Roskov, Book 22, page 27
‘A cappuccino is damned expensive now, and if I take my wife out for a nice meal it’s a hundred and fifty quid at least!’
‘Ten years from now that meal will be five hundred quid, unless we put the brakes on London. We don’t want to damage the London economy - we desire more jobs here, so we’ll build more houses in the commuter belt, more apartments in Docklands, and we’ll build key workers apartments.
‘And in each new town that we build there’ll be a block of apartments for key workers as well as some cheap housing.
‘At the moment, a man with a factory outside Crawley finds it hard to get the staff, and the staff are expensive. If he moved his factory up north he’d find the cheap staff and make a better profit, but his kids are settled in school here and he’s not about to move his factory up north.
‘So we need a few skilled workers brought down and offered cheap housing, till the CBI tells us that we have enough skilled workers in the south east.’
‘The CBI say that we have a huge shortfall!’
‘They do, and we need to fix that, or wage claims in the south east increase in parallel to house prices, and spiral out of control.’
‘Can you stop that spiral?’ he asked.
‘Stop it, no. Slow it some … we hope so.’
‘So we’ll still have problems in the future?’
‘Even with my best efforts, and tens of thousands of houses built, London will still see house prices rise four-fold in ten years, so my experts worry. The rest of the country will see modest gains, but London will see huge gains.
‘Part of the problem is the pull of the capital city, part is the foreign ownership and investment, and part is the growth of second homes for rental income.
‘And the new and easy-to-get gimmick mortgages will push up London house prices quickly. Any idiot with a million quid will be able to get three million quid in new gimmick mortgages, buy twenty apartments and rent them out.
‘That process will slow rental costs a bit, but push up apartment prices across the city.’
‘Will Tony Blair stop the gimmick mortgages?’
‘He’ll try, but he’s no communist and we have a free market, so if the banks wish to be reckless they can. And when the bust comes after the boom, it’s the banks that will suffer the most, homes repossessed but with negative equity.
‘When that happens I’ll stop all my warm house mortgage fixes and wait for the market to correct, maybe five to seven years.’
‘No more warm house mortgage fixes?
‘Not after a boom and bust, no, they need a steady climbing market, not a falling house price market.’
‘So life in London is tough, and will get tougher, and not even a massive Labour spending plan will fix that…’
‘Correct. We can ease house prices a little around the M25 with these new towns, but that’s an ease, that’s not forcing house prices down or level in London.’
‘And if you were Prime Minister?’
‘I’d ban the gimmick mortgages tomorrow, because they’ll accelerate the jump in prices in London way more than any other factor. And then I’d build more houses in new towns around the M25.’
‘Are they likely to be banned?’
‘Not a hope in hell. So if you want to move to London in the future and buy a house or apartment … you better earn a lot of money, three or four times more than you currently earn.’
‘Wages go up by two percent a year, not four hundred percent!’
‘Hence the issue. London property will be for the rich, and the rich alone, who then won’t be able to find a nanny or a cleaner – or staff to work in their businesses, the businesses that made them rich in the first place.’
‘And if you and Blair were to get radical…’
‘Then we’d build a lot more key worker tower blocks, a lot more commuter towns, more apartments in Docklands.’
‘Could that have an effect?’
‘It would, but it will take years to build the commuter towns. With some keen cooperation from the councils inside the M25 we could work faster, and we can convert more old buildings to apartments as now.’
‘Such a building plan would boost the economy, and cause inflation…’
‘It would unfortunately, a headache for Gordon Brown, pressure to raise interest rates maybe three years from now.’
‘And if that radical plan was in place, what would London house prices do?’
‘In five years … they’d double. We can’t stop that, we’d just have to live with it and adjust as best we can, more key worker apartments.’
‘And the rest of the country, if the economy does well?’
‘In five years … thirty to forty percent rises in house prices.’
‘Which would be manageable, and welcome by the homeowners.’
‘That’s what I talk about with Blair and Brown each week, the Goldilock’s Zone.’
‘Goldilocks?’
I carefully stated, ‘Not too hot, not too cold.’
He smiled widely. ‘On that note of average porridge temperatures and friendly bears, thanks for coming on.’
We were off air.
He stood. ‘I’m going to buy a few places in London with my savings.’
I stood. ‘You can’t lose. But you can and will soon pay five hundred quid for a meal out.’
He sighed loudly. ‘Getting that way now!’
Back in Leicester, and the segment had shown, Blair on the phone straight away. ‘You just worried a few people but gave the rich in London a wide smile.’
‘We need the poor people on our side, and the families with kids that want to live in London someday, and to hell with the super-rich.
‘And the fact is … we won’t have much of an effect, and London prices will probably rocket no matter what we do. At least now the blame is where it should be, and not with you.’
‘There is that, yes, and we’ll push those commuter towns. And I had overlooked the fact that this year’s homeless round-up won’t be repeated, because in the future we’ll be on top of it.’
