A piece of the action

I have decided to take over.

With the financial world going mad (for example, I now seem to be the sole owner of The Royal Bank of Scotland), I have decided to scare the government by declaring a redundancy package that guarantees me £1 squillion, unless my toxic assets are quantitively eased and forthwith. Obviously, they will cave in as soon as they realise I know what I am talking about.

I once convinced my bank manager to give me a vast overdraft at next to no interest by firmly using a phrase I learned from a P.G. Wodehouse book. In it, the impecunious main character is touching a rich friend for a substantial loan. “Credit is the life-blood of commerce,” he reasons, “without which, the marts of trade lack elasticity.”

I remember the bank manager looking at me with what I took to be reverence, but might, I now realise, have been pity. Either out of fear or wisdom he signed off the rhino immediately.

As the heads of world governments gathered in London the other week to posture and bluster I sensed that these bank managers of the world’s economy have no more idea than my b.m. of what is afoot. Some, half admitting it, say that the situation is new.

But it is they who have created a financial world in which there are no fixed points, where all financial definition became fluid. Concepts that were once fixed to a defined quantity or essence for two or three hundred years, now roam around the place stretching their muscles and looking dazed. It’s as if your living room furniture had suddenly learned to waltz. Too late, the bank managers are realising that once exposed to the joys of free movement fiscal entities will not voluntarily chain themselves back to the oars. As the World War One song put it about soldiers exposed to the delights of the city: “How you gonna keep them down on the farm, After they’ve seen Paree?”.

But to come back to the beginning. I have decided to take over. Capitalism has clearly run its course. What we need is something to replace it. The following are my proposals – a simple Five Year Plan.

1) Year One. Introduce democracy. It has not been tried before. The people will vote legislation directly, using small voting computers the size of a remote control, releasing politicians from the necessity of fiddling their expenses and telling us that honesty in public life is critical.
2) Year Two. Build tumbrils and plenty of them. I don’t know why, it just seems prudent.
3) Year Three. Spangles will be reintroduced, and Opal Fruits will have their name restored.
4) Year Four. Those in favour of capital punishment will be guillotined. I knew we’d need those tumbrils.
5) Year Five. I finally succumb to pleas from many notable figures in the community to emerge from my private life in New Malden where I tend goats. My refusal to accept the title His Majesty, Roger, the Lord New Malden and a tax free pension for life of an undisclosed sum, is drowned out in a tumult of praise. Although much against so many of my principals, I am forced to accept the generous will of the people who wish to express their profound gratitude. A place of honour is prepared for me in the Pantheon. I die of a surfeit of Spangles, which are consequently outlawed, though some feel sure it was a conspiracy among Opal Fruits. Posthumously I am decorated with the Garter and made a Knight of the Goat. I am remembered with love and affection for minutes by a flock in New Malden. In time my legacy is reviewed by historians who agree that my single greatest achievement was the resurrection of the tumbril industry.