Eat A Banker
Peter Bailey
Copyright © 2011 Peter Bailey
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David lives in the world created by the bank bailouts and the credit squeeze. It's not a good place to be. The cities are battlegrounds, those with jobs fight those without and the young fight the old. Fear hangs in the air like a fog, and violence is a way of life. If outside is bad, then inside is worse, forced to share with the tattooed and pierced squatters. He has to get out. All he has to do is find a way past the armed guards, the landmines and the heavy machine guns at the border.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Certain locations discussed in the story are fictional or used in a fictional context.
As soon as he saw the old man steal the apple, he immediately had him arrested.
It was the right thing to do.
Until the theft, he had been successfully ignoring the TV in the corner of the diner.
The headlines for today - 21 November 2013 – said that things were worse than yesterday, and that tomorrow would probably be even worse...
“Euro collapses as Italy defaults on its debits”
“Global financial system in crisis, FTSE 100 new record low"
“UK unemployment drops by 5%”
David laughed –inside where no one could report it – at the last headline. Government figures said that unemployment had been dropping by 5% a month, every month. By now, 150% of the population should have jobs.
He ignored the rest of the news. The financial crisis and the bank bailouts had been part of life in Swindon for so long, that its reports had just become another part of his daily life.
He had just sat down with the meagre lunch that he had swapped his food vouchers for, when he saw the old man.
He looked like just another pensioner, trying to get by on a pension that had been so badly reduced by inflation that it was nearly worthless. But the moment David saw him take the apple, he instantly reported him to the peace officer standing in the corner. It only took a few steps to cross the canteen but as soon as the other diners saw where he was headed, the room fell silent.
The armed and armoured figure of the peace officer had been the unspoken presence in the room, and he watched David carefully as he grew close. He looked old and tired, as if the weight of so many arrests had worn him down, but under the plexi glass visor his eyes were very sharp.
“The old man over there” he didn’t need to point, the only people in the room that were not looking at David were looking at him” stole an apple” in the sudden quiet of the room his voice sounded far too loud.
The firm gaze from under the visor found a new target as the guard thanked him for doing his duty, and he moved implacably across the room to secure the old man.
As David took his seat and continued to eat, he could feel the hatred of everyone in the room directed at him, but the old man said nothing as he was dragged away.
“Good afternoon, British internal security, David speaking, how can I help you” the buzz of conversation was loud in the large open plan call centre, and he had to concentrate to hear the caller as he reported the odd behaviour of a neighbour
While he took the details of the call, a detached observer might have thought that David looked less like a real human being, with all of their dreams and plans, but much more like some biological extension of the desk. Just past middle age, he was one of those people you sometimes meet who only seem at home behind a desk. Average height, average weight and so nondescript that if you met him in the street, he would be forgotten before you had taken another step.
Until the scientists create a worker drone that they can grow in a vat he was the next-best thing. He was his job, and his job was his life.
Finishing the call, he sent off his report to ‘processing’ to be investigated. He marked the call as CT - ‘concerned tenant’ - but everyone knew that it stood for ‘Curtain Twitchier'. The noisy neighbour, trying to win this week’s prize for being a good citizen.
There was an icon on his desktop, to run the report ‘offences reported from this address'. He was sure that this would show a long list of the other times that this same ‘concerned tenant’ had phoned in a report. But he was also sure that if he ran this report without a ‘request for history’ form fully authorized. It would be less than an hour before he was invited for a discussion on correct working practises. The best possible outcome of this ‘discussion’ would be him being ejected from the building by security, and at worst he would be scheduled for a ‘social re-education’ the same day.
It was easy to see the people that had completed SR. There were no physical marks on them, but the effects of sleep deprivation and drug regime turned them into happy smiling zombies. Unless they were led by the hand everywhere, they would either forget to eat, or soil themselves in public. He left the icon alone.
Hs computer flashed up a ‘break time’ notice, along with a countdown until he should be back at his desk, he could use a drink and a visit to the toilet.
He stood up very carefully; His back hurt where the first punch had hit him.
Just across the street from the diner, was the entrance to a small alley. It was there they got him. No one had followed him from the diner - he was sure about that - but while security had been dealing with the old man, some of the other diners must have left and waited for him. The shock of being dragged from the street had stunned him for a moment, and then they had got to work with their fists. It was only when he saw the man with the baseball bat approaching that he managed to speak.
“SLT, it was a SLT” under the noise of the group beating him his voice was hard to hear, but some of them must have heard. The group reluctantly stopped its fun. Most of them had been the target of a Standard Loyalty Test and knew all about the little tests the government created for them. Where the only way to avoid arrest, was prove themselves a good little citizen.
“The lady in the corner, she had a video camera under her paper. I saw it when she turned it on. The old man looked right at it before he took the apple, and the video had a perfect view of both of us. If the recording showed me failing to report a crime, then I would be in re-education before the end of the day”
“You expect us to believe that?” it was the man with the baseball bat. He wanted his turn, but the man holding his arms released his grip a little. Just enough for David to be able to see out into the world beyond this alley
“Over there,” the group looked ‘over there’ where they could just see the police van stopped by the side of the road. They could also see the man from the diner being saluted by the uniformed police. In the diner he had looked just like any other nice old man trying to get by, now he looked like what he really was. A small part of the government machine.