‘I’ll build more soft prisons and use them for the homeless in the meantime, then for genuine prisoners, they won’t go to waste. And the cost savings in year three onwards will be huge.’
‘You mentioned before a tie-up with Barclays and your fifty-percent mortgage company…’
‘Yes, and now I’m starting to think they played us well. But I had my reasons, and they have theirs.’
‘They have an eye on London prices, yes, and a good profit made. So when you get more money from us for commuter towns, we could be the silent partner, the Government…’
‘You could, and you’d make a few quid for the taxpayers, I said that before.’
‘Work on that assumption, and we’ll teach Barclays who are more sneaky, bankers or politicians.’
‘Politicians, definitely politicians.’
Sneaky politicians
In the morning I headed into the property business, soon sat with just Russel. ‘This is off the record for now. Barclays have given us access to huge funds for joint ventures, fifty-percent mortgages, which is good – we get to do more.
‘But I also have Government money and will get more Government money to play with, and I want the Government funds used some of the time, so that ten years from now it’s the poor old British taxpayer that benefits.
‘And if you spot a good bargain, use government fund money. Set up their fund as the others, allow for mortgage deeds, etc, as per the repos and warm house mortgage fixes, but I want to quietly increase their property investment.’
‘Why shouldn’t the taxpayers benefit?’ he challenged. ‘You created the Barclays poor fund to help poor people as prices rise, so … why not help the general taxpayers as well.’
‘There are a few government rules, so we’ll keep it quiet and … we’ll blame me if the scheme is criticised.’
‘We buy houses for them now, the warm house mortgages fixes, a few repos, this will be no different.’
‘It will be, when the money starts to add up to a big figure, then a very big figure.’
‘Ah. And yes, it would be noticed.’
‘Have a quiet word with my fifty-percent mortgage company, and explain that we want a simple switching mechanism, and that money is taken from Barclays but also from the Government fund.
‘Mostly I want repos inside the M25 for the Government, and good London deals when you see them. I may also use their money in Corsica, but the French may not like that, so we’d hide the ownership.’
‘All the houses are registered to us, it never says who funded it.’
I nodded. ‘My aim is still to keep London prices stable, I just wanted to frighten a few people.’
‘You frightened some, but the rest will be partying this weekend, those with a London portfolio. Oh, I spoke with Hertfordshire Council and basically they’ll do anything we want.’
‘Promise them a few leisure centres next to the new housing clusters,’ I suggested.
‘New leisure centres always please the councils,’ he noted.
‘Have my architect design a new town, then I’ll have my input. I want the poor apartments and shops next to the train station, nicer houses further out, and we’ll build way more key worker places than I may have suggested.’
He began, ‘Those key worker towers, use Government money, and then the rental income goes to the Government as well, just that it appears to be us.’
‘Russel, you’re a sneaky politician in the making.’
‘There’s no need to swear at me. And talking of sneaky shits, we don’t buy and sell houses around the M25, we aim to build them, and the build cost will not go up as London house prices go up, and we’ll make more when we sell them…’
‘Really? I had overlooked that aspect.’
‘Sneaky shit!’
At the BBC studios for 2pm I met Paul and Ian, a cup of tea and a chat, make-up done, teeth cleaned, and I was ready.
On I went to a loud applause, but we were not filming yet. Seated, I had Paul on my left, Angus in the middle, Ian on the far side, and next to him was a middle-aged lady activist of some sort.
The music played out and the contrived applause eased.
Angus began, ‘With is tonight we have Jane Bell, an activist for many causes and many charities. And on my left is someone that always makes me puke.’
The audience laughed as I grinned.
He faced me. ‘So … what have you been up to lately?’
‘Bungling along, minding my own business.’
Paul touched my arm. ‘How’s that working out for you?’
‘Well I got a good rest in Corsica, and a second good rest in Stockholm, and in between I’ve fitted in a few hours work.’
They laughed.
Ian noted, ‘And made half the people in this country vomit on their carpets.’
‘I’d like to say that it was not my fault, but some blame must lie with me, what with me trying to help people like Grog.’
‘Is that his name?’ Paul asked. ‘Is he from Iceland?’
‘We have no idea what his name is, and neither does he, and the police can’t identify him.’
Paul asked, ‘Have his facial and body features changed much?’
The audience laughed.
‘Some, yes,’ I told Paul. ‘He grew a beard, then kept mice in it, dead ones.’
Ian began, ‘I admit to being shocked, and … disgusted and more shocked and … outraged at a few people, just that I was not quite sure who I was more outraged at.
‘I think the fact that he had gone ten years without anyone noticing was the cause of most of my rage.’ He faced Jane Bell. ‘Were you shocked?’
‘No, but I’m not in favour of such things being seen on the BBC news. I’ve seen it all before, the teenage prostitute raped and murdered, the homeless man lying in his own filth, a room full of druggies that had been dead ten days.’
‘Not a pleasant smell,’ Angus noted.
‘That room would have made you puke, flies and maggots – it was August.’
