Roskov, Book 20, page 2
‘Yes, they’re very much needed, and they save a great deal of money; no NHS staff getting stabbed and beaten, police cells not full of drunks.’
Blair asked, ‘And what did John Major offer to pay you?’
‘For soft prisons, he initially offered G4S thirty grand a year per man, same to me. That makes a small profit on a large prison, a city centre soft prison is a loss leader.’
‘We can subsidise them a little,’ he suggested.
‘We’re building one in London, sat between a police station and a magistrates’ court. Talk about saving on travel costs.’
They laughed.
Blunkett asked, ‘A small margin on a big prison?’
‘I can cope because I have the warehouse, we cut costs on food and drink, but G4S would struggle unless I supply them as well.’
‘And will you?’ he asked.
‘Yes, even if we break even. I want the concept to work.’
Blunkett asked, ‘And now a place for kids?’
‘Consider the end of your first term, and someone asking you why the kid that stabbed him was never punished.’
Blair noted, ‘A hard question, yes, and we closed most of the borstals, so we need to answer that question. In the future, if a kid stabs someone, he’ll get a comfy stay in a soft borstal and some education. At least he’s isolated from society.’
‘I can roll out a few each year and make a difference, and create a soft teenage section in my main prisons.’
‘You’re building a soft prison in south London?’
‘Yes, a large one, next to our big AIDS hospice. And … for maximum political gain, London should perhaps be a focus of new soft prisons and nursing homes.’
They exchanged looks.
Gordon Brown noted, ‘It’s where all the reporters live and work.’
Mandelson asked, ‘And your housing activities?’
I told him, ‘I aim to become the biggest landlord by far, nice apartments and houses at reasonable rates, a fast track to a fifty percent mortgage.’
‘We can loan money to that mortgage company,’ Blair noted.
‘Not needed just yet, but in a few months maybe. As to the effect that my new funds will have … I’ll regenerate the High Street whilst aiming at social renters, plus we aim to keep house prices down.
‘As to future house prices, most commentators think that my efforts will boost jobs, which they will, and that we’ll see that inflationary effect and … that house prices will start to rise in the years ahead.
‘A small rise each year is healthy, ten percent or more is not, and we have this issue with gimmick mortgages, buy-to-let mortgages. Such mortgages mean that if you have a house - part paid off, you can buy a smaller house and rent it out, no deposit or proof of income.
‘That would cause house prices to rocket, everyone buying a second home as an investment, and soon we’d have no first time buyers being able to afford a mortgage, then a glorious bust, followed by an inglorious end to the Labour Government.’
They exchanged concerned looks.
Blair firmly stated, ‘We’ll clamp down on them. House prices must be linked to wages, and if house prices double and wages go up ten percent it will be a disaster, us at the helm.’
Mandelson asked, ‘You’re buying up many houses?’
‘Repossessions for the most part, no effect on local house prices - never listed on the market, all invisible. And most get rented out, a downward pressure on local house prices, High Street regeneration to also be a downward pressure.
‘But by building many nursing homes it will have an upwards effect on inflation and house prices.’
Brown asked, ‘And this new idea, warm house mortgage fixes?’
‘A repossession is traumatic for the family, they lose money, and the bank loses money. If I step in and buy a house, bank paid off, deposit paid back to the homeowner, then all sides win and the homeowner becomes a renter but stays where he is, same furniture.’
Brown added, ‘We like the idea, a rescue package, and we’d subsidise it some.’
‘Need only subsidise it five hundred quid maybe. We’d hold it for two years and sell it, or convert it to a fifty-percent mortgage, we’d not lose money on the deal. You’d be subsidising the high bank charges.’
The Health Minister asked, ‘These health gyms, you’ll go right around the country?’
‘Yes, a thousand of them or more. We take a bunch of fat people, they dance to sixty’s music, make friends, buy wine and health foods from us and treat it like a social centre.
‘So far the results are good, people are attending and losing weight.’
‘How much of a subsidy would push that?’ Brown asked.
‘Perhaps fifty pence per attendance, or less, it’s all done very cheaply. I’ll work out the true costs for you, but it’s very cheap.’
Brown noted, ‘The cost to the NHS is bloody huge, the cost of diabetes and obesity related illnesses.’
I nodded at him. ‘Hence my desire to do something. Give me a year to spread them, then we’ll do the maths. But by the end of your first term I’d have thousands of them operating.
‘And all residents in my nursing homes and Phase Zero buildings are encouraged to exercise, set programmes. And for kids I can create these indoor five-a-side facilities in each town, and that helps.’
‘We have a lot of fat kids now,’ Blair complained. ‘Not just fat adults.’
Blunkett asked, ‘Is it realistic to send pensioners down to Spain?’
‘Yes, because they’d love it there, and the cost to you would be almost half of what it is here in Britain, a huge saving. So if we can send them, legally, then we should.’
‘When will the first home down there open?’ Blair asked.
‘Six or seven months from now. John Major loaned me four hundred million, but that’s to gain you a forty percent stake in what we build.’
‘How many people will that money house?’ Brown asked.
