Roskov, Book 20, page 25
In the morning I was requested by Blair, and I was soon on my way south to a Cabinet Meeting. I was already familiar with the back way in, and Pat and Dingle flashed their ID cards.
Inside, a man showed me the way, and the Cabinet were mostly stood around when I entered, a cup of tea made for me, a chat before they started to be seated.
Blair finally arrived with Brown, welcomes for me, and everyone sat in their allotted places, I sat to one side. Blair began, ‘We have Roksov with us today to go over a few things, a question and answer session.’ He faced me after glancing at his notes. ‘What would you say was the priority … in social reform?’
‘Being seen to do what we say we can do. The priority, from a party political standpoint, should be the high visibility policies.’
‘Which are?’
‘Homeless people sleeping on the streets. We need to grab them and get them off the streets, and in a few months. To start, we need a bill passed that says no one has the right to be homeless and to sleep rough -’
The Home Secretary cut in, ‘We have old vagrancy laws, just that no one has bothered to enforce them for twenty years or more. No one has the right to sleep rough or in someone else’s property.’
I told him, ‘It needs something fresh, and not to be called vagrancy. It needs to be passed by Parliament, to be seen to be passed, to be reported about widely and discussed, and it needs to say that a homeless addict from Liverpool has no right to sleep rough, and definitely no right to sleep rough in London - he gets sent back to a local hostel.
‘Liverpool may well have a hostel, some towns do, Coventry has a good one, Derby closed theirs and we’re re-opening it as we speak.
‘So we need the nation to see that new law and new procedures, and then we’ll start to enact them. And inside a few months my new prison west of Leicester will be open, and it could take end of sentence men, yes, but also two thousand homeless, a thousand from London because London has most of the nation’s homeless people.
‘Most of those are not on the streets but in abandoned houses, old abandoned factories or in shared shit houses and apartments. If a thousand of those that like to beg on the streets and sleep rough were grabbed, that would be high visibility in the media.’
Heads were nodded as Blair took in the faces.
‘How quickly can we act?’ Blair asked.
‘That huge prison will be open in a few months, plus I have three holiday camps about to open, so another thousand homeless could be housed ahead of end-of-sentence men.
‘I can open more holiday camps, but end-of-sentence men don’t try and escape, the homeless druggy will try. At the moment, my people are calling each council hostel and asking the question: are you still open, how many people can you handle, do you need some cash?
‘Chances are … that the capacity of those hostels can be increased tenfold by simply doing what was done before Thatcher allowed them to close down.’
‘We can order the councils to open them and fund them, some money from central office,’ Blair noted.
‘I can send you a list soon, but best to just send me the money and I’ll make sure they obey - and don’t take a year to plan it out. Let my people do the phone survey first, then I’ll report to you the state of play.’
‘But it may be just a case of blowing off the dust…’ Blair noted.
‘Yes, and expanding the places, old staff hired. That’s what we did in Leicester and in nearby towns.’
‘And then we can move the homeless out of London, a high visibility exercise.’
‘All my surveys suggest that it will be a very poplar move,’ I told him. ‘And within nine months we’ll have a second large soft prison, capacity five thousand, in Manchester.’
‘We can send back anyone from Manchester that came south.’
‘And they do travel south, they like Bournemouth and Brighton,’ I told him. ‘In the meantime I’ll open more holiday camps for minor offenders, and we can use the two large places for the difficult customers.
‘And keep in mind that we’re not talking about a huge number of high visibility homeless people. In Derby that’s twenty men, in Northampton that’s twenty men.
‘Behind them are a hundred homeless in old buildings, drug dealing and shoplifting for a living but not sleeping rough. If we grab a thousand around the country … that’s fifty towns that lose their worst offenders.
‘Leicester has a population of a hundred thousand people, yet we found that just fifty were causing all the trouble, causing half of all recorded minor crimes. Get rid of the fifty and the job is mostly done.
‘Grab five thousand street homeless, of the forty thousand total homeless, and the effect on the country is stark and obvious.’
‘That’s all it would take?’ he asked, surprised.
‘Yes.’
‘Then expand the holiday camps and we’ll allocate you money, I want that five thousand rounded up as soon as we can. But behind that five thousand?’
‘Are those official forty thousand, but living in squats and hostels and not sleeping rough, some on a mate’s sofa. They need tackling, yes, but across five years or more.’
The Health Secretary asked, ‘There are some already in hostels?’
‘When I say hostel, I mean a crap place with a hundred bunkbeds in one room, one meal a day and no medical help or counselling, and no reason to want to attend the place.’
Heads were nodded.
Blair noted, ‘But you could take over and fix them with our money…’
‘Yes, the places are basic at best, and they encourage ex-prisoners to go steal some lunch.’
Blunket asked, ‘One meal a day? How is that even legal?’
‘That’s all they serve, a bed and a meal … and the inmates are sent out in all weathers to wander the town centres, drugs to deal and lunch to steal.’
‘That’s bloody ridiculous!’ Blair noted.
‘That’s the system you’re inheriting.’
‘It’s a system I’ll destroy, it encourages crime not fix it!’
