ABOUT CENSERN — AN ISLAND WHERE UTOPIA WILL BE FOUNDED

By Michael Fitzalan

Jaysen, a forensic accountant discovers why some of the Censern Island’s factories will be closing and why the disruptors will take their place. This is a comment on current business practices and a plea for compassionate corporate capitalism that will help restore humanity to the business world. Cut-throat business is a messy corporate suicide, which everyone ignores.

Michael Fitzalan is an author with three published books. He lives in Tooting, in south-west of London and this is his first satirical look at an ideal society, a Utopia for today.

‘About Censern Island Situation’ was a report by Jaysen Blunt this is how it came about and how it turned the fortunes of the island, creating the most successful economy in the world, the highest per capita wealth with the best health care and highest happiness rating of anywhere in the whole world. We start with numbers as Jaysen is a failed lawyer who became an accountant.

CONTENTS

Visit Number One — The Big Brewery

Visit Number Two — Batz Ice Cream

Visit Number Three — At the Damson Brewery

Visit Number Four — The Park.

Visit Number Five — The Farmhouse

Visit Number Six — Jaysen’s Hotel Room.

Visit Number Seven — The Oil Offices

Visit Number Eight — The Re-Jig Bakery

Visit Number Nine — Guests Come to the Hotel

Visit Number Ten — The Harbour Hospital

Visit Number Eleven — The Other Farm.

Visit Number Twelve — A Homestead

Visit Number Twelve — Homestead Continued

Visit Number One — The Behemoth Brewery

At the office of the Dabwasser Brewery, in the town of Fitzalan, in the Bay of St. Michael, there is a smell of malt mashing in the air.

We arrive at the office of the island’s largest brewery. Looking more like an oil refinery, there are large steel, grain silo-style, cylinders with curved crowns stabbing the sky and next to these is a rectangular, brick building that looks like a Victorian warehouse built to house herring or other fresh fish.

The office is spacious, an old factory storeroom, high ceilinged and vast, the huge desk is beside the industrial, factory, framed windows and looks dwarfed by the large space. Sitting behind the desk is Sven Boon, Managing Director of Dubwasser Brewery. Jaysen Blunt, chief accountant at Forensic United Chartered Accountants, strides confidently across the room like a prosecuting barrister returning to court to deliver the winning argument.

Sven: How was your flight?

He does not rise to meet his guest.

Why would he? He has been taught to, but he considers himself far too important to adopt ‘common courtesy’, the clue is in the common. He is one of those social climbers that believe that captains of industry are not hidebound by convention and frankly he cannot be bothered, he has not slept well since the board tried to limit his bonus at the last annual general meeting.

Jaysen: The flight was a smooth as silk.

He ignores the slight, he is used to it, self-important people, in his view, believe that they above all others and can behave like medieval ‘Lords of the Manor’, in the deluded belief that manners do not make man. Jaysen is used to entitlement removing the need for common decency. It is like a badge that allows you to forget any humanity once you feel you are rich enough. Secretly, Jaysen wonders where all the philanthropy has gone, Guinness and Peabody built houses for the poor, the super-wealthy buy yachts. He also regards bad-manners as inexcusable, especially in those who have been taught the importance of them but he lets the treatment slide to save him turning on his heel, returning home and losing his job.

Sven: Brilliant, the first class on our island airline is first rate. We’ll be joined by our office manager William Sturgeon. I hope you don’t mind.

Jaysen: Of course, I know that the Abens-Ruten-Co, the hedge fund took over the brewery and brought you in. What line were you in before?

Sven: I was in the shoe business. Then, three years ago, I was recruited from the mainland to increase sales domestically on the island and to improve our export business, selling to mainland

Jaysen: Can you talk me through how this led to you falling from the premium brewery on the island to becoming a struggling entity that I am visiting to try to prevent receivership?

Sven looks like he has just been given an electric shock, he is disturbed by the forensic frankness. His eyes widen and he feels the collar of his shirt seem to get tighter like a noose. His heart hammers and his pulse races but externally, he manages to cover up his consternation with a charming smile and a return to good manners. If he is going to excoriated, he wants everyone to be seated at least, most of all himself so that the trembling in his left leg will not reveal his guilt at taking on the job for financial gain, knowing it was too big a step for his brain.

Sven: Of course, the company’s problems started way before I joined.

Jaysen: Absolutely, I have seen the balance sheets.

Sven: They show a dip in profits before I joined.

Jaysen: And a catastrophic collapse after, how long? How long have you been here?

Sven: Three years, but it was difficult to stop the downward slide, but we have a new strategy.

Jaysen: Oh, I understand, totally. I’m just trying to get a grip on why this is the third restructuring and why it involves redundancy of key personnel.

Sven: Take a seat. Are you familiar with our product? It’s billed as the smoothest beer you’ll ever taste.

Jaysen: Of course, I’ve done my research. These seats are extremely comfortable, I can smell the leather.

Sven: Thank you, finest Connolly leather with goose down filling, nothing but the best for the boardroom and my office.

Jaysen: Absolutely and so much more pleasant than plastic. No doubt the refit was tax deductible, and you needed the office revamped when you moved in.

Sven: Absolutely, everything needed a refit in here, but we’re not profligate. Look the Abens people say we have to save money, so when we replace the carpets in the office we’ll replace the Axminster from the Wiltshire Carpet Agency that exists on the island with the polyester carpet from China.

Jaysen: But isn’t polyester toxic and responsible for sick building syndrome.

Sven: It won’t be in the executive offices just the support staff, the telesales and engineers, mostly, the brewery itself is tiled.

Jaysen: What if they find out that you’re systematically poisoning them? Won’t they go on strike or protest in some other way, perhaps? They might be a bit peeved.

Sven: No matter, they won’t mind They’re too terrified about losing their jobs to make a fuss. The oil companies have been poisoning people for years. First lead in petrol and then formaldehyde in diesel, no one cares. In fact, the rich people’s switch to diesel is scandalous. They could all afford electric cars, but they don’t care. We are allowed to poison people with impunity. Unemployment is rife on the island, we pay them a pittance. As long as the shareholders are happy and getting a dividend, nothing else matters.

Jaysen: They won’t be for long with your bottom line.

Sven: That’s why you’re here.

Jaysen: I thought so.

Sven: Someone has to carry the fuel can.

Jaysen: I suppose you drive electric?

Sven: Certainly not, I have a farm track to negotiate.

Jaysen: Of course, you bought that estate in the Dell Ben region, near the mountains, lovely.

Sven: It’s hilly. So, we need a diesel. Formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and acrolein, they’re all in there, you be horrified at the terrible toxins that I pump out, but the car has a filter so I’m safe. I’ve no children to worry about. If people worry about particles from diesel getting into people’s brains, lungs and placenta, the oil companies on the island just commission a study that shows particles are present in the air from rubber tyres. People give up even though rubber particles are a lot less harmful than formaldehyde and acetaldehyde in your organs. See it’s ever so easy. As I say, I have no kids so if I poison a cyclist it doesn’t bother me, one less person whizzing past me on my Sunday walk in the park. No one really cares, kids or not. I certainly don’t, global warming won’t have an effect on me.

Jaysen: Even if you do have kids, it wouldn’t matter, I saw that detective show on BBC, where the detective drove a BMW X7, she had a wife who was pregnant, and they still owned a diesel.

Sven: You could not illustrate my point more clearly.

Jaysen: That car’s massive and they’re twice the price of an electric car. They were a modern couple, I thought they’ll have an electric car especially with a baby on the way, no they just had to have the biggest car ever.

Sven: See what I mean. We’ve known diesel is more toxic than petrol for years, but the P.R. people got hold of it, told everyone it was less polluting, and they believed it, even got Gordon Brown in England saying so.

Jaysen: I thought that, too.

Sven: Gullible, or what? Have you seen the sooty black clouds coming out of the exhaust when you start the engine. Diesel has been shown to be four times as polluting a petrol. Who cares? So, we’ll save money on the carpets in the offices, Chinese nylon and the Abens people will be pleased.

Jaysen: That’s very good, sir. Sadly, I read that you sell ninety per cent of your product to the carpet weavers. If everyone does this they’ll be a disaster.

Sven: Don’t worry, I met the Managing Directors at the Island Industry Conference and they’re all doing it. Standard practise, buy cheap.

Jaysen: Homegrown jobs just destroyed for the sake of a few hundred quid per office. Your sales will suffer.

Sven: You shouldn’t be so melodramatic, we’ll get the sales team to get new markets and they’ll make up the same sales we’ve lost in other markets. All will be well.

Jaysen: So why am I here?

Sven: To give me a reason to sack my office manager, Sturgeon, he should be with us soon.

Jaysen: That’s not really what my job is, sir.

Sven: It is now.

Jaysen: I think you are mistaken about sales, it’s not that easy. Your attitude of ‘everything is for the best’ is positively Panglossian.

Sven: All is for the best in this ‘best all of possible worlds’.

The intercom on the desk, a small white box, from another era, lights up. Sven presses a button talks into the speaker to invite William Sturgeon into the lion’s den. They all greet each other, and Will is offered a chair.

Jaysen: Good morning Mr. Sturgeon, I’m Jaysen from the forensic accountants, we’re here to see what’s going wrong and how we can fix it.

Will: Good morning, please, call me Will.

Jaysen: Of course, and you can call me Jay. So how long have you been with the brewery?

Will: Twenty years. I joined when we made beer.

Jaysen: And you don’t, now?

Will: We are no longer brewers but chemists.

Jaysen: Profitable chemists.

Will: Not now, if it weren’t for the Carpet Weavers Club, we wouldn’t have many sales at all. The bar is subsidised by the company, and we offer a huge discount to them. It’s almost twenty-five per cent.

Jaysen: That’s your profit on the beer.

Will: Just about.

So, what’s gone wrong?

Will: Let me show you a film from fifteen years ago.

Leaning forward, Will slips a phone from his pocket and stabs a few buttons and miraculously the far wall becomes a white screen, a projector slides from its home in the roof and projects an image of the brewery trade mark of a waterfall inside a pint glass. The logo underneath reads: The most refreshing Beer on the Island of Censern fresh from the brewery in St. Michael. The films starts when Will presses his phone keypad.

He explains the video was shot when Dubwasser moved to the island. The announcer speaks to the camera as he moves around stainless-steel vessels. Slowly, it dawns on Jaysen that the narrator and guide, in the film, is Will in his late twenties.

Jaysen: That’s you, Will, you look so young!

Will: It was ten years ago when I first started to work for the company.

Announcer: We only use the finest hops and best malt, apart from adding yeast and water those are our main ingredients. We ferment the beer until it reaches five per cent to give it a hit and fuller flavour. It’s a premium price but a premium product. You deserve a decent pint.

Sven: It is the best, the best in this ‘best all of possible worlds’.

Will on the speaker as the narrator: Your hard-earned cash cannot be better spent if you’re having a beer after work or with friends at the weekend. The film pauses.

Sven: Young Will was part of a promotional video we put out that some bright spark decided to turn into an advert. In those days we had seventy-five per cent of the island’s market for beer and it was growing.

Jaysen: You could do with those sort of sales. now!

Will: We certainly could. But the quality’s not there, now.

Jaysen: Explain what you mean, that’s interesting.

Will: Let me take you around the factory.

Sven: Please limit your brewery tour to the bare minimum, I need Jaysen back for lunch at twelve.

Will: Shall I send up some beer from the sample room for your lunch?

Ben: Certainly not, it’s bilge, we have a couple of bottles of Chassagne Montrachet to drink. The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll be back.

Will: Thank you, sir.

Leaving the office, Jaysen and Will walk towards the vertical flow brewery.

Jaysen: What happens here?

Will: This is the mash tun area where traditionally malt is boiled to create a mash.

Jaysen: I can’t smell malt.

Will: Oh, we add that later as an artificial flavour and we send steam out of a chimney smelling of malt to add to the authenticity.

Jaysen: So that’s why I smelt malt, I thought you were mashing in when I arrived this morning.

Will: We haven’t used real malt in our brewing for years, the accountants tell us it’s too expensive, so we pick cheaper alternatives.

Jaysen: What do you use instead?

Will: Rice and sugar.

Jaysen: Why?

Will: It’s cheaper.

Jaysen: Is that it?

Will: It’s not for flavour.

Jaysen : What about your claim to only use only malt and hops?

Will: We no longer talk about malt and hops. We make no claims.