One of the group managed a muttered ‘sorry’ as they left him on the floor of the alley, but David could see that they had been looking forward to a really good beating and were disappointed, still he was sure they would find another target for their fun.
The clock was still showing three minutes left of his break when he sat down and took the next call from someone reporting a crime for the reward it might bring...
It was dark by the time he left work. The official finishing time was five, but with so many people chasing so few jobs, everyone wanted to show that they were really dedicated to the job. He was lucky to leave only two hours late.
Tonight, he left the building by the back entrance where the Lorries had once made their deliveries. Normally, he used the side entrance that led directly on to a side road, but when he had left last night, someone had shouted out ‘geek’ and thrown a brick at him. The brick had missed, but he did not want to run the risk of a welcoming committee by the door tonight.
He grasped the door handle that would open to the street and took a deep breath, before he could change his mind, he opened the door.
For years afterwards, he would tell his stories of his escape from the armed camp that Britain had become. He would let people buy him drinks while he told them about the route he took, the people he met, and finally, the awful price, he paid to cross the border. But he could never tell them what his life was like before he left.
The words would never come that would really describe the fear that hung in the air like a fog, its metallic taste filling your throat. How to describe the stomach tightening anxiety of being watched by any of the groups that did not need a reason to attack him, they just needed an opportunity. The unemployed would hate him because he had a job. The women would hate him because he was a man. The young because he was old, and the old because he was young. In this strange new Britain, everyone had a reason to hate everyone else, and the streets were their battleground.
As he turned the corner on to the street, he checked his appearance in one of the few unbroken windows. The things on his feet were just a mass of string and tape holding them together. His trousers were so covered with dirt that they were shiny. They were an excellent disguise.
But it was his face and hair that worried him. His face was far too clean, and he had not rubbed enough water into his hair to make it look convincing matted. Still it was dark and he should get away with it.
Across the road, he saw Mike from the next desk to his. A slight (and almost imperceptible) nod of the head was the only greeting that passed between them. David thought to himself that Mike had made a much better job of his street clothes. His hair and face seemed to have been dipped in mud, while his jacket and trousers were stained and worn. The perfect outfit to merge into the background and become one of the crowd.
But as Mike stepped around the corner and disappeared, David saw with horror that he had forgotten to change his shoes. He still had on the worn but smart office shoes. They would be noticed in minutes.
For a moment, he had the wild idea of running after him, but already it was too late. Around the corner, there was the sudden roar of shouting, and the sound of running feet. From his position across the road, he could only make out a few words “selfish bastard” “think you are better than us” and the old favourite “office drone." It was too late to help him now. In the morning, he would tell those bastards in management what had happened (after checking his desk to make sure that there were no useful items he could borrow)
They had bought their house because it was close to the town centre, and the schools and the nurseries that were going to be so important to them. They had been sure that the area was going to be the next area to be gentrified by the upper-middle classes moving in, and that house prices would soar. But the recession had stopped all that. The area was still border line slum, and now its only merit was that it was just a few minutes walk from his office to the single room that was all he had left.
As the streets grew poorer so the level of graffiti increased, until it covered every possible surface. Some of it was just letting everyone know that ‘they wos here’, but most of it demanded that they eat a banker.
‘Eat the bankers’ had started out as a joke on some trendy late-night show, but had spread rapidly. First, it had been a joke, but fuelled by the anger against the bankers who had caused the great recession. Soon it started to sound like a promise.
The general election of 2012 had looked to be fairly evenly balanced between the failed economic policies of the coalition and the tax and spend history of the labour party. In the face of widespread public disillusion with both parties, the opportunely for something new and different in politics was overwhelming.
The ‘Eat the bankers’ party filled that gap perfectly.
It actually took him two hours to get home. Walking anyway in a quick purposeful way would have been suicide. On every corner were the little groups that were on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary to break their boredom. So instead of the firm positive step of someone with somewhere to go, you had to shuffle along head down, as if you had all the time in the world. While making sure he took every opportunity to sit down, as if moving was such hard work.
As he shuffled his way along, he had plenty of time to read the headlines on the papers that were littering the floor.
“Three more shop owners arrested for charging excessive prices”
Last week the headline had been.
“Five more shops go bankrupt and close”
Reading between the lines–you learnt to do this quickly or go under – David guessed that the true rate of inflation had jumped again, and it was much easier to blame the shops than fix the problem. The approved rate of 8% had remained the same since the government took power, but daily life told him it had to be at least three times that. Doing anything about inflation seemed to be either beyond the power of the government to change, or maybe it was part of their policy.
When he finally turned the corner, it was obvious which his house was. Every light in the house was lit and even from here he could hear the heavy bass line of whatever it was the squatters were playing.