‘I’ll do the survey and let you know. And I’ll look for more holiday camps as well.’
‘And in London?’ Brown asked.
‘Land is expensive, for me to build a hostel. There are many hostels here, most just a bed and a meal and … go have fun in the city during the day.’
‘That’s no answer for the inmates,’ Brown noted. ‘They need to be locked in. That’s just a step up from sleeping in a shop doorway.’
Heads were nodded.
Brown added, ‘What’s needed are many soft prisons with medical bays, dotted around the country, people sent there and not in these idiotic hostels in London.’
I told him, ‘Those hostels operate on the inmate’s choice of … where he wants to hang out.’
‘Like hell,’ Blair responded. ‘We’ll change that. No one has the right to choose where they’re homeless.’
‘So debate it and pass a bill, and let everyone know what you’re doing and why. I’ll do a TV debate on it, and we’ll let the media kick it around for a while.
‘There are some well-funded charities that will oppose you, but the nation is ninety-five percent in favour of strong action, homeless people off the streets.’
Blunket put in, ‘We have a legal obligation to get them off the streets and look after them. The standpoint we have today is very odd, probably because Thatcher spun it around and closed places, but this is bloody ridiculous – when we’re sneaking ideas to get the homeless off our streets, when the law says that we should look after our damn citizens!’
‘Very true,’ a Minister put in. ‘We’re pandering to the pressure groups and charities, to leave homeless people to make their own choices. What choices? It’s as if large protests will break out if we move homeless people away and force a medical and warm meal upon them.’
I told him, ‘That attitude is there, the “hands off our homeless” attitude, and the charities don’t like the police to hassle homeless people. Our police forces know that they’ll get some shit for rounding up homeless people.’
‘That has to change,’ Blair insisted. ‘We’ll change that attitude. We’ll look after the homeless, and that means rounding them up. And a drug addict in a stupor is in no position to tell us where he wants to live.’
I began, ‘We need a twenty-eight day holding order for any homeless person. After that, if the drugs have fried their brains, a three-month medical observation order.
‘If their brains are OK, they sit an interview with Social Services - police officer present maybe, certainly a doctor and psychiatrist. If they say they want a job and a place to live, great, we move them to a hostel and see what happens.
‘If they say “screw you I’m going to kill someone”, they stay, they stay forever if necessary. And if the guy we put in a hostel stabs someone, he comes back on a six month sentence, followed by another assessment.
‘And what you’ll find … is that half will fail a mental health assessment, and a few years down the road we’ll need more mental health places – just that my soft prisons can do that job already, we just separate the categories; violent, or eat-your-face-off violent.’
Blair noted, ‘So your soft prisons can handle all sorts, in one place.’
‘They come in, they get cleaned-up, they get assessed, re-assessed, monitored, moved next door to max security if necessary. Simple. My big place in Leicester has a soft section, medium and high security, and a full-on mental health place. We can handle all-comers; it’s basically seven phases.’
I faced the Home Secretary. ‘And we’re creating a Midlands’ borstal for you, capacity of a thousand kids. And keep in mind that many a teenage drug addict is sleeping in a shop doorway of a cold night.’
‘And success rates at reforming them?’ someone asked me.
‘If they’ve been sleeping rough a few years, fucking none, none at all, they don’t even know their own names any longer. If they’ve just hit the streets, almost a hundred percent success rate.
‘So our success rate will go up as we get organised, but the old timers - forget it. Lock them in a mental health place and forget them, they’re too far gone, they’ve been drinking hard booze and doing drugs for ten years or more, no brain cells left working.
‘And plenty of them have AIDS and need to be isolated, and my new place will have an AIDS section as well. There are an estimated four thousand AIDS patients sleeping rough, never tested.’
‘Jesus,’ a man let out.
Blair told me, ‘That four thousand can’t be left where they are, passing needles, they’ll cost the NHS a fortune.’
‘They will, and they are,’ I agreed. ‘And they’re the ones biting nurses and trying to stab people.’
Brown asked me, ‘The total number of sick or psychotic homeless?’
‘Around two thousand, I read, but that seems low from what we’re discovering.’
They exchanged looks.
I added, ‘And for most of them we don’t even know where they hide at night, and finding them all would be hard work, they move around – definitely not wanting to be found and helped.’
‘A special police unit?’ Brown floated.
‘Most definitely,’ I told him. ‘But with local Salvation Army staff and ex-homeless people who know the hideouts, special vans to carry them, straight-jackets applied, facemask put on them. A homeless man may have AIDS and TB, and spit at an officer.’
‘In this day and age,’ Blunkett complained. ‘Just what the hell was Thatcher thinking! Do we treat people like rats in a sewer?’
‘How are your money reserves?’ Blair asked me.
‘For the housing funds, buoyant and huge. For city soft prisons and medical bays … limited now. No profit in them, so no investors.’
‘We’ll make you a specific loan for that project, and soon.’
I told him, ‘A basic city soft prison and medical bay is a few million quid only outside London, quick to convert old buildings. If you loan us the money, but end up owning the land for the long term, that would help.