Ian asked her, ‘And are you in favour of the round-up?’
‘It should never have been necessary, we should have had the facilities in place all along, but they were closed down, and then we had “care in the community”, which was just a lie to cover up the closing of our mental health places.’
‘So you were not a Thatcherite?’
‘I was at the start, but she had no time for people like myself and the charities when she started on the cuts, we were never allowed to meet ministers.
‘And as time went on we could see the cynical attitude, to pass the sick back to the street where they came from, as if the old ladies of the street might club together and look after them.
‘But they just ended up on the streets, in shop doorways, and they became like Grog.’
I told them, ‘I’ll raise a statue to him in Leicester, one in London, a large one, a reminder for everyone as to what can happen when society and the Government stop caring.’
The audience applauded me.
‘He’s not dead yet,’ Paul noted.
‘He only has a few days left,’ I replied. ‘His colon is infected with the black necrotising flesh-eating virus, highly contagious and very deadly. They want to cremate the poor bugger now.’
‘Are there more like him?’ Ian asked.
‘There are a dozen that we’ll probably transfer to my AIDS hospice, to the end-of-life wards. They’ll get doped up and … wait for the end, at the taxpayers’ expense, which needs looking at.
‘In this country, if you’re terminally ill – like Grog, you have to wait till your heart gives out as they increase the meds each day. Silly really, because they are killing him, but slowly within the law.’
Angus asked me, ‘You’d vote to allow doctors to speed up that process?’
‘I would, most definitely; just look at Grog, being eaten away from the inside. But there’s no law that can ease his suffering. So the taxpayers will pay and he’ll suffer.’
Ian faced our guest. ‘Would you ease his suffering?’
‘A hard question, and one best left to the doctors. But I’m not in favour of doctors being able to just end a person’s life. We need a court order and family permission, and other considerations first.’
I cut in, ‘Doctors turn off machines every day of the week, no court order or family consideration, and every day about fifty cancer sufferers die when their morphine dose is increased – by a doctor that consults with no one.
‘We all know that they do it, and cancer is a key point. When they tell you that you have three months to live … you get a bed, you get an IV drip with morphine, and they steadily increase the dose till it kills you.
‘Why not just say goodbye to your family and have the higher dose today? And leave a funny card behind for your kids, suggesting that they had been adopted.’
The audience laughed.
Angus asked me, ‘The NHS sent you an old lady by mistake?’
‘They did, but she was well looked after, till we realised that she should not be with us … so we then bused her to the city and put her in a shop doorway.’
They laughed.
I added, ‘That was the Thatcher policy, the new Blair policy is to look after her in a room with a bed and some heating, and a roof. Yes, a roof, a roof is important, it keeps the snow off you.’
‘I have a roof,’ Paul noted, the audience laughing. ‘Great inventions, roofs, they do keep the snow off.’
Ian asked me, ‘So what happened to her?’
‘She’ll stay a while, then be moved to a Phase Zero apartment, but we told her to shut up about a transfer down to Frances House.’
They laughed.
Paul noted, ‘Offer me a room there and I’ll be packed quickly.’
‘Hot in August and September,’ I told him. ‘You’d want to wait till October, sunny then but not so hot.’
He nodded back at me.
Angus asked, ‘And how many people will your new prison hold, the one called The Airfield?’
‘It was extended recently, more mental health facilities and beds, and we currently have six hundred maximum security prisoners that have a year to serve on their sentences, all bad boys.
‘We also have a few hundred soft prisoners in the soft section, and they’re enjoying the facilities, pool and gym. And what’s left is capacity for around eight thousand homeless persons because we used bunkbeds and we installed extra beds.
‘So people that are younger, and can focus their eyes, can use the rooms with bunkbeds. I met a few, and bunkbeds would have been an issue for them, they could hardly lift a cup of tea.
‘But keep in mind that as the homeless get sorted they get moved on, and many of the teenagers can be sent back to their home towns, provided that there’s somewhere suitable for them to go back to – not a shop doorway.’
‘There are not many places,’ Jane Bell warned. ‘Just the hostels, and those hostels don’t care, no medical staff on hand, no rehab of any kind.’
I began, ‘If we can’t send someone back to their home town then they stay, till we can send them somewhere – other than to London again. And if they make their way to London they’ll come back to me, get held as a punishment, then sent home again.
‘What we won’t do … is allow a homeless person to head for London just for fun, they’ll need a place to stay, or family, or the promise of a job – not the promise of shop doorway. Within a year the smell of urine will be washed away.’
The audience laughed.
Paul noted, ‘So we just have to smell it for another year then.’
‘This is a modern phenomena,’ Ian began. ‘When I was young there were no homeless on the streets, and my father could never recall seeing any.’
‘Drugs in the sixties started it,’ I told Ian. ‘And the rise in rents and house prices, a few recessions, the breakdown of the family unit and the easy supply of soft drugs – which lead on to hard drugs.’
