Roskov book 22, p.15
Roskov, Book 22, page 15
They made notes.
I added, ‘If a bus has just crazy people, or just placid, or just women, that helps as well – the advance warning.’
Blair noted, ‘The reception centres here can do that to some degree.’
‘When you ship the crazies, have two officers on board or two G4S men, and we aim to hand the buses and the transport operation to them anyhow, their concern.’
‘They move prisoners now, some around the country,’ Blair noted. ‘So they are geared up for that.’
‘If done smoothly … we could handle two hundred a day, but that would be a strain on the medics, to check them over.’
Blair noted, ‘We’ll start with forty and get the feedback. Can you explain it to the TV news?’
‘I can, but the nation is very much behind it, and Londoners are definitely behind it; why should they have a druggy from Manchester on their streets?’
‘Exactly, London is not a waste bin,’ Blair noted. ‘So we can start in two weeks.’ He checked his notes. ‘The number of end-of-sentence men you’ve taken is having an effect, more free prison cells these days, tougher sentences being handed out.
‘Your new soft prisons around the Midlands made the news, and everyone now knows what the benefits are of the medical sections – thanks in part to a horrendous TV series that I hope they don’t show abroad.
‘Nottingham’s first nursing home opens next week, Queen in attendance…’
‘Yes, and maybe you can review the huge soft prison and the nursing home the same day. And the reviews of the residents on the first two homes in Leicester have been published, good reviews of course. I mean, not like Frances House good obviously.’
They laughed.
Blair faced his Cabinet. ‘You have to see it to believe it, you’d think it a posh hotel.’ He faced me. ‘Someone told me when I was down there that a man sold his apartment in Phase One for three hundred thousand Euro.’
‘That’s three times what he paid for it. Why’d he leave?’
‘He’s terminal, money would go to his daughter.’
‘Ah, that does happen, yes. And selling it for your family’s gain is the whole point.’
He checked his notes. ‘Health gyms?’
‘We now have a dedicated manager and a team, we have sixty running, ten a month being created, which could move towards twenty a month soon.’
‘We can subsidise them.’
‘Anytime you’re ready, but I’d suggest that the subsidy kicks in when they attend a minimum number of days a month, say fifteen days a month.’
They made notes.
‘And the subsidy should be fifty pence a day of attendance - at most. Call it forty pence.’
‘Forty pence to start,’ Blair noted. ‘And your people did send us a report, a progress report, and sixty-eight percent stick at it and show a decent weight loss. They don’t have figures for what happens to those people after they leave you.’
‘I can organise a survey. On a side note, we’re grabbing many crap old buildings in London and converting or fixing the apartments, small and modest, for workers not the rich folk.
‘The Old Tannery style buildings are for key workers, these other apartments are for ordinary workers, and we hope that the rich folk will avoid the small apartments.
‘On a second side note, we’re now joining with Barclays and pushing fifty-percent mortgages for affluent folk. If a young city trader can afford a half-million pound apartment he can now get a fifty-percent mortgage, buy a million pound apartment - and pretend that it’s all his.’
They laughed.
I continued, ‘That will see a tiny property surge in London, done to make money not to help anyone. And before you read about it in the papers, I have a few Asian banks opening funds with me, same format as the other funds, repo houses as well as some good stock in London and the south east.’
Blunkett asked, ‘Will that force up house prices?’
‘On the face of it, yes, and that’s something we need to discuss. I need you to jump on buy-to-let mortgages or we will see a rapid rise in house prices, a boom then a bust.
‘To counter the upwards pressure on prices, partly caused by me and partly by a new optimism in the nation, I’ll build more apartments and houses than previously planned – mostly outside of London.
‘We’re targeting the London commuter belt areas, new housing estates to be built and houses sold at market value, and further out we’re looking at many smart two-bed apartments that would suit a newly married couple with jobs.
‘Around the UK, the poor areas, we’re grabbing rundown apartment blocks and fixing them, more apartments available for graduates and school leavers.
‘And it’s fair to say that if we fix the nation’s High Streets that the number of new apartments will keep house prices stable. That project could release a hundred thousand apartments, a big number.
‘What I think you lot should be aiming at … is a rise of five percent a year on average house prices. More than that … and six years from now will see us in trouble, the poor people unable to buy and to get on the housing ladder.
‘To assist in that issue, over the next few years the number of fifty-percent mortgages should be high – not later on, more low-income families getting on the property ladder sooner rather than later.
‘And without aiming to embarrass you lot, I will monitor average wages and average house prices per region, which at the moment is OK for outside of London, a struggle in the southeast already.
‘In the Midlands, the average wage is twenty thousand pounds times two for a couple with reasonable jobs, a nice house is forty-six thousand. Make that house a hundred thousand … and the couple can’t buy, the market starts to slow and the next recession is around the corner.’
They exchanged looks.
I added, ‘In Wales, the average wage is sixteen thousand, houses now at thirty thousand, so even a single working person could buy. If house prices in Wales go over forty thousand, the process slows down and stops – and you get the blame.