Jaysen: So, rice is the carbohydrate and protein, the sugar turns it into alcohol.

Will: You know it, it doesn’t taste the same, but the accountants insist we keep the price the same and make more profit, so we borrowed the idea from the mainland, they’ve been ‘brewing’ like this for many years. They spend millions on advertising and people buy enough of the product to keep the brands going.

Jaysen: Interesting. I’ve witnessed 300 beer brands disappearing despite local and national adverting campaigns.

Will: I have to admit that many of the beers we grew up with, or drank as teenagers, have gone.

Jaysen: And where do you add the hops? I haven’t seen any vessels. I was once told that adding hops at the beginning of the boil will create bitterness, the hops added during the middle of the boil will create flavour, and the hops added at the end of the boil will create aroma.

Will: We don’t add hops at any stage.

Jaysen: What? But beer is made of malt, hops and water. I’m incredulous! You do not add hops to your beer.

Will: No, just hop flavour, it comes in a liquid.

Jaysen: So, no hops at all.

Will: The flavour of hops goes in, the chemists have formulated a facsimile of what they feel has the same flavour and we add the essence.

Jaysen: A beer with hop oil.

Will: We do add hop pellets at the end, but they get smaller and smaller each year, more like a pill than a pellet. They used to be fuel cap size.

Jaysen: What yeast do you use?

Will: We don’t use yeast any more, we just use enzymes. This is John Andams our chief chemist.

John: Pleased to meet you. Don’t let Ben hear you, but we’re basically now just a chemical plant, it’s more chemistry than brewing.

Jaysen: So, let me get this right, correct me if I’m wrong. You used to use malt hops, water and yeast to make your product, which created its own carbonation.

John: Yes, that’s how brewing works, the sugars in the malt turn into alcohol when yeast is added to the wort or liquid and left to ferment, we add hops to balance the flavour of the ale and make it bitter.

Jaysen: I see

John: The yeast works on the sugars in the liquid and converts the maltose into alcohol, but you know all this surely, you’ve visited enough breweries, haven’t you? We make more money if we cut corners.

Jaysen: I just wanted clarity. So instead of malt, you use rice and sugar, is that right?

John: Yes, the accountants told us the malt was too expensive.

Jaysen: Rice and sugar aren’t on the ingredients.

John: To be fair, if you look at most beers, they just call themselves beer and technically they are. If they do put the ingredients on the label, they might chuck in a spoonful of malt and a pellet of hops in every batch of 100 barrels — 3,600 gallons or slightly over 12,000 litres. It’s gone in the tank so it’s an ingredient.

Jaysen: It’s slightly misleading wouldn’t you say.

John: All industries do it. Stick a Censern flag on a jacket and even though it came from Bangladesh, you can pass it off as finished or even made in Censern.

Jaysen: Is there any integrity in business anymore?

John: Brewing is a complicated process.

Jaysen: Not according to the craft brewers.

John: They are often referred to as the reason for our dire sales.

Jaysen: So why not use cheaper malt?

John: No such thing. Malt is an expensive commodity. At scale, you have to make sure there are no impurities. Breweries have blown up when that has happened, moving malt in augurs, a stone gets in, a spark and then, boom. Extra care has to be taken. Malt has to be spread on the floor and dampened, left for days.

Will: John’s right it is very costly to make malt because the cereal grain is converted into malt by soaking it in water, allowing it to sprout and then drying it to stop further growth, it takes skill, time and patience.

Jaysen: I get that. I understand. So why use rice and sugar, which doesn’t have the sophisticated different flavours or top notes of say a chocolate malt or a pale malt?

John: Cost cutting. As the administration keeps increasing tax on beer, we have to save money, or the cost of beer will rise.

Jaysen: That’s madness, the product is meant to be quality.

John: The consumer doesn’t realise.

Jaysen: I beg to differ. You are the only lager brewery on the island and yet your sales have dropped. Why?

John: Maybe people are switching from lager and the craft beers.

Jaysen: I’ve done research. Your sales have dropped forty per cent. Imports of lager have increased by forty per cent.

Will: Are you suggesting our customers are switching to imported lager?

Jaysen: Yes, the figures speak for themselves.

Will: But the imported beer is more expensive than ours.

Jaysen: Yes, but it tastes better.

John: We know that you can’t compete if you don’t use malt, these imports all have eastern European malt in them, much cheaper and it gives a rounder taste.

Jaysen: Yet the product has been shipped miles and is more costly for the consumer. The customer, who you think doesn’t care or can’t tell the difference, is choosing to buy the more expensive beer because it is a better-quality product, and they can tell the difference between your product and the imported beers.

Will: I’m sure they can’t .

Jaysen: They clearly can. What’s your solution?

John: We can’t change the process, we spent thousands on the new plant to cope with the increased production we were anticipating.

Jaysen: Before you tried to cheat the consumer by changing the product and fobbing them off with an inferior product.

John: That’s going a bit too far.

Will: I suppose it’s true.

Jaysen: You’ve just told me you use rice, sugar and water, enzymes and hop oil instead of proper hops. Your advertising five years ago was based around the purity of your product, and the three main ingredients added to water, which are malt, hops and yeast. Now, you only use water.

Will: We used to use water from a spring but now we just use the mains water. Of course, we have to add a water softener.

Jaysen: So, you produce a completely different product; the only similarity to the product that brought you profits is the beer has the same name.

Will: If the accountants say that we should substitute, we do as they say.

Jaysen: So, what’s your solution to the problem, Sven?

John: Sven’s asked us to bring down the specific gravity to ten point three six.

Jaysen: You started off at five per cent alcohol, and you’ve brought it down to four point two; that’s just over four per cent and your sales have dropped and now you want to drop it to three point six per cent, that’s a specific gravity of ten-thirty-six, which is weaker still? You’re flogging a premium beer, which is normally 5 per cent and you want to brew it at just over 3.5 per cent, it will taste so different.

Will: It will save us money on the duty.

Jaysen: Yes, but your drinkers are already drinking imports at five per cent, they will taste the difference.

John: Not necessarily.

Jaysen: Yes, definitely.

Will: We will keep the price the same.

Jaysen: Your former customers are already paying twenty-five per cent more for a proper product.

John: I think the tours over.

Jaysen and Will watch John storm off.

Will: This is serious.

Jaysen: I reckon you’ll lose another forty per cent when the change occurs.

Will: Seriously?

Jaysen: At least; time for you to work for one of the other two breweries.

Will: I’ve always enjoyed Godson’s beers.

Jaysen: The Black Horse is delicious.

Will: And five per cent. Strong enough.

Jaysen: I’d apply today. Who’s your largest customer?

Will: The carpet weavers, their bar is a social club, and they get a subsidy from the company so our beer’s half price.

Jaysen: So, people can drink twice as much. I get the picture.

Will: Yes, I think they provide twenty per cent of our trade.

Jaysen: That’s not to be sniffed at.

Will: It’s a big factory and the weavers have weddings, christenings and funerals there, well the receptions and wakes for those events because the church is a short walk, its practically the next to the factory. Without trying to be funny, the carpet factory is woven into the fabric of this part of the island.

Jaysen: I’m afraid that twenty per cent is going to fade.

Will: Because we’re diluting the beer too much?

Jaysen: No, the Island Business Consortium will kill it?

Will: The eye bee see? How?

Jaysen: Sven was telling me that all the businesses have agreed to buy nylon carpets from the Far East for every single refit over the next five years.

Will: But aren’t they responsible for sick building syndrome.

Jaysen: Don’t worry, the executive rooms will have wool carpets still.

Will: The only executive room in the whole building is Sven’s.

Jaysen: Oh, I see.

Will: Without any new contracts, the carpet factory will close.

Jaysen: In eighteen months, I reckon.

Will: Taking our trade with it.

Jaysen: You still have the pubs.

Will: They’ve been losing customers as we refuse to stock other beers but our own.

Jaysen: This is a mess. What will happen to all the workers at the carpet factory.

Will: What about here?

Jaysen: They’ll all go eventually, you won’t be able to sustain the dividend and CEO’s salary. Sven will most probably go back to running a shoe factory on the mainland.

Will: It’s a disaster.

Jaysen: That’s what happens when you read the Ladybird Books, ‘How to Run a Business in Victorian Britain’ and the ‘W.H. Smith Guide to Cost Cutting in Industry’?

Will: I’m glad you think me losing my job is funny. Why didn’t we listen to the salesmen and production people.

Jaysen: Why did you take the advice of accountants who know nothing about the business who have never owned a commercial enterprise, and do not understand your industry? You should know that they only ever look at the bottom-line.

Will: Sven thought we could cut cost and the sales force would make up any lost sales.

Jaysen: A sales force can’t compete with the imported brands; they’re selling an inferior product. The consumer will always go with quality at a fair price. Try to extract more than the product is worth and they’ll buy their beer elsewhere, try and fob them off with inferior products and they’ll never buy from you again.

Will: Where’s that from?

Jaysen: The book of Common Sense.

Will: What will happen?

Jaysen: The weavers will go, the brewery might do a reciprocal deal with another so they swap products, but no profit will be made, the facility will be kept running but will never make any money.

Will: I’ve seen it before on another island.

Jaysen: I’ve seen it, too often.

Will: I’m sure you have. In this case, the brewers imported an Australian beer that sold phenomenally well. Then, they moved to brewing the imported lager that doubled their sales but the accountants insisted on cost savings so they made the product weaker and weaker until people used to say don’t take the wee out of Tara-wum Lager, it needs all the flavour it can get. Within two years the brewery was turned into conference centre.

Jaysen: I’m not surprised.

Will: it’s a travesty, the brewery had been running since the seventeenth century and was destroyed in less than five years.

Jaysen: It happens all the time. Well, I’m off to see Batz Ice Cream and I advise you to start polishing up your C.V. before you face redundancy.

Will: Thank you for visiting us today, you’ve saved my bacon.

Jaysen; That’s strange, I think Batz use bacon fat in their products.

第 1.02 节 Visit Number Two — Batz Ice Cream

Jaysen walks into an almost identical office to the brewery he has just visited, except that all the walls are plastered, painted salmon pink and have pictures of ice cream vans and different ice cream brands on them.

Jaysen: All the offices look the same.

Adam: I’m afraid we all use the same warehouses, all designed by the same architect and built in the same year, 1888, if I recall correctly. We were a fishing island, herring, the most delicious of fish or so my grandmother tried to convince me. We stored and smoked kippers here and when the fashion for fish for breakfast waned so did our fortunes. We were not so much kippered but scuppered.

Jaysen: You’ve been skipper here for two years?

Adam: In February, absolutely right. I’ve learnt a lot about the business.

Jaysen: So, you’re new to ice cream.

Adam: If you can call it that, yes, I’m not an ice cream man born to the ice cream van. I grew up here and went to the army, then business school and worked for Zach and Mary, a premium ice cream operation in Maryland, we turned the Maryland operation into the Dairyland operation. I wanted to educate my children at home so when the post came up here it seemed like a good fit.

Jaysen: Yet the company is still in dire straits, is that correct?

Adam: I’m afraid so, quality brands are outselling us three to one. We were the premier brand twenty years ago with 90 per cent sales, now we’ll be lucky to muster twenty per cent.

Jaysen: So, what went wrong?

Adam: That’s what I wanted to know, I’ve asked for our production manager to come and see you here, he should be here within the next two minutes.

Jaysen: That’s very precise.

Adam: He is, that’s why we put him in charge of production.

Jaysen: Got it.

Adam, hearing a knock at the door: Come in.

Tom: Good morning, Adam, your secretary said I should come straight in.

Adam: Absolutely, Jaysen, Tom and I meet every morning at seven, so we’ve pretty much caught up. Tom Manning is our production manager and the most valuable member of the new team. Let me introduce you to Jaysen, Jaysen Blunt, chief accountant at Forensic United Chartered Accountants.

Tom: Pleased to meet you, ignore Adam, he thinks everyone is the most valuable member of the team, except himself, he never puts enough value on his contribution.

Jaysen: You seem a happy collegiate, buoyant steamship, so what’s the problem?

Tom: The amount of air in ice cream affects the taste, texture and appearance of the finished product. Higher aeration will produce a tastier and smoother ice cream.

Adam: A side effect of aeration is that the ice cream tends to melt quicker.

Jaysen: I appreciate you are keeping it simple for the layman, lawyer and accountant but we’ve all had our hands covered in ice cream when we’ve bought a ninety-nine or a Mr Whippy. It’s part of the experience.