‘We’d operate them, and someday - fifty years from now - you sell the land, no loss to you.’
‘That would be OK, we’re just buying land for the future,’ Blair agreed. ‘And you did take me on a romantic trip.’
They laughed loudly.
‘You saw the show then?’ I asked with a grin.
‘We always watch it when you’re on.’
‘Did they show the after-filming bit?’
‘They did, yes. And that photo has done the rounds, the Tories very embarrassed. He’ll be deselected.’
‘Well at least Blunkett will never visit a lap dance bar,’ I quipped, the Cabinet laughing loudly.
Blunkett noted, ‘Something that I can’t be accused of, no. But my sense of touch is very good.’
They laughed again.
‘Just so that you know, my property business will start to trade the stock markets for my charity. I have some very good stock market analysts, and when I rub shoulders at parties with billionaires they always supply me with great stock market tips.
‘But since any profit goes to my charity, and homeless people, I don’t think it will come in for too much criticism.’
Brown noted, ‘Such companies buy shares in listed companies that are exclusively exposed to house price rises; it’s not an unusual activity. And all of our pension funds are split between houses and stocks.’
‘I have a room full of well-paid experts, so they may as well earn their damn keep. And we’re busy buying up houses for you, and using your investment money on Barclays warm house mortgage fixes.
‘And if we could do ten thousand tomorrow ... we would, we have the interest, the phone ringing off the hook. I spoke to the first few we signed up, and the old homeowners could not be happier. All sides win.’
‘Was a BBC interview of a few homeowners,’ Blair noted. ‘And now all sides are singing its praises.’
‘Once we’ve ironed out the kinks with Barclays we’ll approach the other banks.’
‘We want to buy 147 Southwark -’
‘Not for sale, I want to collude with MPs and influence them and teach them.’
‘You can do that, as the management company. We’d own the building on behalf of the taxpayers.’
‘Well it cost us eight million and then fittings, was worth ten million.’
‘How did you get the discount?’ someone asked me.
‘Barclays’ repossessions list, it was with the receiver. When I buy places like that with your fund money we secure a good discount. Once I’ve spent your three hundred million it will hold a built-in profit of about thirty percent to start, then we collect rent, then we wait for the price to go up across ten years.’
They exchanged looks.
Blair began, ‘We’ll add more to it. Do … with it what you think best.’
‘A nod and a wink and some of Barclay’s repo list, yes. First, loan us some money for soft prisons and hostels, and you’ll get the land we build on.’
Brown asked, ‘And would you use some of our fund money for overseas property?’
‘Shit yes, and treble the money quickly. I buy land for two hundred grand, build for the same, and sell the final villa for over a million quid.
‘And when the nursing homes in Spain are ready I’ll build hundreds of villas near them, same in Italy and Greece. And Sardinia, which they say is even more beautiful than Corsica.’
Blair asked, ‘I can stay at the special villa?’
‘Of course you can, just book ahead.’
‘And how did you twist the arm of the French President?’ he asked.
‘I simply mentioned that I would pay to have the story of the migrants being bussed to Calais in every European newspaper every day till the practise stopped.’
They smiled.
‘But it has stopped, a war between the people smuggling gangs in Tunisia,’ Brown noted.
‘Someone will replace them, they always do,’ I noted. ‘But it is a European problem and not just our problem.’
Back up in Leicester, I called Bill and explained that we would sell 147 Southwark but stay in charge of how it was used, rent collected and passed on as agents.
The stock markets
The next morning, and Russel noted the receipt of an extra hundred million pounds in the Regeneration Fund and he called me.
I told him, ‘Be discrete, but some of that money will go on the Barclays repo list, as fast as humanly possible. Take the good deals and the modest deals first.’
‘Noted. Oh, we’ve set-up a trading account with a city broker, Bill asked us to, but we never revealed which fund would trade it.’
‘Secrecy is probably called for, because if I think that a stock will make me twenty percent to the end of the year … it may leak and people will think that it will make fantastic return, because it’s me.
‘Your first trade is Barclays Bank shares, to slowly accumulate stock on down days, small batches, always less than ten thousand shares. And I expect to make twenty percent, because we’re buying up their debt. Oh, and use ten million from the Regeneration Fund, rest would be charity money.’
‘Their stock price hasn’t moved yet,’ he noted.
‘They’re being sneaky, and waiting to drop the good news.’
‘Ah. When?’
‘August they hinted at.’
‘I’m a good stock trader, I’ll handle it myself, I have a share portfolio I bought - despite the divorce, all stocks doing well, many bought ten years ago.’
‘The twins’ father, Rolf, he looks at PE ratios and debt and assets.’
‘So do I, a hobby.’
‘Well your hobby just got a few quid, so go accumulate like a sneaky shit.’
‘The Barclays’ repo list, OK to buy apartment blocks in London?’
‘Yes, but I want the money spread, not one huge block.’
‘So each to be less than say ten million?’
‘Yes. But I’d prefer individual houses and apartments.’
‘I’ll get on it. Buying from the list is dead easy, just a phone call, no fees, and Chessington alerts me to good new deals.’