‘But the silver lining … are the fifty-percent mortgages, because we can get the Welsh buyers into a house, a forty grand house.’
‘It’s is the one silver lining, yes,’ Blair agreed. ‘Do your experts have a ground-level feeling for where house prices will go in the next two years?’
‘Close to seven percent nationally, but with big differences around the country. But keep in mind that places like Middlesbrough will see thirty and fifty percent increases, simply because the houses are shit - and are very undervalued at the moment.
‘When you go from sixteen grand to twenty, it’s not much of a move till you add them all up and average them out. The figures will be regional, and need to be regional, a four grand gain in Middlesbrough and a forty grand gain in London.’
‘Very distorted,’ Blair agreed. ‘So we could see a reported twenty percent rise in the north which is meaningless and nothing to worry about it.’
‘That will happen. My people sort prices by a benchmark three-bed semi, and that way we can be accurate. And with all we’re doing … London will see prices double in five years.’
Blair faced his team. ‘Is that even an issue?’
‘For key workers, yes,’ Brown put in. ‘The rental market follows the mortgage market.’
I cut in, ‘We will build a shit load of new apartments in Docklands, and many will be affordable for city workers, and I also have my key workers’ programme. But prices could be seen to rise sharply down here and be stable around the provinces.’
A man put in, ‘Belfast is seeing rises.’
‘Yes, they could see ten percent a year at least, mostly due to money sent back from men working in Corsica, better houses bought. But since they lag the UK by fifty percent or more I want to see house prices there rise.’
Gordon asked, ‘And your repossession programme?’
‘The warm house mortgage fix is very popular, and the other banks will copy us soon. The abandoned repos are coming to us at a rate of around a thousand a month.
‘So that’s an extra twelve thousand abodes a year opening up, bound to have an effect. On top of that, we’re grabbing rundown old apartment blocks and revamping them, more apartments on the market around the provinces.
‘All together, all funds, we’ll buy anything up to fifty thousand houses a year ongoing. What we then need … are figures. If house prices are rising too fast I can sell a few thousand houses in certain regions, a cooling effect. It’s a tool available to you a few years down the road if needed.
‘And if you have figures and projections now, today, I can adjust the type of place we buy, and where, and the use of fifty-percent mortgages.’
Brown responded, ‘I have figures, no warning bells yet. House prices normally follow jobs and wages, but in this case it’s artificial, it’s your fund money driving it not local jobs and inflation.’
I responded, ‘My people think that the optimism attributed to your win is worth five percent a year on house prices ongoing.’
Gordon responded, ‘That would be in line with what we think. But as you said, the provinces will show greater gains, they start from a smaller figure.’
I asked Gordon, ‘Do you want me to push fifty-percent mortgages in the north and in Wales?’
‘We want them pushed in a tight range, the bottom slice. And better to push them more now than later on - as you said. If more people become home owners this year, albeit fifty-percent, that’s in line with our manifesto but also practical, since we want them to benefit from any sudden national rises.’
I told him, ‘The only factor that could cause a sudden rise is these stupid buy-to-let mortgages. My efforts should level prices outside London, apart from certain targeting towns like Middlesbrough, small short-term blips.
‘And where I build a nursing home I’ll buy a thousand ex-council houses, renovate them and then sell half, that half suddenly bought by next year’s slum landlord using the novelty new mortgages.’
Heads were nodded.
Blair asked, ‘Three years from now, if prices are rising too fast, you could sell more ex-council houses?’
‘Yes, and that would lower prices in some regions, but just in the price-bands of houses below thirty grand. That leaves most of the housing market unaffected.
‘Whichever way my experts look at this, it’s optimism in you lot that drives prices up nationally, not my funds.’
Blair slowly nodded to himself. ‘We need to check the figures each month and decide as we go.’
I told him, ‘You should have been informed already, but some of the money you sent me will go as loans to accelerate nursing home construction.’
‘That’s OK, we want them opened quickly.’
‘And as I mentioned on the phone we’ll build mobile phone towers in Northern Ireland and partner with the mobile phone companies in the south. The province will jump ahead a few years, mobile coverage in the cities as well as the muddy cow fields.’
‘We’re very keen to push it along,’ Blair told me. ‘And that gas company over there is doing very well.’
‘Odd to think, that they just got gas cookers and indoor toilets.’
Blair shot me a look. ‘I think they had indoor plumbing for a while, since the sixties.’ He read his notes. ‘How much to build the average soft prison?’
‘We always try to buy a suitable old city building and convert it. Outside the southeast, that’s less than ten million quid for fifty cells and the medial bay, then the beds and tables and chairs, TVs. Then it’s staff wages and the heating bill ongoing.’
‘We’ll allocate three hundred million towards them, for a rapid expansion.’
‘I had always hoped that you’d end up owning a slice of them, or the land under them.’
‘We could do, in the future.’
‘For now my charity runs them, there’s no profit for my consortium to want to be involved. But repaying the loan would be slow, a small profit to play with, so you would own them anyhow.’
‘That’s OK, we’ll make a plan a few years down the road, who owns and who operates them, maybe G4s.’