Tom: The secret, I find is to bite a hole in the bottom and suck the ice cream through the end of the cone, it does involve titling your head back so it can be difficult to eat it on the move.

Adam: I just demolish as much of the ice cream in a few seconds as I can, leaving a small alpine peak that does not leak too much on the crispy cone.

Jaysen: I think I’m the only traditionalist in the room, eat the chocolate flake first and then slowly lick towards the peak, maybe my technique is wrong, but I always end up with ice-cream on the back of my fist.

Tom: There’s no right way or wrong to eat ice-cream. It’s the right way of making it that counts.

Adam: We sell ice cream by the litre not by the kilogramme.

Tom: Since air is free and ice cream is sold by volume rather than weight, economy ice creams tend to contain lots of air.

Adam: Whereas premium ice creams have less air, to create a luxurious, creamy mouth-feel, our brand has over seventy per cent aeration.

Jaysen: So, what’s the standard.

Tom: Looking back at the records, forty years ago, when this ice cream had ninety-five per cent of the market, the aeration was five per cent.

Adam: Most economy ice creams are aerated to about fifty percent.

Jaysen: So Batz was a premium product and sold well, with its five per cent.

Tom: From the records, it would suggest that.

Jaysen: So, what’s the problem?

Tom: Most of our competitors’ ice cream consists of fifty per cent aeration, the other fifty per cent is made of fat globules, ice crystals and sugar.

Jaysen: Hence the fact you put pork fat in the ice cream.

Tom: Of course, but that’s never been the problem.

Jaysen: For Muslim and Jewish customers it might be.

Tom: True.

Adam: The point is that we went from five per cent aeration to seventy-five per cent.

Jaysen: Wow! Okay let’s get this right, seventy-five.

Tom: The accountants insisted we charge the same but find cost-cutting measures. Once the production team had sourced the cheapest sugar beet rather than sugar cane. the cheapest flavours, aeration was the next step.

Jaysen: Why didn’t you say something?

Tom: I tried but they would not listen you cannot have much influence against accountants, I was just a flavour enhancer injector, nothing more or less.

Jaysen: That’s a shame. So, the product was compromised from the start.

Adam : Then, the American premium brands come in with 20 per cent aeration but with a superior product at a premium price and they still take away all our trade.

Jaysen: So, the public noticed the difference in quality and taste and were prepared to pay a steeper price for a product that delivered in taste and quality.

Tom: Exactly and the accountants told us no one would notice the difference.

Jaysen: How little they knew.

Tom: They chipped away at our costs consistently, and now we have twenty-five per cent of the sales, half the workforce and American brands continue to beat us hands down.

Jaysen: So why not produce a premium product?

Tom: We tried, test marketed and sampled it throughout the island but the trust in the brand has gone. People say you’d be bats to buy Batz ice-cream. We reduced the aeration, returned to sugar cane and proper vanilla pods from Madagascar but like a restaurant, once you get a bad reputation for poor quality, it’s almost impossible to shake off that stigma.

Jaysen: I presume you’ve been brought in to sugar the deal with the Americans and make their product under licence.

Adam: Precisely that; it’s the only way we can keep the factory going.

Jaysen: This is depressing.

Adam: We’ll have wafer thin margins, if you’ll pardon the pun but the worker’s jobs will be secure.

Jaysen: Really, how?

Adam: Naturally, lots of the workforce will retire over the next five years and recruitment has been frozen, though I’d like to get some more sales people, my budget will not allow it.

Jaysen: An ice cream firm with its assets frozen would be the only other option. (No one reacted to Jaysen’s facile comment). So, you’ll be a satellite for the America company.

Adam: With a correspondingly small status and cuts in salaries all around. The last CEO sent his children to the mainland to board school, I’ll be lucky to afford the nursery fees on the island.

Tom: My wife is a nursery nurse, otherwise I’d be back on the ferry, looking for work.

Jaysen: At least the government invests in public services.

Adam: I wouldn’t bank on it, we haven’t made a profit for five years so there’s no corporation tax taken from us.

Tom: There’s rumours that Dabwasser is going under and that will take out another raft of tax funding. The island’s going to pot.

Adam: To hell in a handcart.

Jaysen: So why is that?

Tom: We’re bleeding people to the mainland. There are more opportunities there, salaries are higher and frankly there’s a better infrastructure.

Adam: We’re allowing too much unfettered immigration. That’s our biggest problem, it’s putting a strain on services and leading to rising crime.

Tom: Not that old chestnut.

Jaysen: I’m confused, didn’t you invite people to come to the island as the population shrank so much during the war. You didn’t have enough people to run simple services and enough of a workforce to provide a ‘tax-take’ to run those services. There’s no money in the government’s kitty because you’re not generating profits.

Adam: We did need some more people, but it’s gone too far.

Jaysen: Not according to my figures, the population of the island has only just reached the size it was before the war.

Tom: And for the last fifty years, since the war, we’ve had signs saying: ‘No dogs, No pet snakes and No Mainlanders’ outside practically every single lodging house on the island. It’s ridiculous and you’re a Mainlander, anyhow.

Adam: I know but we don’t need more of them.

Tom: So, they gave you a ladder when you were drowning and now you’re pulling it up, leaving them to drown.

Jaysen: Let’s move on, I don’t think my investigation into the financial health of the company includes political discussion.

Tom: I’ve prepared the figures for you on this flash-drive, Adam’s got you a room for your work and you can leave the flash-drive at reception when you leave.

Adam: It should take you about an hour to harvest the data you need, but we’re giving you the boardroom for the whole day, so take as long as you like. We’ll check in occasionally to see if you want any more coffee or tea, but you should have calm and privacy in there.

Tom: If you need any more figures you can get reception to buzz me.

Jaysen: It should be straightforward, thank you.

Adam: You’re right. One thing we can do is produce diamond-hard information. Which company are you going to see, next?

Jaysen: I’m off to see Damson’s, the brewery overlooking the dam.

Tom: It’s a wonderful place, you’ll love it. They do a wonderful lunch at the Devil’s Dam Hotel, their trout terrine and baked carp are famous around here.

Jaysen: Thank you both for enlightening me; I feel I know the process well. Thank you for explaining the product and being frank about your corporate situation.

Tom: A problem shared and all that.

Adam: To be frank, we were selling an inferior product, thinking the consumer was too stupid to notice. They voted with their feet and our reputation is in tatters. Our customers switched to a premium product that was imported because it tasted good.

Tom: I think Adam is right there; we’re trying to rebuild the brand by increasing quality and ingredients but we’re in a nose dive and we might not be able to pull up.

Jaysen: I see it all the time, businesses follow some accountancy firm’s advice to cut costs without regard for the quality of the product. I’ve seen it all over the place.

Tom: Is it that common?

Jaysen: All too common, I’m afraid. The product suffers, the sales drop and then the product disappears from the shelves. It happens on the mainland as well. It’s a sorry state of affairs but I blame the companies. They should use accountants wisely, to keep cost under control but they should never let them interfere with the integrity of the product under any circumstances.

Adam: Accountants have too much say and too much power on the island.

Jaysen: I’m beginning to see that.

Tom: It think it might be too late, though.

Adam: We’ll be okay when the Americans take us over.

Jaysen: Will you really?

Tom: We won’t get more than a pittance for our license agreement.

Jaysen: Granted.

Adam: Also, half the factory staff will go and so will most of the salesforce. They won’t trust us with selling their product as theirs is premium, they won’t want to taint their product with a salesforce that’s been selling synthetic flavours, sugar and air instead of ice cream to the public and treating customers like idiots over decades. It’s not really a win for the community is it?

Jaysen: You’ll still be paid won’t you?

Adam: I would like to have turned this company around.

Jaysen: We all have dreams.

第 1.03 节 Visit Number Three — At the Damson Brewery

Simon Atticus sweeps into The Devil’s Dam Hotel, he is wearing a wide brimmed fedora hat, a woollen, striped scarf of motley autumn shades, ochre and tangerine, to name but two, and a brown, soft wool trench coat as well as a devilish grin on his face. A firm handshake and eye contact faze Jaysen who can manage either one of those but not both at the same time. Simultaneously, looking down at his shoes and trying to grip Simon’s hand in a manly clench is too much for him. Instead of feeling embraced by Simon’s warmth, he looks awkward. He should have stuck to being a barrister, but he kept on getting details of the cases wrong and laughing at inappropriate moments. Figures did not have feelings, so he was happier out of chambers, away from the bar and much happier playing with his abacus.

Simon: Welcome to the Devil’s Hotel, it’s our brewery’s latest addition.

Jaysen: It’s nice to be out of the warehouses in the docks. I felt like I was in the Victorian Workhouse.

Simon: Yes, this is the old turbine hall, but they thoughtfully put lots of window space in to cut down on use of electric lighting.

Jaysen: Well, the views are better. Warehouse onto warehouse wears a bit thin, the view of the hills reminds me of Shropshire.

Simon: I hope you like the carp here, caught fresh from the reservoir this morning, can’t get fresher fish.

Jaysen I’ve heard good things about their trout terrine here and I understand the baked carp are famous on the island.

Simon: You’re my guest. I thought we’d have the Pouilly Fume unless you prefer Sancerre.

Jaysen: I’m more of a chardonnay man, I see they have Cullen’s chardonnay on the list, I’ll get the wine.

Simon: As you wish.

Jaysen: So how are things with the company. I understand your family own the majority of the company, you’re CEO and Joseph Damson is the Managing Director with David Block taking over from you next year.

Simon: You’ve done your research.

Jaysen; You had a turnover of 30 million and your half yearly loses were £2.4 mill, readily available on the internet.

Simon: You’re not talking out of school. It’s well known on the island that we’re in trouble.

Jaysen: So, what happened, you were telling me on the phone that twenty years ago you were unstoppable, you had doubled your turnover and were extremely profitable.

Simon: Joseph hated the fact that William Fitzwilliam had started the Doll-Fin brewery, which was the first brewery in Dublin since 1900 and he wanted to teach him a lesson.

Jaysen: But you sold more beer in the city than you did in the seventy pubs you own, so you produced twice as much as your pubs needed. Sounds sweet.

Simon: It was until Joseph had his brilliant idea. You see he was never a salesman and he forgot that despite everything, you cannot conjure up sales out of thin air. The free trade in brewing is cut throat. There is very little loyalty amongst the publicans unless your beer sells well.

Jaysen: And yours did.

Simon: Yes while Doll-Fin were looking after it, they got the beer into the yacht clubs, the universities’ college bars, the iconic pubs, restaurants and even into tied houses where the beer was meant to be only from one source.

Jaysen: So, what went wrong?

Simon: Joseph went wrong. He decided we no longer need an agent in Dublin, and we should go in directly.

Jaysen: Oh, no!

Simon: Yes, Doll-Fin had a network of salesmen on the ground, a reputation for great service and built our business up from scratch.

Jaysen: Anecdotally, I heard you dropped off a nine-gallon barrel in Kidney Bay and Will took it to a pub in a wealthy suburb, called the Angel-Tree Arms . He built it up into an order of 72 gallons in two weeks and 154 in a month.

Simon: Full marks for homework, though we call the nine-gallon barrels a firkin, he very quickly orders four kilderkins, then four barrels, you are quite right. He built up our business for us impressively; we had no idea he’d be so effective. Our products started appearing all over and most importantly in the financial district bars, which had a phenomenal trade. Work hard, play hard.

Jaysen: Within six months, he was taking a truckload every week, I’ve seen the figures, increasing the barrelage sold each year for seven years by about 12 per cent per year.

Simon: Again, faultless forensics.

Jaysen: It’s my job.

Simon: So, Joseph decides to save the twenty quid they charge to deliver the beer and deal direct through our own distribution service, hoping that Doll-Fin, losing seventy-five per cent of their trade, would fold and we would take their market share.

Jaysen: That didn’t happen.

Simon: Not exactly. We disappeared from the city completely except the automobile club, yacht club and one pub. Without the Doll-Fin sales team looking after the customers, we had no presence; their deliverymen were also wonderful, and their telesales were second to none. We had none of that, they had three salesmen, we had none. Our trade collapsed. It halted.

Jaysen: That’s quite a story.

Simon: It was a disaster. Doll-Fin sold as much as our seventy pubs did altogether in a year. So, we had seventy pubs and a wonderful, profitable wholesale business. Over next month the brewery sales were cut in half. Can you imagine? Half our trade went, we had to sack people for the first time since 1977 when Doll-Fin first started with us. Thank goodness, we owned the pubs, and our wine merchant division was doing well.