Technically, he should call them ‘guests’ as set out in the ‘optimum use of housing space act, 2013’. But since the two of them – both dreadlocked and pierced - had just moved into his house immediately the act had passed, and helped themselves to whatever room they wanted, he thought that ‘guests’ was a bit much. The policeman who was with them, ‘to enforce the rule of law’, had been very sympathetic, but also very clear that the law was on their side.
The word and letter of the law was something his ‘guests’ were very clear on, and would quote exactly what the act had to say about their rights and his responsibilities at the slightest sign that he had not ‘provided his guests with a welcoming and comfortable habitation’. Oddly enough they seemed very vague on what the act had to say about his rights and their responsibilities.
As he opened the front door, he could feel the building vibrating slightly to their music, and he knew he would need both the ear plugs and cushions to get any sleep tonight. The hallway was filled with their rubbish - but it had been like this for weeks (picking things up was ‘not their way’) - but the nasty smell that greeted him was new.
The note pinned to the wall explained the smell “upstairs toilet blocked, fix it” there was no please or thank you. Considering how keen they were to promote a world free from imposed status values or class, they seemed very happy to treat him as their servant. He thought that this was payback for his only minor triumph over them.
It was a month after they had moved in when the lights went out, and the radiators started to get cold. MarX had banged on his door and lectured him about the ‘financial penalties that could be imposed for non-compliance with the law’ (he got quite excited about how the law could punish the cruel landlord who did not look after his poor unfortunate guests, and his voice started to sound less ‘street’ and more ‘expensive public school’). David let him carry on until he started to run out of threats, before pointing out that the gas and electric had been turned off because he could not afford to pay the bills. They could fine him as much as they liked. But since he had no money they would get exactly 100% of nothing at all, and closed the door in his face.
There was a lot of shouting and cursing downstairs (and a very quiet phone call to mummy) and less than an hour later both the gas and electric were back on.
The fact that his ‘poor unfortunate guests’ could afford the bills that he could not did not really surprise him. He had overheard enough phone calls to know that MarX and his girlfriend Wail were Tarquin and Cressida to Mummy, and that their occasional weekends away were spent at her villa in France.
In the cupboard under the stairs, he found the rubber gloves and the plunger that he would need. Blocking up the toilet was a frequent problem. They seemed to believe that a two gallon flush would carry away everything from another burnt meal to the masses of tin foil scraps that used to hold their supplies. At least, they had not broken something important this time. Perhaps they had finally learnt that breaking up the place they lived in was stupid, even by their standards.
David left the cleaning supplies outside the door to his room while he got changed and opened a can of beans to eat (it was not worth calling it ‘tea’ and certainly not ‘dinner'), but it should be enough to stop him feeling too hungry tonight.
His room looked exactly as he had left it, small cramped, but least somewhere that he could call his own, a little place he could shut out the madness outside.
While he got changed out of the rags that he wore to get him safely between here and work, he checked his room to see if his ‘guests’ had been in here again. When they had first moved in, it had been plain that they had helped themselves to anything bright and shiny while he was out. But today there was no sign of the mess and disruption they left behind when they were ‘liberating the things stolen from the poor’.
When his ‘guests’ had moved in they had also moved him into the smallest bedroom in the house, but this had not turned out to be so bad after all. Party because this was an extension, it was slightly away from the permanent party they were having and give him just a little peace.
He was still idly checking the room while he changed when he realized that he had been wrong, someone had been in here.
He had soon found out that anything he left in the kitchen quickly disappeared (he had complained about this but had just been told not to be so precious about possessions), and anything in his room was apparently ‘public property as it had been stolen by force from the deserving poor’ (pointing out that he was the deserving poor had cut no ice with them). The floor board by the window was already loose -it was one of those jobs he had meant to ‘get round to’ one day-, and the roar of their music had covered the noise it had made as he lifted it. The space inside was only really private space he had in the house, and it held nearly everything that he cared about.
Someone must have searched very carefully to find his hiding place. If they had just been a little more careful, they would have noticed that they had creased the carpet as they replaced it.
Finding out that someone knew about his secret space was bad, but when he opened the space and checked inside it became much worse.
Everything inside was exactly as he had left it. The few cans of food were there. His passport was still there, and even the photographs of happier times were just as they had been.
He sat on the floor and watched the space carefully as if this would change what he could see. If any of his ‘guests’ had found the food, it would have vanished in a second. There would have been no attempt to hide that they had been here, and probably he would have come back to a lecture on sharing the profits of growth. So, someone else must have been in here. Someone who wanted to check very carefully what he had, but did not want him to know that he was under investigation.
He leant back against the wall, and tried to recall every moment of the last few weeks. Had he said something out of place, something suspicious? Had he spent too long looking at the wrong sites on his carefully monitored internet connection?
Now he looked at the situation in the diner this morning in a completely different light. Perhaps it had not been just an accident that he had been selected for SLT and that the camera had been pointing at him. Maybe he was reading something into nothing, and it was only that he had not put the carpet back properly last night. But there was an old saying that seemed to fit “It's only paranoia if they're not out to get you”
In the corner of the room was the other reason he had been almost happy when he had been shoved into this room. The pipes that fed the kitchen and bathroom filled the back of the built in cupboard, and these looked untouched since the day they had been installed. Only the person who had plumbed in the new kitchen sink, would know that some of the pipes were now empty and unused.