‘With our consortium money added to it, roughly thirty thousand residents. A nice apartment with a sea view will cost you a hundred pounds a month to put someone in it, then medical costs.’
‘Jesus,’ the Health Secretary let out. ‘You could charge a lot more!’
‘If I was a Conservative … I probably would.’
‘And your investors?’ he pressed.
‘Do as they’re told, by me. They get nice deals when they come along, villas handed to them for four hundred thousand that list at one-point-five million. They make money from my name as well and they don’t want to upset me.
‘They could make more money, theoretically, but without my name and face they’d not fill the nursing homes.’
Heads were nodded.
Blair nudged, ‘Your plan for Northern Ireland…’
‘I’m building apartment blocks, a small effect, and buying up shit old houses and renovating them in West Belfast, a larger effect. My team is looking at businesses to invest in, and that will create jobs, and I have every teenager that can stand up … kicking a football in a tournament.
‘There’ll soon be a joint team, Catholic and Protestant, seen on the TV news, a junior side playing English junior sides.’
‘A common cause,’ Blair noted. ‘Something for them all to get behind, like The World Cup.’
‘I’m also boosting all the youth training centres over there, such as construction, and I’ll start soon on woodwork and training for electricians, how to drive a JCB and a small crane.
‘I could, realistically, take four thousand men out of the equation and have them working abroad. And that’s not losing me any money.
‘And the IRA, they now have a legit building business, and I’ll hand them some work, and swords will be turned into trowels, bombs into paintbrushes.’
‘Not quite the Bible quote,’ Brown noted. ‘But the same meaning. They’ll stay quiet?’
‘Yes, most definitely, because I’ll be handing them building work, no loss to me. In time they could have a business employing five hundred men, and if they piss me off … I cut off the work.’
Blair shook his head. ‘You deal with the IRA with a practised ease, yet I don’t know where you got the years of experience.’
Bonza, sat behind me, laughed. ‘He learnt on the soccer pitch, how to deal with people. And one season he punched sixty-five players.’
‘Sixty-five?’ Blunkett repeated. ‘No wonder he became a diplomat.’
They laughed.
I told them with a smile, ‘If a player fouled someone, I hit them; I was team captain, my rules. As to Northern Ireland, the issue will be the Loyalists, who think that it’s their province and that the Catholics are illegal immigrants.
‘So I’ll boost jobs for all sides, and as I gain power and influence so the power is lessened in the politicians over there. We need only get the unemployment rate down five percent, some houses fixed, and after that no one will want to go back to fighting, or will listen to their local politicians.
‘I could work through them and Stormont, but I don’t want to, I want the influence centred around me, not them. That way I can affect change.’
Blair noted, ‘The Americans want to put some money in.’
‘It all helps, but I just need to build nursing homes and employ the men of the province, that will have the greatest effect over there. And the nice man in the White House will be pissed off when he sees what I’m doing in Mexico.’
‘What are you doing in Mexico?’ Blair puzzled.
‘Building nursing homes for poor Americans, to pinch some of that trade away from Florida.’
‘You’ll make him look bad…’
‘He can lump it, I don’t work for him I work for you, and some of the builders in Mexico will be from Belfast. So if he hands me some money for the province I’ll use it to build nursing homes in Mexico with Catholic labourers.’
‘Please don’t do that,’ Blair urged, everyone laughing.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll use consortium money instead,’ I suggested with a grin. ‘And five years from now a few British pensioners will book themselves into nursing homes in Mexico.’
Brown asked, ‘How many private nursing homes do you think will be built? Like Barclays?’
‘I have orders for about fifty, so far that is. And the EU want another fifty, so the ladies in Belfast will be lonely.’
They laughed.
Blair asked, ‘How many men could you take - at a push?’
‘Up to six thousand, maybe a few more. And that would have a real impact on the economy over there, wives buying household goods with husband’s wages, house prices rising.
‘But the thing is, I need those men - they make me money; I’m not subsidising them any. You don’t need to waste money to get those six thousand men some work.
‘Support the building of British nursing homes in Spain, Crete, and places like Portugal, because you’ll save money on the residents, and we’ll get the tough men out of Belfast at the same time – you also save on not sending the Army in.’
Brown noted, ‘All those tough men will soon be so tired they’ll be glad of a weekend off, no rioting or making bombs.’
I nodded at him. ‘The Catholics in Corsica already have a whole new attitude, about family and futures and houses – not making bombs.’
Blair asked the group, ‘Does anyone have any doubts about Roskov’s plan for Northern Ireland?’
No one piped up with a complaint, but from the looks I was sure that some had voiced dissent before this meeting.
‘The motion is carried,’ he quipped.
I told him, ‘First order of business, clamp down on these damn stupid buy-to-let mortgages.’
‘We will,’ he assured me. ‘You have a place to stay?’
‘An expensive apartment not far from Parliament Square Green, my staff with me.’ I thumbed at Bonza. ‘The big lump is smarter than he looks, just keep the biscuits away from him.’
They laughed.
I added, ‘Second order of business … is a limit on what NHS managers can spend on external consultants without recourse to the Cabinet Office.’