Jaysen: What did you do?

Simon: Sadly, I was too ill at the time to intervene, the treatment for my cancer would not allow me to work and there were complications with my health before and after, which had forced me to step down. Then, Joseph was left in charge for another ten years, running the brewery into the ground.

Jaysen: I gather you were too unwell to force him to step down.

Simon: Yes, if that hadn’t happened, we would never have severed our ties with Doll-Fin and would have had ten years of double sales.

Jaysen: Perhaps more, from what I can gather, the brewery was expanding and taking you with it.

Simon: When it was gone, we very quickly settled back into our old turnover, which of course led to reduced profits. We were a public company, and the shareholders knew nothing except their dividends were reduced, naturally, we had poor profits and eventually losses as we needed to reinvest in our pubs and plant.

Jaysen: The company is making a small loss, but you have an estate of seventy pubs. That’s got to be worth 3.5 million, surely?

Simon: If we’re selling our beer through reciprocal deals, we make no money.

Jaysen: Reciprocal means you swap out products gallon for gallon.

Simon: Correct.

Jaysen: So, no profit on either side.

Simon: Indeed, that’s the case. We take a lager from another brewery, and they take an equal value of beer from us and as a result no money is made.

Jaysen: A painful position to be in. It doesn’t help your bottom line but at least the mash tuns and production were working at a higher rate than they might be otherwise.

Simon: True but what a waste. This is the legacy of the asinine scion of the namesake family does not realise. He sacrificed our city trade to bolster his prestige; the result is we have no presence in the city.

Jaysen: There’s a lot of beers around now.

Simon: There were, then, but we had Doll-Fin to help our balance sheet. They had built up pubs totally loyal to them and to our beers.

We could not have hoped for more loyal and consistent customers. It made us profitable from 1977 to 1982.

Jaysen: What was Joseph up to?

Simon: Settling old scores, he hated their success, after all he had inherited his position and here was a new brewery started by someone more dynamic. Joseph, the dullard thought our beer sold itself, needed no sales team or support network, no one to supply spiles, pipe clearing fluid and check the customer has everything and the product is selling well. The fundamentals of sales were ignored, and our beer was subsequently dismissed. You can find it here or there but again we are not selling it, we are swapping it for lager that generally doesn’t sell well in our pubs except with the teenagers who know no better.

Jaysen: I can see your problem and feel your frustration. If you had not been ill the lunatics would not have taken over the asylum and all would be well.

Simon: Let’s not dwell on the past, let’s discuss the plans for the future.

第 1.04 节 Visit Number Four — The Park.

Jaysen: I’ll go for a walk in the park.

Simon: Enjoy the fresh air, it will be a change from the atmosphere of festering failure in this brewery.

Jaysen walks through the park in the summer sunshine. He passes a woman and a pushchair, smiling at the baby and the mother.

Jaysen: It does get easier.

She smiles at him but does not stop or speak. A cyclist rings his bell, but Jaysen ignores it. The cyclist stops beside him when the pushchair has passed Jaysen.

Cyclist: Didn’t you hear my bell.

Jaysen: Yes, I did but I thought you were warning someone behind me.

Cyclist: I was letting you know you were in my way.

Jaysen: Surely this is a footpath, a shared space, if you want to go fast, you can stick to the road, it’s only a short detour of five minutes. You can share the space with cars and ring your little bell with impunity.

Cyclist: Are you trying to be funny?

Jaysen: Who has the power here? You do. I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. You have control, you can speed up and stop much more easily than me when there is a hazard ahead.

Cyclist: I was only warning you I was here.

Jaysen: On a footpath which is a shared space? I think not. It is up to you to move around me not the other way around.

Cyclist: Why am I wasting my time talking to a knobhead.

Jaysen: Your use of insults shows you have lost the argument. If you want to use your bell, I suggest you use the main road where you have right of way; here I have right of way, the clue is in the title: footpath.

Cyclist: I ought to wipe that smile off your face.

Jaysen: A bully and violent, I suggest you get some therapy. I assume you used your bell because I was in your way, and you were late. Hadn’t you better get off?

Cyclist: Don’t let me see you here, again, or else.

Jaysen: I’m a blue belt in judo, if you got off your high horse, you’d find out that intimidation is not accepted in a civilised society.

Cyclist: Tosser.

Jaysen: Get help while you can.

Cyclist: Sod off!

Jaysen: I rest my case.

Cyclist: Bloody Mainlanders. We don’t need you here clogging up the footpaths.

Jaysen: Again, you are wrong, you’d be screwed without us, we provide seventy-five per cent of your workforce, we get you to work, heal your sick, do the jobs you can’t or won’t and yet you despise us. Our help is scorned.

After lunch with Simon and hearing his expansion plans and plans for new products, which he has to keep confidential even from you, the reader, Simon was in a good mood.

He decides that the cyclist, bully that he was, is not going to spoil his tour of the public park next to the lakeside brewery. Arriving at the edge of the park, Jaysen approaches the roundabout. Sitting on a tree stump is a girl holding her ankle which is crossed over one leg. She is crying. A large man stands next to her, holding his phone to his ear, and two passers-by, joggers are standing in the path.

Jaysen: Is everyone okay?

Man with Phone: She’s conscious. We need an ambulance.

Jaysen to the passers-by: What happened?

Man with phone: She’s conscious but I’m having to support her. It’s an emergency. I think she’s losing consciousness.

Jaysen processed the blatant lie, knowing that a heart attack victim could die because paramedics were diverted from an emergency to deal with someone who fell off a bike and hurt her foot.

Jaysen, looking at the man with the phone: It’s not an emergency. Hang up. You’ll have a four hour wait for an ambulance, I’ll book her an Uber and have her in Accident and Emergency before the ambulance is even dispatched.

Man on phone: What’s my location? At the edge of the park by the roundabout.

Jaysen: Really, let’s not waste time. I’ll get her to hospital, she can sit up so she can walk.

Man on the phone: We’ll get her to A and E.

Jaysen is flabbergasted by someone calling an ambulance for a tumble off a bike. His brother is a paramedic, instead of saving lives in real emergencies like a heart attack or a stabbing, he is dispatched to people who lie about the severity of their injury just to get moved up the queue. An ambulance he muses is an emergency vehicle for emergencies; a company is a body that sells to customers for customers.

They meet a need, dishonesty and chicanery have no place when making that call and no place when serving the company’s customers.

第 1.05 节 Visit Number Five — The Farmhouse

Sitting in a farmhouse next to an Aga, sipping a cup of tea, Jaysen, waits for Patrick to deliver a crumpet dripping in melted butter.

Patrick: You can enjoy that without feeling guilty, the Aga runs on electricity generated from our farm’s windmills and solar panels, we have under floor heating and heat exchangers in the dairy. We are totally self-sufficient for energy. We run our tractors on methane, our cars are electric or hybrid depending on their use. Our only problem is water but that’s going to be one of the key issues for everyone with global warming.

Jaysen: Sadly, you’re right but you seem to be able to farm and brew without much trouble.

Patrick: On the surface, yes and we benefit from a well, if we had a spring, we could really do well.

Jaysen: So, I’ve seen a large brewery that is being kept float by one customer that will soon close.

Patrick: They say you can’t take the piss out of their beer, it needs all the flavour it can get.

Jaysen: I heard that from their brewing staff. Sorry, their chemists, I didn’t mean to insult you.

Patrick: No slight taken.

Jaysen: Then, I went to see a medium sized brewery that had sacked its agent in the mainland, failed to employ an adequate salesforce and were surprised they had lost market share.

Patrick: What are they left with?

Jaysen: Just one customer of any merit, they could only grip onto a club bar where one of committee members was on the brewery’s board and the rest of their small trade was reciprocal.

Patrick: Pretty standard practise.

Jaysen: The agent on the mainland had sold more beer annually than the brewery sold in their seventy pubs on the island until the changed the formula. It’s all crazy. How can you survive with your brewery?

Patrick: We sell sixty barrels a week; people travel from the mainland to try our beer, we sell in Holland, Ireland and Scotland. In those markets, we’ve heard of minibuses being hired to travel fifty miles to try our beer on the mainland.

Jaysen: So, what’s the secret?

Patrick: Quality.

Jaysen: Really.

Patrick: Absolutely. We use the finest malt we can get hold of, the best quality hops and find a benign yeast that will not interfere with those flavours.

Jaysen: That’s a refreshing change.

Patrick: Our Wilmot’s Hop Cone is the best bitter you can buy, and we make an IPA for export. Of course, Damson do a delicious best bitter but it’s only three and a half per cent and ours is four-point two percent. Our best seller is the Godson’s Black Horse Bitter.

Jaysen: Alcohol: I’m interested in the IPA.

Patrick: India pale ale, basically a stronger product, traditionally it was brewed with more alcohol to help the beer last the voyage to India.

Jaysen: That could be a new market.

Patrick: When we can afford to install a bottling line in a few years that might be the case.

Jaysen: Okay, so you have a good product.

Patrick: We pay a decent wage, too many companies try and cut cost by shaving the wage bills, we let our people know they are valued.

Jaysen: True, it works for others.

Patrick: Some supermarkets on the mainland have only just started paying their staff a decent living wage; it’s disgusting, they slave away at the shelves, stacking them and sit at the checkout all-day-long and yet they are still underpaid. We think low paid people deserve to avoid having to go to the foodbank, on the mainland they are quite happy to see nurses, who save people’s lives, paid far less than they need to survive and are quite happy for them to finish a twelve-hour shift and use a food bank. The more we pay our staff, within reason, the more they have to spend in the economy, the rich squirrel their money away, yet they are the ones that get the tax breaks. Sorry, the short answer is we pay well.

Jaysen: Having spoken to local pubs before coming to the island, I know your telesales are second to none and they love your draymen who put the beer up on the racks after tapping and spiling them.

Patrick: All you have to do is go that little bit extra and it puts you ahead of the rest.

Jaysen: They also said your salesmen visit regularly to check they are happy and even you go and visit the accounts your company sells to, the pubs, I mean.

Patrick: It’s important to establish a relationship and for them to put faces to people. I want to show that I’m not some person who sits in his office.

Jaysen: I know it is appreciated.

Patrick: It’s a privilege for me and makes the customer feel valued.

Jaysen: And it works.

Patrick: You have to have an exceptional product and by that I mean the best quality product that you can produce.

Jaysen: Of course.

Patrick: You need a salesforce that is constantly providing for the customer’s needs and a delivery service where the staff are part of your salesforce. Every time we deliver diligently to our customers, we build up customer loyalty. We have heard of instances of draymen just dumping the barrels on the pavement. That’s not service.

Jaysen: Yeah I ordered an Uber once and he parked outside number thirteen on a crescent, we were number ten at the other end of the road.

Patrick: Laziness.

Jaysen: I thought I was ringing the others when I found him and in colourful language told them he had parked miles away and we might as well take a bus to meet him.

Patrick: Fair point, if you agree to meet someone at a house number, you meet them at that address, I wouldn’t go to the Fox and Grapes when I offered to meet you at The Hand in Hand.

Jaysen: The driver was most upset. He kept wittering on about how he offers a service and throwing us all around in the back, driving like a lunatic, it was like being in the back of an angry electric Scalextric car. Even the passenger in the front felt sick after the journey. Four us shared the same house, the journey was a nightmare.

Patrick: What did you do?

Jaysen: I gave him as many stars as I could and a large tip.

Patrick: So, you rewarded the fact that he could not have been bothered to turn up outside the right house and that he drove like a bat out of hell.

Jaysen: When I dialled the number, I thought I was talking to my friend, not a number sent automatically to me. So, I used some rich language, not about the driver but the fact that we should take a taxi to get the taxi or just walk home. I only found out when we got home and compared notes. Anyhow, I knew something had annoyed him, but I didn’t want him to think that his hissy-fit had affected anyone, in the hope that if he got no reaction, he would not do it, again, to anyone.

Patrick: When did you next use an Uber?

Jaysen: Haven’t yet, I wouldn’t mind but I’d chosen an electric driver even though he was another ten minutes away. Good green conscious, bad ride decision. I’ve been using another ride app, ever since. I don’t want to be hurled around in my seat outside a funfair.