In the light of the single bulb in the room, the hexagonal nut that connected two lengths of pipe looked untouched. The side of the nut that he had carefully marked with a scratch still faced into the room. Exactly as he had left it.
The nut unscrewed easily, and revealed that the pipe was completely dry and empty, with only the very end of a piece of string visible. A gentle pull on this dragged a small packet into sight.
It was still there. His escape was still possible.
It had been a very long time since their honeymoon in Las Vegas. David thought he had taken more than enough money, but the 24-hour party of Vegas had emptied his wallet very efficiently. All they had left when they got home was 100 dollars (mainly in fives and ones) and some happy memories.
At the time, that amount of dollars converted back into pounds might have bought them a nice meal or a tank full of petrol, and the money had lain forgotten in a drawer.
It was only after his wife left him, and he searched the house from top to bottom in a vain attempt to find out where she had gone, that he had found the money. The distance between the happy honeymoon and separation had been filled with bank crises and the collapse of the UK exchange rate. Now 100 dollars was a small fortune, and could give him both an escape and a good life on the other side of the border. If only he could get to it, and then over it.
Outside only two of the street lights in the road were still working and the huge graffiti scrawl of EAT THE BANKERS was still readable. Also visible was a battered transit van. He watched it for a long time, trying to decide if it was watching him back.
Fuelled by the anger against the bankers, the slogan “Eat the bankers” was taken up first by a few, then by the many
Everyone wanted two things. First, the bankers who had caused the recession by gambling with peoples hard-earned money must be punished, and second the wealth of the super rich was obscene. They must shoulder their fair share of the costs of creating a more equal society where none were held back by their position in society.
At first, the big two parties saw the “Eat the bankers” as a joke, and they poured scorn on the ‘incoherent rage of the young inexperienced Marxists, “who don’t know what they want, only what they were against”
The pro tem leader of the “Eat the bankers” (a gap year student) pointed out that the party had just as many young conservatives as young Marxists’ (the candidate for Oxingham was an anarchist who believed that ‘property was theft’ while the candidate for Sayinford was a Tory, who believed in hanging for speeding offences)
As for ‘inexperienced’, they liked to point out just how perfectly the current old guard had managed things, what with the 12% interest rate and millions unemployed.
At the election, the ‘eat’ party’s manifesto was the shortest ever written.
The bank bailouts have been a massive theft of wealth from the working and middle classes to the rich. We refuse to pay for the problems that the banks created with their reckless behaviour. We didn't create this crisis, and so it is the rich, the tax evaders, the corrupt politicians and their cronies who should pay for it.
There needs to be a fundamental restructuring of Britain’s political systems where economy can be leveraged to engage with equality via radical redistribution of wealth.
We do not believe that the cuts imposed by the coalition are either necessary or inevitable. Money should enter the economy, not as debt owed with interest to bankers, but as a benefit to society. We are furious at the government for implementing cuts, which will destroy ordinary people lives, while the elite few live in opulent luxury.
We will form a grass roots democratic egalitarian civilized government that will do the following to achieve balance in our economy.
(1) Tax any assets of the super rich at 99.5%
(2) Tax anyone in the banking / financial services industry at 99.4% (it was later explained that the .1% difference was to promote growth)
So that we can create a more perfect society, we will protect public-sector jobs, abolish student fees, and enhance and enlarge the welfare state.
By the time the big two parties started to take the “Eat the bankers“seriously, it was too late, the resulting landslide victory for them, was the biggest ever recorded.
Sleep did not come easily to David, even after his guests had stopped shaking the building with what they claimed to be music. He dreamed of the door being broken down, and the faceless men dragging him away. He shouted that the 100 dollars was just for one last spin of the roulette wheel, but it was all too late.
By the time that dawn lit up his small window, and the birds started to greet the new day, he was both exhausted and a nervous wreak. The transit van had vanished at some point in the night and had left him with a problem. If he left the 100 dollars here, and they searched again, the slightest contact with the pipe would show that it was empty. If he took it with him, then a random search would be the end of all of his plans.
But then he admitted to himself that he had no plans. He had no contacts to a shadowy underground organisation that could smuggle him over the border. All he had was a 100 dollars and the need to escape this horror show of daily abuse, and the constant threat that someone would hate him enough to really hurt him. Just because he was not a member of the right group, at the right time. He had to get out.
For the first time –in a long time- he was doing something constructive. For day after day, month after month, he had come home from work, and checked that the money was still there. Every day he promised himself that tomorrow he would find a way to escape, and then he would sink into the comfortable sleep of routine, and another day would pass. If he had not noticed the creased carpet, then he would still have been dreaming when they came to take him away. Now his hand had been forced, now he had to do something.
