law. Writing was also subject to restrictions and was only permitted when verbal delivery was not possible. Incensed by the ban, a fervent group of mimes known as the MLA (Mime Liberation Army) committed several acts of silent terror and built invisible walls around government buildings preventing staff from entering.

The authorities recognised that national security ears were perhaps not as feasible as they had originally thought. Although several other surveillance schemes were launched in Scarfolk in the 1970s (see, for example, thought-detector vans, telekinetic child-owls, I-Spy books and Living-Eye surveillance computers), GCHQ realised that the most productive way to surveil a nation is for the citizens to unwittingly collate all their own personal data, verbal or otherwise, and transmit it directly to the government. In essence, citizens spying on and betraying themselves. Unfortunately, this idea would be not become workable on an industrial scale until the age of the internet.

"Surgical Toy Insertions Catalogue 1973-1974"

In August 1972 the BBC broadcast a documentary about how overcrowded prisons were forcing the authorities to address alternatives such as house arrest and electronic monitoring. At least a decade before homing devices in the form of ankle monitors or bracelets were first used, a Scarfolk inventor called Matthew Shipton set out to find a solution, drawing upon his years of experience working for toy manufacturer, Scar Toys.

Working with Dr. Hushson of Cavalier Pharmaceuticals, who had made his name hybridising children with kitchen appliances for the catering industries (see Discovering Scarfolk p. 121 for more details), Shipton surgically implanted his daughter's musical box into a lesser-favoured nephew. Whenever the boy released adrenalin (a sure sign of wrongdoing) the musical box opened and played Debussy's Claire de Lune, warning those nearby of potential ill intent on the boy's part.

The documentary had unexpected repercussions. Children up and down Scarfolk wanted to be fitted with their favourite toys. The demand was so great that Scar Toys and Cavalier Pharm went into production. Their Surgical Toy Insertions were the #1 Christmas gift five years in succession.
Meanwhile, the prison system adapted Shipton's musical boxes so that, instead of containing twirling ballerinas, they housed bulldog clips which nipped at the vital organs of criminals if they transgressed. Clare de Lune, however, was retained for its calming effects.

See more from Scar Toys here: Lung Puppy
See more from Cavalier Pharm here: Mindborstal

"Romantic Bile Awareness" (1979)

The romantic bile awareness campaign was launched on Valentine's Day, 1979. It came about following medical research into "that pernicious malady: love", which scientists believed was responsible for the secretion of a mysterious black bile produced in the hearts of the afflicted.

The bile perplexed experts, some of who claimed it to be sentient, though all agreed that it caused irreparable damage to internal organs including the lungs, kidneys and luncheon balls. But it was the brain that was the most susceptible to the bile which could trick the sufferer into demeaning acts such as befriending foreigners and other undesirables.

While the state did turn a blind eye to restrained fondness between its citizens, it could not permit love, requited or otherwise, to go unchecked. As the poster states, all relationships required authorisation from local councils and sexual proficiency was evaluated by a social worker.

In addition to relationship management, Scarfolk council also drew up a definitive list of human traits that it deemed attractive, thus potentially dangerous. Anyone who fulfilled more than three attributes was forced to attend a plastic surgery course during which they were taught self-surgery techniques and given a sterilised Swiss army penknife to ensure compliance with the government's guidelines on physical attraction.

Happy Valentine's Day from everyone at Scarfolk Council

Council Christmas Boy

Over the Christmas period, families in 1970s Scarfolk were plunged into a state of fear. They desperately tried to appear happy - or at least meet the minimum contentment levels - in case a council Christmas Boy turned up at their door to inspect them. Though many families were visited, seemingly concurrently, the council claimed there was ever only one boy. Nobody knew his real name.

Family members would often take turns standing in the front windows of their homes where they mimed laughter in the desperate hope that the Christmas Boy would pass them by. He rarely did. Once inside a home, he would sniff or lick the occupants for signs of stress or unhappiness.The Christmas Boy rarely found what he would deem a legally cheerful family and harsh punishments, which varied, were often meted out on the spot.

Families did not usually realise that they had been visited by the Christmas Boy until an hour or two after he had left because his flute was designed to have soporific effects. When these effects wore off, families might find that one or more members had been removed or that broad grins had been fixed on their faces following minor surgery.

 

A lawfully merry Christmas from Scarfolk Council. Be content...

Organ Tax & live organ postal services (1971-1978)

If a Scarfolk citizen failed to pay his annual Organ Tax, the organ in question could be turned off by the council, and if further warning letters were ignored the organ might be completely uninstalled by council workers, known as Offalbailiffs.

Many old people, as well as unemployed single parents, couldn't afford to pay the usurious Organ Tax, and frequently made ends meet by selling their innards to pay off outstanding debts.

This mounting problem was eventually brought to the public's attention when 82 year old pensioner Marjorie Pierce was discovered to have sold 17 human kidneys and 5 lungs, all of which she alleged were her own. However, the two spleens she traded were revealed to be two frozen, oven-ready lasagnes.

Charity organisations, such as The Insides Foundation, collected internal organs from wealthier citizens, which school children personally delivered in buckets to those less fortunate. However, when children began turning up in hospital emergency rooms suffering from the effects of purloined kidneys and pilfered spleens the practice stopped.

Organ donors instead turned to Scarfolk Royal Mail who quickly started offering special postal services, as can be seen from the advertisement below.

"An End to Starvation?" (Pelican Books, 1973)

Before the 1970s, the idea of reprocessing human body parts had only been officially proposed once. In 1790, Arnold Bumb, an alchemist, necromancer and avid shopper, suggested that amputated human limbs be surgically spliced onto livestock to make them more efficient. His pamphlet "The Duck With My Wife's Foot" was very popular among agriculturists (and fetishists) of the time.

But it wasn't until the 1970s, when poverty levels were at their highest since the the second world war, that the government published a white paper proposing a solution to Britain's impending food deficit.

Since the advent of modern medicine, hospitals had been incinerating post-operative surgical and biological waste, and to many people this was considered both uneconomical and unethical. In the early 1970s, a nationwide study into the numbers of body parts amputated annually showed that there were enough discarded limbs, organs and even hair, to feed a county the size of Lancashire, as long as people supplemented their diet with fingernail biting, thumb sucking, and by popping over the border into Yorkshire for an occasional pub lunch.

The government's trial schemes were so successful that some hospitals, such as Royal Wimpy Infirmary, St. McDonalds General and North Findus Hospital shifted away from healthcare and became fully-fledged food processors and suppliers.