Patrick: We all make mistakes. Again, he was offering a service and he could not be bothered to find the right address, in fact, from what you tell me, he parked on the other side of the square from your address. I disapprove of these drivers not arriving at the correct address, it’s not right. Then, instead of pulling in, the double park, we’re not in New York and there’s a huge parking space for they ‘re car but they sit in the middle of the road or stop on the zig-zags of a crossing.

Jaysen: I see you’ve had your own problems with them. I think I’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest.

Patrick: Sorry, I just hate poor service and selfishness.

Jaysen: So, what else do you do to ensure your company is the most successful sales story on the island?

Patrick: It really is simple: service, investment and product. Our investment includes staff as well as plant.

Jaysen: Well, I’ve just read that a mainland brewery agreed to pay its staff the national minimum wage but when they found out the cost, they decided to reward the shareholders with a dividend instead.

Patrick: Sadly, it does not surprise me.

Jaysen: It all seems bizarre that you do not treat the people who provide you with the profits with dignity and respect. Modern business seems to be about maximising profits for shareholders, diluting and cheapening products and demeaning and exploiting the staff who keep the company going.

Patrick: That’s about the size of it I’m afraid.

第 1.06 节 Visit Number Six — Jaysen’s Hotel Room.

That evening Jaysen settles down to read his book, Meet Me Later by Michael Fitzalan, he has a meeting with the island’s oil company the next day and is stunned by the chapter on idling.

Chapter Two — vi — Day Ten — Monday 10th October

Whenever I can I cycle everywhere, we have a 1.2 petrol Polo and another car, a 1.5 VW T-Roc, my wife loves the high position — a Range Rover without the girth and stigma. I hate no one and nothing, I will greet all strangers and I will eat any food. However, as a cyclist, I dislike diesel fumes particularly as they are four times as polluting and damaging as petrol engine exhaust.

Okay, I dislike one other thing idling engines.

Anyway, I cycle to my client that afternoon and I feel good, the evenings are getting lighter and as it is the Christmas holidays I can go along at 4.00 before it gets dark. As I lock my bike, a ‘D-lock’ at the back fastened around a post with details of parking restrictions — residents only — 11am -12pm, which stops commuters, I notice a huge truck.

Looking further down the road, I spot another five lorries, a film crew, shooting some interiors shots in one of the houses in the side street, brilliant.

A bit of ‘Hollywood’ glamour coming to Wandsworth is all good, the dull residential streets deserve some excitement, a change from children going back and forth from school or clubs. Idly wondering what they are shooting, I pass another truck opposite the door of the house. The engine is idling.

Normally, I go up to the perpetrator of the crime, it is illegal in some cities to run your engine on idle, it is more polluting than driving as everyone knows.

Approaching them, I tell them that a friend has been fined £80.00 just last week by a warden going around and booking purely for this offence. It is generally a friendly exchange, followed by an acknowledgment that turning off the engine saves the planet, a little, keeps petrol costs from skyrocketing as it reduces demand and limits the oil we have to import from Russia so indirectly helps Ukraine. Yes, it still goes on surreptitiously.

Always having a good-natured chat, I explain the waste and most people will switch off the engine. This time I don’t. I have a lesson and I am focused on that. Coming out of the house an hour later, it is dark, but the truck is still there, and its engine is still running. I unhitch my bike, put the lights on and wheel the bike over to the middle-aged man behind the wheel. He grew up in an energy crisis, he was urged to ‘SAVE IT’, yet he is content to run his engine non-stop.

“Hi there, I’ve just been visiting a family across the road,” I say casually, “are you okay?’

“It’s freezing,” he complains.

A brisk walk around the block would warm him up, I think.

“Here,” I offer him a fiver, “here’s a fiver; there’s a pub five-minutes-walk from here, the County Arms, they serve coffee, that will warm you up.”

“I’m on call, I’ve got to stay with the vehicle,” he explains.

“It’s five minutes away, three with a brisk walk, that would warm you up, too.”

“I have to stay here, I’d lose my job,” he argues.

“My friend’s son is a surgeon, he’s allowed to get a coffee between operations, if you’re going to stay at least turn the engine off for five minutes, there’s families all around here.”

“I suppose you’re right, I’ve got kids, too,” he says and cuts the engine.

“Thank you, listen take the money and grab a coffee, it’s really good there.”

“I can’t the film crew need me here.”

“I shall never see a film again if this is how they treat their staff,” I promise.

He smiles.

“Goodnight and thanks.”

“Goodnight.”

I try one more time.

He is already back on social media when his heart could do with moving and some exercise.

“A brisk walk will warm you up a bit, there’s some nice houses around here for you to admire, too, beats staring at the dashboard or Facebook.”

I switch on my rechargeable lights knowing full well that as soon as I’m gone he will put the engine back on. I wonder why we live in such a space. The city is full of madness.

Ludicrous London, an urban setting where people waste fuel instead of taking exercise, where people buy diesel SUVs and wonder why their children have asthma. If your house was on fire would you throw more fuel on the fire? Why are people so lazy, then look at the scales and wonder why they have put on weight?

Why don’t companies help their staff to stay fit?

Why do people add to pollution all the time. Running the engine just to keep warm, a trip around the block would warm them up.

Yet in London, one of the most polluted cities in the world where it has been reported in the newspapers that children have died due to the level of nitrous oxide in the air, people go out and by diesel Range Rovers and Mercedes so that they look good when driving at twenty mile an hour down a side street.

By all means have a big, swanky car but, in London, or in big cities, have a small run around for city driving.

Every day, I pass gridlocked cars, stuck in jams because their cars are too big for the London streets and cannot get through, it must be infuriating for them. Smaller cars take up less space, so you get more cars through on a traffic light change; they’re easier to park and kinder to the planet as they are more economical.

These ‘successful’ people who have a lot of money, enough to buy an £80,000 car, do not have the wit to buy a second, smaller, more economical car for nipping around to the shops. In a city with consistently bad air quality, it beggars belief that people drive polluting cars.

The trouble is their personality is so wrapped up in their car that they cannot be seen in what they consider an inferior car. The result is a toxic air that hangs like a pall over cities, leading to breathing difficulties, more hospital admissions and I am convinced more cases of cancer in people under thirty-five.

Of course, no one would countenance an investigation into the link between cancer and pollution, just as no government would welcome an investigation into an accounting system that saw innocent post masters jailed and no administration would reveal that patients were given contaminated blood and were subsequently abandoned by the state. As far as sustainability and helping to save and nurture the planet a large car is one of the worst things that anyone can do. A larger engine pollutes more, the car uses more materials in its manufacturing and the increased fuel consumption puts more strain on the earth’s dwindling resources.

Small cars are superior, in fact, because they use less materials to build and consume less petrol, which is better for the planet and for their children and grandchildren, but they do not have the ability to recognise their contribution to destroying the planet. They complain about the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone or U.L.E.Z. but they are the ones who forced it to be brought in.

As I cycle home from the client’s house, I reflect on what Oscar Wilde might say if he was alive today: they are individuals that ‘know the price of everything and the value of nothing’.

That evening I meet my brother Rickard. We start off at the Selkirk, move onto the Antelope and then dive into Chez Vous for some lovely Lebanese Mezes. We would have gone to Tokova but both of us are a bit broke after the cost-of-living crisis. The litany of pubs and restaurants closing down in the less well-healed areas is reported to us by the charming lady who brings us mint tea and chats to us.

The previous time we met, we went to Tokova in the Market, run by Christina and Maisie. Their wines are delicious and the food fantastic, we normally go for black rice, croquets and chorizo. Sitting at the bar we can see the food being cooked in the open plan kitchen. The meal is wonderful, expensive ingredients but delicious and therefore good value.

Closing the book, Jaysen ponders the problems he has seen during the day and in the brief excerpt from ‘Meet Me Later’; people do not care about the environment as much as we think.

He has finally understood that people will pay a premium price for a premium product, expensive ingredients and great food is value for money. Too many businesses pay their staff poorly and produce an inferior product. Those companies who have survived have stayed true to their product and to their ingredients AND to their customers.

Jaysen turns out the light.

第 1.07 节 Visit Number Seven — The Oil Offices

The oil company buildings are suitably luxurious, but they overlook the steaming chimneys and stainless-steel towers of the refinery itself, a Pompidou Centre on steroids with pipework and tubes and outlets swamping the complex. In an office, overlooking some fields on the south side of the complex, with floor to ceiling glass, providing panoramic views of surrounding fields, sits the Managing Director, Roger Matthews. This office has turned its back on the industrial complex as if the oil refinery does not exist.

Roger: I suppose you are right, we are like tobacco companies. We produce poisons but the difference is instead of hooking a few people on nicotine, we have hooked the whole planet on petroleum products and petrochemicals, it’s quite an achievement wouldn’t you say. We still have a virtual monopoly in transport and food production.

Jaysen: Yes, indeed though electric buses and vans are making progress and farmers are looking into bio-diesel and methane to power their tractors, but I would safely concur with your summation, the world is hooked on polyester, plastic and petrol.

Roger: If we had to be honest, we could switch to natural fabrics, in fashion; substitute silicon in most plastic products; use glass in the drinks industry, instead of PET bottles. and use methane, bio-diesel, methanol and hydrogen to power out trains, trucks and buses, but why bother with the hassle. It’s easier and cheaper to refine crude oil.

Jaysen: I think the fashion industry and the drinks industry should be ashamed of themselves with their disregard for the planet, but I do know Exxon Mobil is committed to reducing emissions.

Roger: Oh, the big boys have the money, granted but we can’t compete.

Jaysen: Is that why you’re allowed to dump pollution into fields, rivers and the sea.

Roger: From the river to the sea takes government complicity. You and I both know that we were warned about climate change in the seventies, over sixty years ago. Did we invest in hydro — no. Could insurance companies saved a fortune by saving downstream houses from flooding by damming rivers and producing hydroelectric power at the same time? Of course, and they would have made a greater profit because there would have been negligible pay-outs. but that would have taken investment. Could we have invested in wave power at areas where erosion threatened coasts? Of course, we could have done that and saved buildings falling into the sea. Could we have invested more in solar, wind and heat exchangers or heat pumps? Of course, and we would be less reliant on fossil fuels, but you have to wait for your returns on those types of projects, everyone want results and yesterday. Would we be in this situation? No, we would not. It was easier to just produce fuels from fractional distillation. We should have had our feet held to the fire, but no one wanted to make us accountable. We could have gone to greener technology decades ago.

Jaysen: So why didn’t you?

Roger: You know why. We could get away with it.

Jaysen: Of course but how?

Roger: We had the government in our pocket, a lunch here, a holiday there and we were allowed exemptions, we could weather Amoco Cadiz, Exxon Valdez and the rest, we could survive Atlantic Empress, Deepwater Horizon and Castillo de Bellver, sludging up rivers in Africa, all because no government dared interfere with the car driver, no government set up a sovereign wealth fund, no government had an energy strategy.

Jaysen: That’s crazy.

Roger: It’s a mad world where people compromise with oil companies and their filthy products because people do not want to have their freedom to drive, and their independence interfered with. The joke is, cheap, reliable and coordinated public transport would have negated the need for expensive car ownership, which ties up income for years.

Jaysen: So, what do we do?

Roger: As far as oil is concerned, full-steam ahead, we’re cleaner than coal!

Jaysen: You oil the wheels of industry, trucks for distribution and delivery.

Roger: All able to be delivered by rail and milk floats, trams transporting people, you had it right in the fifties with all that and the tax regime.

Jaysen: We had superannuation tax.

Roger: Precisely and it bought in revenue, and it did not impinge on poor people.

Jaysen: I thought the rich got richer if the poor remained poorer.

Roger: You cannot have a successful capitalist society if the poor people are too poor to buy your goods. The wealthier you make the poor, the more they spend and the wealthier you make the middle class, the more they invest, which do you think benefits the economy? You tell me, you’re the accountant.

Jaysen: So, what went wrong?

Roger: Everything was going well for you, until you ripped out the infrastructure and the authorities on the mainland followed the example of Dr. Beeching, in the UK.

Jaysen: What did he do, precisely?

Roger: He put the motor car ahead of the train.

Jaysen: So, he was not very ecologically friendly, was he?

Roger: You could say that; he was tasked with saving money and so he

destroyed the railways, you on the mainland made cars the king, too and the peasants could rot for all the planners cared. Trams, trains, trolley-buses and buses were despised as poor proletariat transport, no use in a modern world, an idiotic precept, public transport they felt and that was because they did not use and they did not need it, bugger the poor who used it.