‘That money will get you thirty soft prisons around the country, added to our soon-to-be twenty, and they will have an immediate effect on city crime. Open one in Bournemouth, and the idiots down there all sit in it and crime drops fifty percent in a month.’
‘That’s what we want, that headline,’ Blair stated.
I told them, ‘Fifty soft prisons running will have a huge effect, because it’s the same idiots being arrested each week at the moment. And some of the places that we’re opening will hold two hundred people or more, a big effect on local crime.’
‘Women’s refuges?’
‘Opening at a rate of … less than six a month, but that will rise as we recruit more staff. You need sixty nationally.’
‘Push them along, we can allocate the money for them as well.’
‘The one here in London is progressing, and it will hold three hundred women and many families, the pavement outside soon to be covered in blood.’
‘Blood?’ a lady asked.
‘The husbands and ex-boyfriends all to be shot dead by the police as they try to kill the women in their lives. The highest percentage of UK crimes, that are murder or very violent, are committed by ex-boyfriends. That pavement will get lively.
‘In Leicester, more serious crimes and attempted murders were committed outside the women’s shelter than anywhere else.’
Blair began, ‘So if we have cameras, and police hidden, we circumvent those serious crimes…’
‘You could. The refuge will prevent roughly twenty murders in London and fifty serious woundings a year. A police trap would prevent twenty attempted murders a year.’
‘Jesus,’ a man let out.
Blunket noted, ‘It’s good that we can focus our efforts in one small place, and arrest the men before they kill their partners. Every murder trial costs us a million pounds!’
Heads were nodded.
I told them, ‘Nationally, you can cut murders by half, and most murders are domestic; we can save a shit load of money.’
Blair noted, ‘As soon as that place opens in London I’ll order a study done, a detailed study, and we’ll get the stats and the costs. Prevention is better than a cure, and we’ll try and put some numbers and costings on the preventions – otherwise those savings are invisible.’
‘We have the Leicester stats, more than a year’s worth, a good average,’ I told them. ‘And yes, we washed down the blood once a month.’
‘Is it quiet there now?’ Blunkett asked.
‘Fuck no; new couples meet and then they split and they then fight. It will go on as long as people inhabit this planet.’
‘Unfortunately, yes,’ Blair agreed. He checked his notes. ‘Do any of your contacts around the world have a clue about why our tower was brought down with thermite?’
‘It was suggested … that it was two things. Firstly, the main man behind it here had some … dirty bedfellows. And second, a dry run before another building was to be brought down.’
They exchanged looks.
Blair began, ‘We have some of the clues and the links, just not all of the pieces yet.’
‘In this country, there are some men that are considered … above the law. That’s a mistake, they’re all on the make to some degree, and when someone meets with The Queen and gives to charity and is a senior freemason … don’t rule them out as being the criminal mastermind.’
‘Very hard to investigate such men,’ he complained.
‘Even harder for me than for you,’ I told him. ‘But MI5 can do it on the quiet.’
‘Any more investigations into Americans?’ Blair asked me.
‘Only when I get a tip-off, no fresh tip-offs.’
‘Italian police are seeing some successes…’
I eased back. ‘It will take several generations for the Italians to change their attitudes. At the moment … the Mafia there are part of the fabric of society, and that needs to change.
‘Here they would be reported and caught, but in Italy they have the well-established code of silence. I fear … that it will take forty years to get rid of the Mafia there.’
He nodded. ‘Part of society, as you said. But it seems that the patience of the police there is running out.’
An image popped up, which caused me to pause.
‘Something?’ Blair puzzled.
I took in their faces. ‘Labour peer, Sir Edmund Pollock.’
Blair glanced uneasily at his Cabinet. ‘We’ve … heard things. What have you heard?’
‘That he’ll cause you some severe public embarrassment someday very soon, his cock in a small boy. You need to be seen to be the one calling for his head on a plate.’
‘I’ll … look into that.’
‘Clock is ticking,’ I warned him. ‘Tabloids have him in their sights, could be a matter of days.’
He exchanged a look with the Home Secretary. ‘We need to move quickly.’
The Home Secretary nodded.
‘Send him to prison!’ Gordon Brown angrily suggested.
Blair’s look disagreed with Brown. ‘We need evidence, solid evidence, but he will be interviewed today.’
‘And warned off?’ Brown challenged.
I cut in, ‘Tabloids will roast him within days, warning or not; trial by innuendo in the good old court of public opinion. It can be bad, or less bad.’
I wrote down a name. ‘That’s the rent boy selling his story to the tabloids – so reported to me. Pick him up, then arrest Pollock based on the evidence given.’
Blair handed the paper to the Home Secretary. ‘With dispatch please.’
The Home Secretary stepped out.
I added, ‘Try and get it on the news today, defuse the tabloids some. Condemn Pollock, no one will blame you.’
Blair nodded, deep in thought. ‘Press on with the projects, we’ll chat again soon.’
Out from the meeting I headed to the BBC studios, and to the Panorama show, hosted by Paxman, who had gotten his wish – he was now head honcho.