As he left the house, he made sure to slam the door behind him as hard as possible. This might be the last time he would ever have the chance to upset the scum that had forced them on him, and he wanted to make it as uncomfortable for them as they had made it for him.
Normally, it was an effort to walk so slowly and listlessly to make sure that he did not stand out as having a job, but this morning walking so slowly seemed much more natural. It was all rather uncomfortable.
Work seemed much more difficult than normal, and he felt half asleep as he dealt with the flow of phone calls reporting what their neighbours were doing. What they thought they were doing and of course, the constant favourite ‘next door is spying on me’ (which of course; they were).
During the morning, he ran through the options. Steal a car and crash the barrier around Swindon? Most of the cars that littered the street had run out of petrol months ago, and for those that were still mobile - hotwiring’ a car was only something that happened in the films. Climb over the barrier? and be instantly arrested.
By eleven, he had decided that the right thing to do would be to go home, burn the money and live as a nice regular citizen. Perhaps if they took too long to arrest him, he would come to welcome the inevitable knife in the back, or the skull crushed by a concrete block when the mob finally turned on him.
The phone rang.
The voice on the other end of the call sounded old and irritable. David could easily visualise the sad old woman spending her days working off some ill defined grudge against the world by reporting every minor offence that that she could. In fact the call was so familiar, that he had recorded most of the details of the complaint before he started to pay any attention to what she was saying.
“…and there are visitors all hours of the day and night, never the same people either. I see the same faces turn up once maybe twice and then never see them again. “The old grumpy voice carried on complaining about the noise and the litter around the local shops while David absorbed what she had just said.
Getting this job, any job, had been a stroke of luck that he badly needed. But the reality of the induction meeting was so boring that he tried for an out of body experience to escape for a few minutes. But it seemed that some of the ‘important types of offence’ briefing had managed to evade the force field of his lack of interest, because now he had a moment of perfect recall.
“Watch out for calls that seem to be just run of the mill complaints about neighbours, that is really something much more important. Take, for example, a call about a residence that seems to be getting lots of visitors at all times of the day. This could be a flag for you to log the call as a suspected black market or drugs operation. “David’s interest was equally split between the instructor’s voice and the pattern of cracks in the back of the chair in front “but what could it mean if the visitors to a house are only ever seen one or twice and never again?” the silence in the room was deafening “it could mean a people smuggling operation, malcontents wanting to return to the societies that have not thrown off the shackles of class and status. One or two meeting to arrange the price and payment, and then another citizen disappears toward the border that maintains our security”
The thin whiney voice was still unfolding its endless of grievances through his headphones, but David had stopped typing. Perhaps he could be another citizen on his way to the border.
His fingers started typing again, but now he was thinking very quickly indeed. He had written up most of the complaint before he had woken up to what was really happening. Change the damming details of the call, and the computer would flag up a ‘possible malicious form update’, and then it would be a matter of minutes before the call monitors would check the recording of this call. But then he looked at the screen and the answer was obvious
“Excuse me caller, what is the address that you are calling about?”
Perhaps the old women had forgotten he was here, and that she was not just talking to herself. There was a pause before she replied.
“217 Murray Street, West Swindon”
He dutifully repeated the address back to her, at the same time his fingers were typing “217 Marie Street, Swindon” Just close enough to be confusing without being obvious as a lie.
It took another few minutes before he could get rid of the daft old women, but already there was a clock ticking.
He took another call, but now there was only a direct connection between his ears and his fingers. The brain was not involved at all. He had not flagged the call as ‘urgent’ so it would be at least two, maybe three, hours before it was checked. If Marie Street Swindon existed, then a raid there would add at least another hour to the time he had, before they checked the call log with the on-line form.
The clock on the wall of the call centre, told him it was 11:30, He had until three, maybe four at the latest before the information was useless. The earliest he could get of here was five. It was too late.
Until 1848, Swindon was a small-market town, but then the Industrial Revolution and the choice of Swindon for the Great Western Railways depot was responsible for a massive acceleration of Swindon's growth, and it became one of the fastest growing towns in the South of England. West Swindon is the most-recent expansion of the town. It is also more than four miles away from the center of town, and the office where David should have been. He wasn’t even half way there, and already it was more than his feet were hurting.
Looking up the address ‘Murray Street, West Swindon’ on his very closely monitored internet connection would have been possibly the second most stupid thing he had ever done (the first was getting married). So he had no idea if he was only a few minutes away from it, or another hour of walking.
In the days when he had been married, they had sometimes used the supermarket in West Swindon that was now his goal. He just hoped that the map just inside the entrance was still intact and that its proud boast “Everything there is to know about your local area” was true.
He tired to avoid the unblinking gaze of the CCTV cameras that hung from every lamppost, by keeping his head down as if bowed down by the weight of his troubles. But if the rumours about face recognition software were true, then the moment they realized that something was wrong it would be a simple matter for then to trace his path through the town. They would know exactly where he was, and where the peace service should arrest him.
When the CCTV cameras had been introduced, the government had promised them a new era free of crime - where the streets would be safe and secure, and the threat of violence would be a thing of the past. It was certainly worth the minor fears that the country would sleep-walk its way into a surveillance society, where personal privacy would be a distant memory.