Jaysen: It does seem short-sighted.

Roger: They had a fantastic public transport system in the UK , and they systematically torpedoed it. Soon, people could only get to work in expensive cars, which they put most of their extra spending money into running and maintaining. The car became the be all and end all of the consumer society and the public transport system withered.

Jaysen: It’s made a comeback because petrol is so expensive.

Roger: The king size, cigarette smoking, sports car driving, middle class consumers were not going to use the railways.

Jaysen: And trucks took goods door to door, much easier and quicker than train.

Roger: Precisely. Did the dairies have the wit to collect freight and deliver both churn and crate? That would have made them disruptors. They could have delivered the goods the last few miles in floats that were parked up, idle and doing nothing after the early morning milk round.

Jaysen: That would have been great.

Roger: They would have negated the need for any of these disruptive distributors that treat their staff like excrement and pay them appallingly, keeping all their profits off-shore so they don’t even have to pay for the workers’ healthcare or for their bins to be emptied.

Jaysen: Hindsight’s, twenty-twenty vision — now all the dairies have been built over and the electricity consumption of the milk-floats has been matched and superseded by the servers and laptops.

The phone rings.

Roger: No, totally understand — — yes — — life is fluid — — things change — — 29th is fine — — the cusp of a new month and the cusp of a new adventure.

Jaysen: So why are you working for an oil company?

Roger: I don’t really have any alternative. Did you arrive here in a hybrid taxi or an electric.

Jaysen: Guilty, hybrid, the last time I took a green taxi he parked outside number 13, and we were in number 10, it was a green, so the taxi was in completely the wrong place. The driver heard me complaining to the other passengers and spent the rest of the ride hurling us around corners at great speed, trying to make us all sick. He almost succeeded with Alice. Poor girl dared not say a word as he was clearly fuming and drove like a maniac. We closed our eyes and prayed. You cannot put a powerful car like that in the hands of a volatile driver.

Roger: Have you used them since.

Jaysen: Only once, in an emergency, there are plenty more services that pay their staff better, rather take less of a percentage for the use of their app, even if it is not going to save the planet any quicker.

Roger: There you go! We all make decisions based on our needs, our prejudices and our desires for us and not the planet. That’s the problem.

Jaysen: I agree but you have not answered my question.

Roger: If I work within the industry, I can influence things more easily. My house has solar panels and heat pumps; my car is electric, I am green-man, the Green Knight slaughtering climate changing apparatus but we are still too reliant on oil. The Russians know it, the Iranians know it and we have to wean ourselves of it, but it takes time.

Jaysen: so, you’re saying you will change oil companies into energy companies, is that correct?

Roger: That’s completely correct.

Jaysen: You think we can wean ourselves off oil.

Roger: We will need alternatives, biodiesel, which has its problems because it reacts with some metals and cannot be stored for more than six months as it gets sediment, methanol and ethanol are strong contenders, methane from farms, running tractors and hydrogen cells for trucks and trains.

Jaysen: Spoken like a true alcoholic, we will never get off oil, fossils fuels have replaced the demon drink as the scourge of the 21st century.

Roger laughs heartily, and takes a sip of his strong, Krakatoa coffee, smiles at Jaysen and hesitates before continuing.

Roger: I appreciate your humour. What you should be focusing on is the amount of fuel wasted in the world by needless car journeys and idling engines. Colman’s mustard allegedly made their money from the condiment left on the side of the plate. Our profligate use of petrol and diesel keeps up demand and therefore prices. Does the consumer care.

Jaysen, sounding incredulous: You’re blaming us, the consumer.

Roger: Go to any street corner and you have people needlessly running their cars to warm up the engine when modern engines do not need it, or people running their engines to keep warm instead of walking around for five minutes and worst of all, people sitting in their car looking at apps, not caring about the added air pollution, outside shops and schools or houses where young children are.

Jaysen: You have a point.

Roger: As long as that selfish behaviour continues, matters will get worse. Yes, people need to get to work or to sick relatives or the doctor but why has adding to the pollution problem become acceptable. Of course, we make more profit so I should not complain at the profligate waste.

Jaysen, leaning forward: So why are you working in oil?

Roger: I need to put bread on the table and try to turn our oil company into an energy company and that can only be done with investment, and our income drives our investment.

Jaysen: Sounds plausible.

Roger: It’s the only way, we have to reform our oil companies from the inside, here on the island and elsewhere.

Jaysen: I think all companies should become energy companies.

Roger: Not a bad idea, old blast furnaces could be used to burn rubbish with carbon capture outlets; water companies could use their waste to generate power, there’s endless opportunities.

Jaysen: And you’re leading the way.

Roger: A Los Angeles style, hydraulic accumulator tank wave power system with metal floaters, which provides stored intermittent power, are being trialled all over the island due to our work.

Jaysen: That sounds encouraging.

Roger: We are also doing a huge amount of research, we put ten per cent ethanol in our petrol, we are trying to improve things, sadly the consumer continues to buy large-engined-diesels and huge gas-guzzling sports cars and off-roaders. Those buyers do not care about anyone else, they do not care about the planet and worse of all they do not care about their children’s and other people’s children’s lungs. No one can justify driving a diesel after the coroner pronounce that Ella Kissi-Debrah’s death in February 2013 was caused by acute respiratory failure, severe asthma and air pollution exposure.

Jaysen: Anything else you like to add.

Roger: Yes, the fifties government got it right and powered the economy through the sixties and it would have continued but for the oil crisis. Again, we did not learn our lessons, then, carrying on using oil and gas with scant regard to having had our economies crushed by oil and over-reliance on oil. We were held hostage and fortunes were made.

Jaysen: True.

Roger: Also, actually this you might argue with, the government got it right in the fifties by having immigration. An economy can only thrive with immigration. Politicians now frighten people with this vital resource that powers all economies.

Visit Number Eight — The Re-Jig Bakery

The next morning, Jaysen visits The Re-Jig bakery where he meets Mariam who creates the coffee and serves the customers.

Jaysen: Hi coffee and a vegan sausage roll.

Mariam: Coming right up.

Jaysen: What time do you open?

Mariam: Seven.

Jaysen: That’s early.

Mariam: We have to be here at six.

Jaysen: That’s very early.

Mariam: It is for me, I need my sleep.

Jaysen: I used to get up at five and start at six.

Mariam: When did you sleep?

Jaysen: I used to work until eleven

Mariam: All week.

Jaysen: Seven days a week.

Mariam: When did you rest?

Jaysen: I would go to sleep for twenty-four hours every three weeks.

Mariam: I would not be able to cope with that.

Jaysen: You’re very quiet now, I was told this was a good time to come here.

Mariam: The calm after and before the storm.

Jaysen: So, you’re busy at seven.

Mariam: Run off my feet, then it goes quiet now, for half an hour, until nine and then the breakfast orders start coming in.

Jaysen: So why are you the biggest bakery on the island and what have you re-jigged about the process of selling something as simple as coffee.

Mariam: That’s easy, we use the best quality products and charge the least amount of money possible for them.

Jaysen: What?

Mariam: Yes, I know it doesn’t sound like a modern business.

Jaysen: I’m an accountant, I know how business works these days, buy the cheapest product you can find whether its coffee or cheese, nut and bolts or tyres and then charge the most money people will be prepared to pay for them.

Mariam: Exactly, and if you’re a small business, give yourself a huge share return while making sure the people who do the work get a pittance, struggle to pay their rent and use foodbanks. If you’re a public limited company, use your profits to pay bonuses for overpaid board members, wildly unrealistic share dividends that please the shareholders, oh and under invest in the business and staff, all the time. Simple.

Jaysen: Simple. Only it doesn’t work, does it?

Mariam: You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

Jaysen: Mark Twain?

Mariam: Actually, Abraham Lincoln, said you can fool people; Mark Twain said buy land, they’re not making it anymore. He had a point. So, we source our coffee from a grower in Jamaica; we buy our flour for our bread and cakes from a local farm and the sweetener for our products come from hives around the island.

Jaysen: So, the provenance of all your contents is understood by your customers so that’s worth a premium price.

Mariam: You might argue that from an accountant’s point of view but I want to keep my customers and so we charge as little as we can. A huge international conglomerate had their coffee shop next door to us, and people migrated to us, we’re not going to punish that migration, ‘fair products at fair prices’ has become our mantra.

Jaysen: I’m impressed.

Mariam: We have savvy consumers who use the internet to inform their decisions, everyone reviews to help each other decide.

Jaysen: So, you charge a fair rate to drive favourable reviews for your business.

Mariam: Exactly, the better the reviews we get, the bigger our business grows.

Jaysen: So, to survive, the dinosaur dynasty businesses need to adapt to survive.

Mariam: They just need to stop selling the cheapest rubbish at outrageous prices. It’s simple.

Jaysen: The lawyers and accountants like complicated.

Mariam: We need more small and medium sized companies not more accountants or lawyers, sorry to say.

Jaysen: Fortunately, I’m a forensic accountant and SMEs do need me, the small and medium enterprises still need me to do a deep dive to see where their spending is going and where they can save money.

Mariam: An accountant is always welcome as long as they do not interfere with the product.

Jaysen: That has been the downfall of too many businesses. Trying to cut costs they have diluted the product and the consumer is not stupid, they migrate to better quality products. Look at the British car industry and the British brewing industry to name but two.

Jaysen move to a booth and waits for Michael Fitzalan, the London playwright who is visiting Censern.

Michael: Good Morning Jaysen, I recognised you form your profile picture.

Jaysen: Great to meet you. Did you want a coffee?

Michael: I’ll order something but here’s the first few acts of the play you wanted.

Jaysen: The one about a citizen’s coup against the mainland government?

Michael: That’s the one.

Michael slides the manuscript across the table and turns on his heel to order a cinnamon pastry, an Americano with hot milk on the side and have a chat with Mariam who he knows well.

Immediately, Jaysen opens the folder and starts to read the play.

ELIZABETH, EXTINCTION REBELLION, REGINA

FADE IN: A FARMHOUSE KITCHEN

DEREK (LOOKING OUT OF THE KITCHEN WINDOW AT HIS AVANCING DAUGHTER). Elizabeth, Extinction Rebellion, caevi everybody.

SARAH

Did she tell you she was coming home?

DEREK

Certainly not, I would have shut up the house and whisked you off to Hook Norton for a few days.

SARAH

Quick hand me the ‘Fairy Liquid’ and I’ll get the ‘Ecover’ out.

DEREK

Where did you put the board for covering up the dish washer?

SARAH

Behind the door in the larder, hurry, she’s coming this way.

DEREK

Why can’t she use the front door like any other normal person.

SARAH

She’s your daughter, that’s why!

DEREK

I keep forgetting. I suppose she was my daughter until she went off to university, do you remember when all she was interested in was horses and gymkhanas? Do you recall when she made upside down pineapple cakes and scones?

SARAH

Where did those halcyon days disappear to? Do you remember when she was normal. Those were the days. I’m afraid her rebellious phase led to their extinction.

DEREK

When ER stood for Elizabeth Regina or Emergency Room, not Extinction Rebellion. (Lizzie bursts through the door and grabs her mother’s hand squeezing hard).

LIZZIE

Mums, you look so thin, but your face so beautiful and your hair is gorgeous, I’ve missed you. (hugs her mother).

SARAH

One can never be too rich or too thin, darling, but really, I’ve put on weight, we’ve discovered a vegan, organic, sundried sausage and I’ve been stuffing you father with them as if we were foie gras geese. We’ll both end up with fatty livers!

LIZZIE

Pops, bet you’re still shooting and eating rabbits, bet you’re still stuffing steaks into your face; no wonder ten per cent of the population go to bed hungry each night!

DEREK

Vegan thrice a week, now.

SARAH (LOYALLY)

Sometimes more often than that even!

LIZZIE

Quite right with Mum’s delicious red pepper and parsnip pies. By the way, I saw that disgusting, diesel Defender. You know diesel has killer ingredients like nitrogen oxides and aldehydes. You know they’ve found particles in the lungs and brains of children and the placenta of women, you are aware?

DEREK

Darling, all my tractors run on biodiesel and the Defender’s fueled by Macdonald’s chip fat, I’m not the enemy here, Your Majesty.

SARAH

Off with his head Elizabeth, he’s been using it far too frequently recently.

LIZZIE

The brain or the Landy? Poor lamb; he must be totally exhausted! (Lizzie hugs her father).