‘That’s on the cards, and you hit them hard in the media,’ Blair noted.
‘I’ll investigate some of them, then you’ll be shocked by what I find.’
He sighed out. ‘They have partial autonomy, regional trusts, but we can legislate against these external consultants.’
‘I’ll destroy a few in the media, then the people will back you.’
Brown asked, ‘And these new Barclays funds?’
‘May well be used for some collusion, since Barclays are keen that I buy up much of their bad debt register, and they’re willing to drop prices for a quick deal.
‘That means that I get houses at knock down prices, and they get a better balance sheet to show their shareholders. I haven’t agreed it yet, but if they want to hand me one-point-three billion in houses for eight hundred million … great.’
Blair noted, ‘You’d have a profit on paper on day one, let alone ten years later!’
‘Yes, and perhaps the person behind the fake collusion story was a rival bank.’
‘Not so fake,’ Mandelson noted.
‘I am considering the deal, yes, but I tell Barclays what I want, not the other way around. I created the funds to buy-up cheap properties, and they have cheap properties, so too HSBC and the taxman and the receivers.
‘I may take that debt, but also the HSBC debt, or wherever the prices are best, and I save a shit load of money on legal costs and conveyancing costs.
‘My charity has been buying repossessed houses these past two weeks, and it has a paper profit of forty percent already, in month one, on four hundred houses bought.
‘So if Barclays offer me the best deal they get the money, or some of it. If you lot cause house prices to rise across two terms, those people that invested with me could see a huge return, and we already have the first forty percent.’
‘You can’t lose,’ Mandelson noted. ‘What’s the uptake on the two funds?’
‘The fund for rich people collected two hundred million on day one, the poor fund had twenty thousand people sign up in three days, before the leaflets ran out.’
‘So it could be a great deal of money…’ Blair noted.
‘Both funds could touch a billion, yes. Much of that will go on repossessed houses and apartments, some on High Street regeneration.’
Blair eased back. ‘Are we allowed to invest in it ourselves, in that … this is a great idea, we think house prices will rise, so can public money be invested not loaned?’
Mandelson cut in, ‘We control interest rates and other factors, so that idea might be seen to benefit ourselves.’
‘No,’ I told him. ‘It benefits the British taxpayer, not you lot personally. Are there EU rules about such things? Because the French Government owns more than half the damn houses over there!’
‘We can check the rules,’ Blair noted.
‘What are you thinking?’ Brown asked him.
‘That we place public money in such a scheme, not in T-Bonds.’
Brown noted, ‘Those T-Bonds will make three percent, at best.’
I cut in, ‘My scheme could triple the initial fund. And you do, technically, own the council houses that I buy – so what’s different?’
Blair took in their faces. ‘Opinions?’
Campbell finally spoke up, ‘We’re Labour, we do social housing investments, and the fund would spread social housing, so what the fuck? Why would that be an issue?
‘You invest in T-Bonds, you invest in foreign businesses that come here and lose us money. This will not lose us money unless we see a 1920s style depression. It’s houses, for fuck’s sake; safe as houses.’
Heads were nodded.
I told Blair, ‘Create a fund with us, a limited amount, reassess each year, judge any fallout or comments from Europe.
‘But this is not a business you’re investing in, it’s a charity that renovates repossessed houses, social housing. Europe has rules against you propping up our state businesses, no rules about houses - it’s what my Vatican charity in Italy does with EU support.’
Brown faced Blair. ‘We specify that poor quality housing is targeted, repossessed houses as well, and the EU directs funds to those kinds of properties in deprived areas anyhow. This would be no different; urban regeneration. Just that we want to make some money back from it.’
Blair faced me. ‘We’ll create an Urban Regeneration Fund and announce it, properties in bad areas to be bought, renovated and rented out. Administered through you because you have the staff already.’
Blunket put in, ‘I see no laws broken, it’s something that the EU push its member states to do, but Thatcher didn’t do. If anything, we’re remiss for not doing it!’
Heads were nodded.
I pointed at Campbell. ‘And what about the opinion out there, the north-south divide, and … should we focus on London for profit or … help the regions first?’
‘A bit of both. And we stick to our manifesto and help the poor northern regions more visibly. Ten houses there, one profitable house here in London.’
Blair asked me, ‘Where are the bulk of the properties?’
‘Outside London. But London offers up some juicy buildings, a good longer-term capital appreciation of the asset. But you lot could not be the rental agent, or be seen to own them, it must be invisible money buried in the market and spread around.
‘If your fund had a house in Sheffield, and they knew you owned it, the “Tory voting” tenants might stop paying rent and get the media involved because there was a leaky roof – all Blair’s fault! It has to be invisible, rental agents appointed.’
Heads were nodded.
Blair firmly noted, ‘We don’t want bad publicity from a rundown property, no. And some tenants will always complain, no matter what. Like your man shitting on the carpet.’
‘An angry mob went to Tescos to find him, but I placated Tescos by inviting them to open a store in Battersea.’
They laughed.
I asked, ‘When do I need to be here … in London this week?’
‘Day before the opening is paperwork day,’ Blair told me. ‘Briefings, and to be there for the day of course.’