In the end, the fears about sleep walking were massively over stated. As soon as the riots had started, the demand to install CCTV on every corner had been deafening.
The country hadn’t sleep walked; it had stampeded into the comforting arms of the government that promised to protect them. By the time they realized exactly what they had traded their privacy for, it was too late.
The day after the overwhelming election victory of the ‘eat the bankers’ party, the fleets of Rolls Royce’s headed towards Heathrow as the exodus of the super rich took place. The strip of road between the M4 and the airport became one long party and was lined with balloons, home-made decorations and camp fires for the leaving party for the super rich. As each expensive car went by the crowd would clap and cheer while waving their placards.
“Good-bye and good riddance” was popular, and so was “Don't let the door hit you on the way out”, but the most common was simply “scum”
Later, the papers would calculate that in the first week the number of super rich in the country went from 5,000 to 1500. In the second week it became 200, after that they were extinct.
The free party on the approach to Heathrow changed its roll from ‘good bye to the rich’ to a celebration of a more equal society freed from the stultifying influence of such obscene amounts of money.
It took another month before the party finished, when they realised that the super rich had taken more than expensive luggage. They had also taken their money.
While the protestors having a good time, accountants in anonymous corporate entities had been very busy as they removed the maximum possible capital from the assets owned by the super rich, leaving just zombie business. These were swapped for shares in offshore companies in a shell game that would have made any con man proud. Pension funds were raided for the maximum possible amount and replaced with ownership of shares in the worthless shell companies. Massive amounts of money were being extracted from the system, leaving behind a façade that only had to look good for a short time. By the time anyone realised what was going on it was too late.
Literally overnight major factories and high street stores closed their doors and the number of unemployed tripled.
In desperation, the government passed a new law that required a licence to remove large amounts of money from the country. The law was passed in a record time of only three days. It was simply unfortunate, that with the new computerized banking systems, it took the super rich less than a second to remove the rest of their money.
The number of unemployed tripled again.
‘super rich’ was re-defined to be those earning over £70,000, but most of these turned out to be upper and middle management, and they soon proved that the internet access from Switzerland was more than adequate to provide management by video link
In the end, the permanent under secretary at the Treasury had to explain to the new Chancellor that the country was bankrupt.
“Sir it’s like this. The state doesn't earn anything. It confiscates its money from people in the form of tax, and we have to spend that on roads, schools, police, welfare, the NHS. Getting rid of the (cough) ‘parasitic super rich’ also reduced the amount of tax we are getting by 60%. We are now spending nearly a billion pounds a day that we do not have. We cannot borrow money, because the banks do not believe that we can pay it back. By the end of next week we will be unable to pay our bills. Hospitals will close. Welfare checks will not be sent out. The country will stop working.”
This far out of the town centre, the streets were quiet with only the infrequent roar of a truck on the road to disturb David’s thoughts. So it came as a surprise to both of them when a turn in the path brought him face to face with another pedestrian.
She looked like a middle aged women heading into town in the vain hope of finding anything that she could afford. She got as far as saying “sorry, I didn’t…” but then she saw his face. There was a sharp intake of breath that very nearly became a scream and she ran.
David watched her go with amusement. The blood on his face was certainly very striking and when he had seen himself in the mirror - while the company nurse clucked like a startled hen - he had thought that he would have been a perfect as an extra in a ‘B’ Zombie film. All he would have needed was a vacant expression and a moaned ‘brains’
His ‘accident’ had been a lot more impressive that he had planned.
It had only been a few minutes after the phone call that had given him a possible link to an escape when the computer had flashed up a ‘break time’ notice. He had carefully checked the path to the toilets and picked exactly where he would trip over the carelessly left umbrella. He had worked out just how much he should hold his wrist while claiming, “it hurts so much." A quick trip to the nurses and then he would be free to see if 217 Murray Street could be his escape from this snake pit of fear by arranging his trip to the border.
It was an excellent plan, well thought out and carefully considered.
Clausewitz once said ‘no plan survives contact with the enemy’, but David’s plan did not survive the contact of his left foot with the chair that was abruptly pushed into his path by a co-worker that was thinking more of ‘visit to the toilet’ and less of ‘what’s behind me’
The moment that his feet tangled with the base of the chair was also the same moment that everything became slow motion. David had all the time in the world to be a witness to his inevitable descent to the floor. Except that between him and the floor was a desk, and after his head bounced from its corner David was no longer a witless to anything. He was unconscious.
The period between regaining consciousness in the First Aid room and being helped out of the building was surprising quick. At first, he had thought how helpful his manager was being, but then he had heard him outside the first aid room “get him out of here as soon as possible, if this gets officially recorded, then it will ruin our ‘days without accident’ statistics”
The crude bandage around his head did little to stop the slow trickle of blood as it ran down his face, but the two small white pills the nurse had given him (“avoid alcohol and using heavy machinery”) made the pain a distant bright object that had nothing to do with him. The bandage and the blood, proved to be the perfect disguise for the street, the small groups of men that hung around waiting for something to happen (and if it didn’t happen soon then they would make it happen) patted him gently on the back and claimed him as one of their own in ‘their fight against the ruthless authority of the employers”
By the time he reached the supermarket the pills were starting to wear off, and his head was starting to hurt. Between the pain in his feet from walking, the pain in his head from his fall and the unpleasant ache somewhere in the middle David thought that this was not one of his better days.