DEREK

I’ve been trying to make rewilding work near the bamboo plantation.

LIZZIE

That reminds me, I bought a bamboo chopping board for Mums.

SARAH

How thoughtful.

LIZZIE

Bamboo is the fastest-growing plant on Earth. If I had my way, it would be in every office and on every piece of open space where solar panels cannot be sited.

SARAH

How marvellous darling, that alone could make people in their offices less prone to sick building syndrome.

LIZZIE

Too right, bamboo can easily be used as a building material and to make clothes. It’s a scandal that anyone uses that ghastly oil or nasty petrochemicals still. The horrible fashion industry is still using petrochemicals in the clothing whereas linen, silk, and bamboo are naturally occurring. I’ll get my dearest pops some bamboo socks.

SARAH

You’re too kind my darling. (As Lizzie fishes for the board, Sarah darts a knowing look at her husband and rolls her eyes).

LIZZIE

How practical, you mean and how ecological; I’m trying to turn you into Sustainable Sarah.

DEREK

I preferred your mother when she was a lamb-roasting lovely. How long are you staying darling? We’re so pleased to see you naturally, my sweet but we have various social commitments and I have a report to write for my committee at the House of Lords. So, you see we need to know how long you are here, darling girl.

LIZZIE

Long enough to make sure you have at least seven vegan meals this week.

SARAH

We’ve got the Lloyds coming over for roast chicken on Tuesday and we’re going to a hog roast at the pub on Thursday. (Lizzie winces, rolls her eyes)

LIZZIE

What’s the number for Lloyds, I love Tom and Sabrina, I’ll tell them the menu has changed to vegan wellington, they’ll be up for it. They’re game and not the game you’re think of Dads. I’ll make it Mums so you can have the night off. I’ll ring the pub and see what their vegetarian or vegan option is on Thursday. All sorted.

SARAH

Thank you darling but I was going to get Alicia to cook, it seems such a waste to ruin her chance to practice her Pru Leith cookery school skills. The hog roast is a quiz night, with the boys from the local abattoir, they are supplying the hog for the event, they might be a bit miffed if we don’t eat their offering not to mention Giles, he’s paid for it and our ticket includes a helping.

LIZZIE

What bad luck, best to ring and say you’re unwell and I’ll ask Alicia to do that amazing dish she cooked in Zermatt for those wealthy vegans who stayed the season. I wish you were as adaptable as your daughters.

SARAH

Really, darling you’re most helpful.

LIZZIE

Dearest Mums, I’m in charge now, and Pops if I dip the Land Rover and find it’s got pink diesel and not biofuel, I’ll be getting a cane from the plantation to rap over your knuckles.

DEREK

All right. I’ll drain it now. You’re worse than the customs and excise.

LIZZIE

Think of the flowers and plants you’re

saving. You used to take us on nature walks.

Do you remember that?

DEREK

Of course, I taught you how to identify all

The trees and plants. You were the best at

recognising them.

LIZZIE

Now you want to smother them in nitric

oxides, sulphur dioxide and formaldehyde.

DEREK

Of course not, they’re dangerous toxins.

LIZZIE

That’s what you’re doing, Pops, plant lover.

DEREK

You are infuriating.

LIZZIE

I’m your ecological conscience dads.

SCENE TWO SARAH AND DEREK — Fade in — the drawing room. Derek is on the sofa, looking pensive; Sarah is staring out of the window but turns to face Derek when he speaks.

DEREK

Do you remember when she used to call us Mummy and Daddy? I hate Pops!

SARAH

Well Pops is a fitting name with the flatulence you suffer from these days.

DEREK

That would be the cabbage diet she put me on. Even the dogs think I’m smelly. They’ve been put on a rice diet, it’s getting ridiculous. Labrador’s eating brown rice, it’s preposterous.

SARAH

We indulged her too much as a child, darling. She was head strong and we let it ride.

DEREK

We sent her to the best boarding school.

SARAH

Precisely, and now we rue the day.

DEREK

Boarding school never did me any harm.

SARAH

If you say so darling but you didn’t enjoy the beatings and you got sat on in that maul at sixteen and your back’s never been the same again. It made her more independent minded and I’m afraid she picked up a social conscience thank to the teachers.

DEREK

In my day they read from the textbook and called us idiots and threw board rubbers at us. They were big blocks of wood and poor Neil Dickman was unconscious for twenty minutes when one hit him on the temple.

SARAH

I’m afraid, these days teachers are taught to teach, and they teach our children to think not just to learn

.

DEREK

And that’s progress, I suppose!

SARAH

I’m going to have a gin and tonic, I think. The thought of seven days of Extinction Rebellion has driven me to drink.

DEREK

Let me fix it. I was Head Boy, and I didn’t come out ordering people around like some despot. Live and let live, unless you did something wrong, of course.

SARAH

An enlightened despot, you so admire Peter the Great and Frederick of Prussia. We are too far from the ‘Age of Enlightenment’, I’m afraid.

DEREK

They tried to do their best for the people. Peter went to Deptford to learn about ship building. They were in charge!

SARAH

So is Queen Elizabeth.

DEREK

How long has she had that name?

SARAH

Since she could give orders, darling.

DEREK

What about the weird and wonderful people who have been coming and going?

SARAH

Influential friends by the look of some.

DEREK

Some of them look familiar, from the village. Is she putting on a play? She won’t tell me anything.

SARAH

Darling, she never has.

DEREK

That’s true but this feels different.

SARAH

How so? (She accepts the gin and tonic).

DEREK

This seems ominous.

SARAH

Yes, I feel there’s something in the air, but malevolent?

DEREK

More portentous.

SARAH

Yes prophetic.

DEREK

Why don’t we go and look?

SARAH

A commando raid on the barley barn?

DEREK

We’ve got some black clothes upstairs.

SARAH

You can lend me one of your beanie hats.

DEREK

That will hide your blonde hair.

SARAH

We could smear mud on our faces.

What do you, think?

DEREK

Boot polish would be better.

SARAH

My black ski pants and turtleneck?

DEREK

I can put boot polish on any buckles.

SARAH

You’ve got that black boiler suit.

DEREK

Well, remembered. Let’s drink to it.

SARAH

The raid on the Barn.

DEREK

George Orwell and Animal Farm!

SARAH

That didn’t turn out well.

DEREK

The raid on Entebbe, that was a success.

SARAH

We’ll go for that one, then, cheers.

DEREK

Confusion to our enemies.

SARAH

It’s like David Stirling and the SAS.

DEREK

Stirling’s first attempts failed but I am sure we’ll succeed, Ian Fleming and John Le Carre would be proud.

SCENE THREE — THE PLOT — In the barn, there are fifty people on stackable chairs.

LIZZIE

So, when we remove the government, we replace it with a Citizen’s Assembly. We let all the local governments run their own wards, the local health authority will team up with council to run services in each borough.

PONTEFRACT

The 333 councils will run the country putting forward a representative to sit at the Buckingham House Assembly Rooms.

LIZZIE

An executive committee will be formed to make decisions about spending and taxation. They will take the view of the 333 councils when framing their policies.

ECCLES

Bill Osborne, or Eccles, which is my chosen moniker. I will be coordinating the local government take-over of all local services, we are going to pay into street-wide solar hubs and create wind farm shares.

LIZZIE

public transport that does not pollute and is fully electric or use hydrogen-fuel-cell and we will increase links between schools and hospitals and the community to protect mental health.

JAFFA

We will also support those who need help transporting their pets to vets and integrate services with supermarkets, so they get their terrible diesel vans off the road and that they donate properly to food banks.

PONTEFRACT

Tom Williams, or Pontefract from now on. We’ve all chosen cakes to represent the fact that we hope the spending cake will be divided more fairly. As ex-military, I will be coordinating the logistics and ensuring the army are aware of their role. Pontefract has a castle and that another reason I will be in charge of security.

LIZZIE

We will be taking over the parliament and closing the Palace of Westminster and moving all administration into Buckingham Palace, which will become BuHAR — Buckingham House Assembly Rooms.

JAFFA

Jasper Lord, or Jaffa, chief economist. I’ll be looking after finance, the slicing of the Jaffa cake if you will. Once we have established the Three-Three-Three as the three hundred and thirty-three English councils will be known, they will go back to their voters and establish how much of their taxes should go on defence, military procurement and green technology, research and development, education and health and social care.

LIZZIE

Basically, the areas covered by ministers and mandarins at present. Then, we will ask teachers to elect a committee for education, nurses, and NHS cleaners to elect a committee for health, and so on and so forth.

JAFFA

Each hospital and school will elect a representative to join the Citizen’s Assembly and inform the assembly and vote on behalf of that hospital and school.

PONTEFRACT

There will be national integration in the NHS as there is with the tax office at present.

LIZZIE

Thank you, Eccles, Pontefract, and Jaffa. Any questions?

MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER

I know all the lynch pins have code names. Where’s lemon drizzle?

LIZZIE

I think that would be taking the pith don’t’ you think? Any sensible questions.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER

I get that we will be working as a type of citizen’s assembly, I understand that all services will be run from town halls, I also understand the army will be co-opted to help logistically and I get that we will have a small central government but how will we decide the tax take? (Murmurs of ‘here, here’ come from the audience).

JAFFA

Good question, the tax take will be the same, but each borough will vote on the proportion of their tax revenue that goes to which ministry, so health may get 60 per cent and military only 5 per cent. Each council will vote on the percentages of the residents’ wealth that will go to which department.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER

I appreciate we will help to choose how our tax is spent by the local councils but will this mean tax will come down?

JAFFA

In fact, we will increase taxes. Rateable values have not risen with the value of properties and the increased income will fund local government. We will also push up VAT on everything to 30 per cent, 50 per cent on luxuries. Thirdly, we will also introduce road charging instead of fuel duty to accommodate the move from diesel.

LIZZIE

Food and children’s clothing will be exempt, of course. This is a tax on consumption of unnecessary items.

PONTEFRACT

The tax system will remain the same for the first few months. Then, we will start to adjust residential rates to reflect the value of the property and to be able to fully fund services. This will allow us to pay for local schools, health, both physical and mental, care and co-ordinate all these disciplines.

LIZZIE

We will ban the sale of council houses and coordinate co-operation between homelessness charities and councils to ensure housing needs are met in each area.

ECCLES

Finally, we will introduce a Universal Basic Income or UBI as the Republic of Ireland has but those on salaries above the national average will pay it back through their Pay As You Earn or PAYE tax bills or through reducing allowances for self-employed. The rich will subsidise the poor but without all the different benefits and complicated processes.

LIZZIE

This is noblesse oblige on a grand scale. Philanthropists like Peabody, Barnado and Guinness made a difference. Today the state will have to take their place. We cannot let the working poor suffer more.

JAFFA

We cannot let ten per cent of our population go to bed hungry and we cannot let people play the system for their own gain. We will be removing the corrupt practises of MPs by removing them from office and the corruption of the benefits system by having one payment. Simplicity and fairness.

LIZZIE

This has all be costed by a small firm of accountants and we can fund UBI from payback. This will allow us to start rebuilding the north of the country, starting with parliament and the monarchy being established north of Hull.

PONTEFRACT

The Buckingham House Assembly Rooms or BuHAR will be for the southern administration, that we will establish. The Northern Assembly will be centred on Lancaster and Middlesbrough. The monarchy will be in Middlesbrough, the and the administration and ministries in Lancaster.

SAME MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER

How are we going to get central government to move to the north and persuade the monarchy to abandon Buckingham Palace?

LIZZIE

By abolishing them both and establishing our new versions.(UPROAR ERUPTS IN THE SEATS AND PEOPLE ARE CHEERING AND CLAPPING).

ECCLES

We will establish a small, efficient government accountable to the people and not to lobby groups or millionaires who give the politicians jollies.

JAFFA

We will ensure councils are accountable to and scrutinised by voters to ensure they are not in developers’ back pockets and that they actually serve the community effectively.(THERE ARE MORE CHEERS).

PONTEFRACT

The armed forces will swear allegiance to the monarchy and sort out the M.O.D.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER

Who will replace the monarchy?

LIZZIE

I will! I shall become Elizabeth III and I will turn this nation green and more pleasant. Everyone will have to register their land, everyone will have to pay death duties, even I will. I won’t be able to choose not to pay death duties because I own a farm or evade tax on my estate or my mother’s estate as the present queen decided.

