The Serenissima

Nogo consists of two main districts and three sattellite districts. The three sattellite districts were originally detention centres for asylum seekers and illegal immigrants in Dover, Liverpool and Gravesend. The two main districts are what were once Containment Zone South and Containment Zone North. The former took in much of East London and the Lea Valley from Stratford to Edmonton. Containment Zone North a huge chunk of Sheffield. The Containment Zones were created under the Decent Citizens Protection Act to combat crime and anti-social behavoiur. The Home Office drew up a set of criteria to determine who would be placed in the Containment Zones. This included not just the homeless, the long term unemployed, those with criminal convictions, political agitators and gadflies, subversives and radicals but also those whom statistics suggest were likely to become criminals or unproductive members of society, what were termed 'predators' and 'parasites'. As the Prime Minister of the time declaimed as he officially opened Containment Zone North not by cutting a ribbon but by symbolically locking a gate
'No more shall we be hounded by predators, prisoners of fear. No more shall our blood be sucked by parasites, labouring so that others may idle. We shall be free of both wolf and leech. Free, free at last'
All detainees were permitted to appeal. Mitigating circumstances would be considered. Valuable informants for example, were usually rescused. Sports clubs often bribed the authorities to release promising athletes.
Outside the walls of Nogo are vast, towering, grey and forbidding. Armed guard patrol the perimeter. Inside the walls are alive with colour. Murals of heroes. Graffiti so artfully painted letters seem to writhe and squirm.