PROGRAMME 3

Programme aims

To encourage young people to:

• address the causes of conflict, and consider how conflicts might best be resolved;
• begin to understand checks and balances in democratic government;
• consider the role of the media as a balance of power, and the ways it might be manipulated;
• further investigate an array of rights and their application, especially the right to privacy in opposition to other rights and important democratic tenets.

Programme outline

The Enabling Act is moving forward, and more defections to the Democratic Consensus Party are consolidating the party's power in Parliament. In an interview with Jon Snow, Prime Minister Wheeler refers to the EA as 'simply speeding up the process of change' proclaiming 'there's no need to be alarmist'.

Meanwhile, Tariq is detained without trial and tortured for information on the whereabouts of the laptop. Max has taken it to his friends at the underground collective, where they manage to crack the laptop's password and uncover the real reason Speers was so desperate to retrieve his hardware. A number of incriminating video messages between Speers and the PM are stored on it, in which they betray their plans for the country – and their true attitude to Parliamentary democracy.

When Tariq finally cracks, and phones Max on a traced line, Max is faced with a tough call – whether to hand over the laptop in return for Tariq's safe delivery, or to make the laptop's information available to the public, thereby doing his bit to save British democracy from almost certain doom.