When he turned the corner, and saw that the supermarket had not been burned to the ground made things feel better. Seeing the steady flow of people to and from the building said that it was still open, made him feel positively good.
Entrance to the supermarket, was only possible via the small number of access points the army had opened up in the ring of steel that surrounded the building. But the heroic image that the blood and bandage conjured up worked their magic, and his passage through the nearest choke point was greeted with nods of respect from the soldiers who manned the entrance.
Inside, the nice open plan image of the supermarket had been carefully ruined by a crude brick wall that permanently closed most of the tills, and forced the queues through the few that remained opened. The queues at each till were huge and snaked out of sight, but they were very calm and orderly (although that might have had less to do with the British love of queuing and more to do with the armed guards that watched the queues).
Even if he had wanted to endure the queues, the only English money David had on him would not have bought him a tin of beans - official retail price £1.50, price in any store £7.20. The 100 dollars he had concealed could have bought most of the store, it would also have bought him a great deal of very pointed questions in the nearest peace station. To his right was the only thing he needed from here.
Someone had tried to strike a blow against global capitalism by spray painting “eat the bankers” across the map of the local area (the lettering was very neat. It was a shame that the ‘b’ of bankers had dripped and looked more like a ‘w’)
The blood on his face (and that fact that most people seemed to think that this made him a heroically wounded soldier of the struggle for equality) attracted far too much attention as he drifted across the floor in the vague direction of the map.
Leaning on his wall as he pretended to adjust his shoes, gave him plenty of time to scan the map. Even under the spray-painted letters ‘217 Murray Street’ was easy to find.
In the end, only the International Monetary Fund would lend us any money, but they wanted to see ‘a sensible fiscal policy’ that would pay off the countries' debits in a responsible manner. It had to be explained to the government that this would mean massive austerity cuts that would make the cutbacks seen in Greece look tiny by comparison.
It was a magnificent plan. It was a shame that the chancellor (a 23 year old media studies graduate) was overheard that same night discussing the loans in an expensive restaurant. His answer made to the question “but how are you going to manage such savage and ruthless cuts?” made the front-page news.
“We will just ignore the IMF’s repayment schedule. Of course, we will pay it back, one day, but only when we can. The IMF will just have to wait until we are ready. What are they going to do? Spank us?”
It was next day when the country found out exactly ‘what are they going to do’ when the IMF refused the loans. Desperate offers for loans that the country would pay back at 50% had no takers. The only offer to lend money came from Cuba, but they wanted 60% interest and ownership to the county of Berkshire. This offer only fell through when it was pointed out to the government that this would mean Cuba would own the Queen's home, Winsor Castle (not that this would bother the Royal family. They had seen the writing on the wall a long time ago, and found Canada much more hospitable)
With no one to lend them money, the government had to try something that no government had tried since the war. Spend less than the massively reduced amount of tax they now collected.
In line with the government policy of equality every government department had its budget cut by 70%,
The cuts started well enough. When they cut the army by 70% retired generals wrote polite notes to ‘The Times’ complaining about the ruination of this jewel set in a silver sea. When they cut 70% of teachers, no one noticed for a week.
There were protests and marches when they cut 70% of the NHS, but the marches were well-behaved, and everyone had a good day out.
The problem came when they cut the welfare budget by 70%, and millions of people found their unemployment benefit or pension cut by 70%.
Every city in England exploded in riots.
The first night they looted the shops. The next night the shops were burnt to the ground. The next night they started burning anything near the shops.
The government did what anyone would when faced with a situation completely outside their control and beyond their experience.
They panicked
The army was sent into every city with orders to restore order using all non lethal methods. The ‘none lethal’ part of that lasted exactly two hours, and the parks became funeral pyres.
“The problem is that we have thousand of angry people who will do anything to punish us” The prime minister looked old and tired, but then everyone in the cabinet office looked as if they had seen their own private hell in the last few weeks, “the army is maintaining an uneasy peace by use of deadly force, but this will not continue. Supplies for the army are running short and in a few days, perhaps a week at most, they will be unable to maintain any sort of order. .” The sound of shots as the army tried to keep a lid on the latest riot reminded them exactly what would happen then “We have to fact the fact that…”
But his audience never found out what they needed to face, because it was then that the home Secretary (a 23-year-old Sociology student) spoke up.
“No, that’s not the problem”
The prime Minster was so surprised to be interrupted that he did an excellent fish imitation.
“The problem is not that they are angry. The problem is that they are angry with us” he was not looking at them. He was gazing into the smooth polished surface of the cabinet desk as if he could see everything there
His finger started to trace complex patterns on the table.
“But who else should they be angry with?” it was the minister for schools who asked the question, but only because she was quicker than the rest.
Now the home Secretary looked at his audience. His expression was unreadable.
“Each other”
The home Secretary spoke for a long time as he laid out his ideas, notes were taken and urgent phone calls made.
The first changes appeared in a few days.
Benefit checks for the unemployed now had a note attached that pointed out that the money available for claimants had to be reduced ‘because the privileged few with jobs are unwilling to share their good fortune’
At the same time that a note was sent to everyone who worked in benefit offices, reporting several violent attacks that had taken place in other offices (oddly it was always an office that was always located some distance away) . So now the customer friendly windows through which they could see each other were to be replaced by perforated metal sheets, tazers became standard issue.
Pension checks came with a note regretting out little much someone that had worked hard all their life was getting compared with ‘the life of comfort the feral youth in the council house sink estates enjoyed.’
At the same time, there was a large-scale cutback of youth clubs, after-school activates and financial support for education. It was helpfully pointed out that this was ‘to maintain the pensions of the older generation who had got the country into such a mess.’
The pay checks of the lucky few who had jobs now came complete with a breakdown that helpfully showed just how much of their hard-earned money was going ‘straight into the pockets of the work shy who spend every day watching daytime TV while drinking and smoking’
All employers were hit with a new law ‘to support and maintain the important work of the unions in their struggle for a fair minimum wage, for all union members in the company. The FMW was to be set at a, very reasonable, 25% of the salary of the highest paid person in the business, payable to every union member employed by the company
Every union member was sent a neat little booklet that allowed them to see their own wage in comparison with that of anyone else in the same business, and also their wage in comparison to the salary that the union leaders paid themselves.
A law was passed that allowed a victim of a crime to see’ the full police report on any possible suspects, along with their home addresses, car registration and photographs. While the few that actually went to prison were greeted with posters apologizing for the intolerance of society for those with alternate life styles.
The results were instant.
The cities became battlegrounds as those with jobs fought those without. Union strikes became common as they blockaded the businesses that had gotten rid of every union member. The young fought the old, and the old fought back surprisingly well - when they realised just how much damage a mobility scooter could do when it rammed someone doing 15 MPH. The police force was renamed ‘the peace service’ and their only job was to stop the disparate groups from slaughtering each other
The home Secretary later got a sociology award for his work into the real life uses of the politics of ‘divide and conquer’ and the party to celebrate this went on all weekend. No one noticed that the government had taken the weekend off, they were all far too busy fighting each other.
The distance between the shopping centre and 217 Murray Street turned out to be just a few streets, and even shuffling along - like the people around him - it would only take a few minutes to get there.
Before they had been banned as being ‘reactionary’ he had been a fan of spy film and books, and images from them played across the widescreen high-definition screen that of his imagination.
He knew what 217 Murray Street’ would look like. He could visualize its smoke-filled rooms, and knew the sort of hard faced men that he would meet there. He braced himself for the threats of violence if they did not believe what he had done for them with his confusion of ‘Murray’ and ‘Marie’ . The slightest slip would mean that his next destination would not be the border but a shallow hole in the ground.
Number 217 turned out to be nothing like the films had promised him. It was a small modern house, identical to all the others in its street. Only the neat numbers on the door told him that he had reached his goal.
If number 217 had been unsatisfactory (none of the spy dramas had featured houses with neat flowered curtains, and the distant sound of a radio tuned to easy listening), then the response to his hesitant knock on the door was positively disappointing.
The door was opened, not by some tall thin faced man, but by a grey-haired woman of at least sixty. In any spy film, she would have been ‘customer #2’ or ‘woman on the bus’. Certainly not the contact he hoped would get him to the border.
She was looking at him expectantly, and he realised that he had been so surprised to see her that he had completed missed her ‘hello’ (she had a distinct Wiltshire accent)
He had practiced what he would say at this point so many times (the subtle “perhaps you might be able to help me with some travel plans”. The brisk “can you help me get out of here” or the to-the-point “can you get me to the border). But in the end he was so surprised by his greeting that his reply was just gabble.
“Offence reported - changed address - 100 dollars - get me to the border”
Amazing enough this did not seem to confuse her at all,
“Please come in young man, I’ve been expecting you”
Inside the house was worn old-fashioned shabbiness, but also had the pin sharp neatness of someone with far too much time on their hands. It was nothing like he had expected. Every flat surface in the living room had its own covering of China figurines, and a selection of miniature owls watched him very carefully as he sat down. The sofa had far too many cushions on it.
“Cup of tea?”
A cup of tea appeared in his hand, ferried there by a practiced manoeuvre.
“Take your time young man and tell me how you come to be here”
He started to talk, and then he carried on talking for some time. He told her about his marriage, he told her about the guests he had to share his house with. He told her everything. Partly, it was because it had been a very long time since he had anyone he could talk to (that would not immediately report the conversation). But mainly it was because, while the grey-haired women opposite did not look like his mum, she certainly looked like ‘a’ Mum.
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