PANDEMONIUM ENSUES.

SCENE FOUR

AT HOME — THE SCENE SWITCHES BACK TO THE HOUSE AND SARAH AND DEREK SHARING A CUP OF TEA IN THE KITCHEN.

SARAH

Shame we had to cancel the raid; I curse that security light. Well, I hope all those friends of lizzie’s are having fun.

DEREK

Yes, their cars are blocking the driveway, I’ve got a delivery of silage tomorrow, I hope they’re not staying for a rave. Planning is the key, time in reconnaissance is never wasted, plan the work, and work the plan. The barn was a bridge too far.

SARAH

I love it when you mix your metaphors. Sounds like they’re celebrating something. That’s encouraging.

DEREK

Could we have won the cricket, again?(He frowns, grabs the newspaper and pretends to read to amuse Sarah.

SARAH

What chance do we have of that? Really, sometimes I think you live in a fantasy world darling.

DEREK

I do, I know I do, everything is so beastly, and everyone is so bloody.

SARAH

If only they could be charming like you; the world would be a better place.

DEREK

It needs to be a better place; we’re destroying it and I don’t think it will take kindly to the abuse.

SARAH

Rising sea levels worry me, darling, all those displaced people clamouring at the borders of wealthier countries.

DEREK

What about the water, they’ll be wars over fresh water; you mark my words.

SARAH

I don’t doubt it with temperatures in the desert beating records.

DEREK

I wish we done more when we were younger, or instilled more of a social conscience into Lizzie, Alicia, and William.

SARAH

There’s a lot they do. If only you knew.

DEREK

What was that my love?

SARAH

I might do another brew, how about you?

DEREK

I think I’ll have something stronger.

SARAH

I’ll join you, darling. (She smiles indulgently.

DEREK

I think I might have a bottle of burgundy tucked away. At least that’s sustainable and comes in glass and arrived by boat rather than plane unlike the Kenyan strawberries. A fine wine and a pleasure to drink.

SARAH

What a treat. Aren’t we lucky?

DEREK

We certainly are.

SARAH

Even luckier when Lizzie goes back!

DEREK

Yes, London and Lizzie need each other.

SARAH

And we need to be left alone to eat meat…

DEREK

When we choose!

SCENE FIVE — The Index linked — fade In — A DINNER TABLE WITH EMPTY PLATES BUT FULL GLASSES.

JAFFA

So, we’re trying to establish a new Citizen’s Assembly as you know. The politicians have been getting cash for questions and PPE equipment contracts for their relatives; lobbying to enrich themselves; putting out aircraft carriers without planes, submarines with the conning tower upside down and weapons systems not fit for purpose, that sort of thing.

ROBBIE

Well, as you know from my resume, I’m a retired civil servant.

JAFFA

Well Robbie, you might have to say goodbye to your index linked pension if we get into power.

ROBBIE

Don’t worry, I retired at fifty-five; went back as a consultant and charged the government a pretty penny for my services. I made a fortune. That brought me a nest egg, which I invested in a private pension.

JAFFA

Well, that’s a relief of sorts, I suppose. Nothing wrong with profiteering from taxpayers’ money, is there? So, you offered your help to the community once you retired properly at 65?

ROBBIE

No, we just take holidays. Though when the last fuel shortage came along, I was worried.

JAFFA

Weren’t we all, my wife didn’t drive for three weeks, it was terrible? She had to take the train down to see her mother in Sussex, nightmare. Still, we all had to make sacrifices.

ROBBIE

Not me, oh no, laddie. As soon as I heard, I went straight out. Our petrol station had a limit of £30.00, I don’t normally tell white lies, but I told the guy behind the counter that I was going to visit my ill mother in France, and I got a full tank off him.

JAFFA

How resourceful of you. Well, I’m sure the Uber drivers and the those desperate to get to work appreciated your efforts. So, did you get your holiday? Did you have enough petrol?

ROBBIE

Oh, yes, we drove down to Deal in Kent, and all around and I’ve still got almost a full tank of diesel. The car sips the fuel.

JAFFA

(In a whisper) And you gulp the expensive wine. (More loudly) Yes, sadly Gordon Brown favoured diesel over the less polluting liquid petroleum gas, our council, Wandsworth, had a whole fleet of LPG vans and trucks but Brown decided diesel belching out black smoke was better for the environment than petrol or less polluting LPG. He was Scottish, too. Just a coincidence I suspect.

ROBBIE

You talk in riddles half the time; I find it difficult to follow you at my age.

JAFFA

Never mind, I just thought with the national shortage of fuel and your wealth you might have taken the train to Deal and left some fuel for the next bloke but that’s why we’re having this meal to see who wants to help others rather than themselves.

ROBBIE

I want to help; I was hoping for a contract.

JAFFA

We’ll have to talk about that, but in the meantime, help yourself to a glass of wine, I’ve brought out my celebration wine, Margaux.

ROBBIE

Thank you. Don’t mind if I do.(Robbie pours the wine to the brim).

JAFFA

Wow, I’ve never seen a glass so full.

ROBBIE

I like red wine.

JAFFA:

Robbie, you’ve surpassed yourself, remember there’s many a slip between cup and lip. You do know our motto is: ‘We’re for the needy and not for the greedy, don’t you?’(Turning to Malachiah)What’s your role going to be Malachiah?

MALACHIAH

Social justice.

JAFFA

I like the sound of that.

MALACHIAH

If a statue is toppled into the sea, make another face from a foundry, if someone sets your flag alight, weave anew with colours bright, injustice must make you seethe. I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.

JAFFA

That’s brilliant, we’ll call it the George Floyd Justice department and we’ll show them what levelling up really means. Equality for all religions and races, classes and castes, genders, and persuasions. You’ll need help, I have a few people you should meet. Are you willing to work with them to make society a better place?

MALACIAH

Of course, we need to work together to achieve anything, I know that you know that, even Rebel Robbie knows it deep down. He’s just not aware as yet.

JAFFA

Robbie’s too far gone, I’m afraid So, the House of Lords will have to be replaced.

MALACHIAH

Yes, by an assembly of lawyers but of far fewer numbers. Seize a knight and save the day, we have to abolish without delay. They’ll have to surrender their seats, their tax avoidance and other cheats, their schemes, their flat flips, even their club memberships.

JAFFA

Stay playful. Lizzie must tell Derek the news I suppose.

MALACHIAH

He’s deaf in one ear so he might not hear.

JAFFA

Only Liz could tell her father that

she’s taking away his job.

MALACHIAH

As Shakespeare said in his day: These

are troubled times; scarce a day goes

by when a king does not lose his crown.

Visit Number Nine — Guests Come to Jaysen’s Hotel

Back at the hotel, Jaysen sits down and relaxes in the hotel foyer, waiting for his two guests. When they arrive, Jaysen invites Fiona and Ben to sit down in the hotel bar at a round table that has three cups and saucers arranged in front of the trio of chairs and cafetiere, milk jug and sugar bowl in the centre. They all sit down together.

Jaysen: Thank you both so much for coming, please, help yourself to coffee if you’d like one. I just want to be clear about your concerns about the island’s health service and what needs to be done. Who wants to start?

Fiona: Before we begin, let’s find out a little about you, first. As you know, I’m a teaching assistant and Ben’s a paramedic but we don’t know about you, except you’re the man from the accountancy firm that’s carrying out an audit on public services.

Jaysen: I trained as a lawyer and became a barrister, not a very good one so I gave that up. Then, I took various accountancy exams while working for a small accountancy firm and then I applied for a job and Abens Roucent. Shall we get started, Ben what can you tell me?

Ben: Only that I got Covid thanks to the governments incompetence and the Mainland Health Service. The government hesitated to lock down before a huge wave of a new strain and the M.H.S Managers would not allow me a decent mask.

Fiona: I was in a school that was going to break up a week earlier.

Ben: As part of my training, I worked in a hospital — unfortunately during Covid — there were thirty-two patients on the respiratory ward I was attached to, for one day, the next day thirty-two Covid patients were in the same ward.

Jaysen: What happened to the chest patients on the ward?

Ben: All the other patients had moved out. It was a totally avoidable situation. The position was precarious, but the dithering and delay made it a disaster.

Fiona: If, instead of dithering, the First Minister of the Mainland Administration had done something that situation would not have happened. Every single school on the island was ready to break up a week early like all the private schools.

Ben: The private schools get two weeks for half term. You’re kidding, aren’t you?

Fiona: Yes, of course they do, it’s so they can get a deal on their skiing holidays ahead of the price hikes by the airlines, chalets, and hotels when state schools are on half term.

Ben: Clever.

Fiona: Well, it wasn’t clever of the government to go against the wishes of the local authorities to put in a circuit breaker for the spread of Covid.

Ben: You’re telling me, thanks to that, I got Covid.

Jaysen: As did many doctors and nurses and healthcare worker, some fatally.

Ben: I know, and many deaths could have been avoided by prompt action. But, what really made me seethe was the managers coming around and telling the cleaners who got much closer to the patients than me that they did not need to wear such high-grade masks. Those masks weren’t even that good. They were one grade up from the basic. Even so they were told to wear cheaper masks than that.

Jaysen: Why was that?

Ben: To save money on masks, they were told by the M.H.S. managers.

Fiona: It’s the same in schools, the cleaners and teaching assistants are looked on as nothing better than skivvies. Both groups are paid appallingly badly for what they do.

Jaysen: Well, that’s one of things we should change about society for a start.

Fiona: Since, I moved and started working at the Island Education Authority, it’s got better. I’m paid a decent wage for a start. On the mainland there’s only the corrupt system we have, now. I thought it was during the First World War where the foot soldiers were sacrificed.

Jaysen: That’s appalling.

Fiona: Sounds like the Mainland Health Service managers at your hospital just wanted to save money and if that meant the cleaners getting Covid who cares. If they died, at least the costs were kept down. Surely they should have had the best masks available as they were so close to patients all the time throughout the day, day after day.

Ben: Exactly, they didn’t care about their staff and yet they are a health service that is meant to be protecting everyone from any illness. It sounds like our Island’s Citizen’s Assembly is a good solution to the problem.

Jaysen: I’m beginning to think so from all you tell me.

Fiona: It’s a massive improvement, the I. C. A. runs a committee that oversees each department, so rather than ministers interfering, we can allow teachers to teach and the authorities to support them more fully.

It makes much more sense; I say let’s take politics out of education.

Ben: And out of the I.H.S., as well. The Censern Island Health Service is brilliant, you should go and visit, my shifts are reasonable, the pays great, even without over-time, and their public information service is excellent and the coordination with the local health authorities, community care, general practitioners and hospitals provides a wraparound service for all the citizens.

Jaysen: I think the current management, who preside over health, on the mainland should be stripped out and those in junior position, as medics, should form the new management team, deciding on who should head up the department or facility or being able to hire the appropriate person, not someone who is encouraging the status quo to protect their own career.

Ben: Sounds good to me.

Fiona: What are you going to do about the councils, on the mainland, though?

Jaysen: What do you mean?

Fiona: My brother lives in Furzedown and the council have sold off two houses, they left one house empty for three years, refurbished it and still no one is living there. No wonder homelessness is such an issue on the mainland. Councils have huge amounts of property and are not building new homes, it’s ridiculous.

Jaysen: A very good point, maybe we should integrate housing with NGOs like Shelter, Crisis and Abbeyfield, Guinness, and Peabody. Each will oversee and help each other, no opaqueness and obfuscation allowed.

Fiona: What about the developers?

Jaysen: I remember your email telling me about that school and the offer a consortium of schools put forward in sealed bids and it was still redeveloped into luxury flats. How disgraceful that a school built with public funding should be redeveloped to make people rich.

Fiona: That’s right, Ben you might not know the story. I went for a swim, and someone from the council told me some of the councillors had cousins on the board of the company that developed the site. They closed a perfectly good site that could have been put to good use by four schools to sell as luxury flats.

Jaysen: I hope that this abuse will stop and if we are able, we will bring in retrospective prosecutions for abuse of public funds.

Fiona: If only.

Jaysen: On the mainland, we might even jail those selling off public property that was paid for by tax-payers. All those properties could have been repurposed for homeless people, social care or health uses. I hope all of those involved will be fined or punished in some way for the scandalous misappropriation of buildings financed from the public purse.

Ben: Good luck with that.

Visit Number Ten — The Harbour Hospital

On Ben and Fiona’s advice, Jaysen makes an appointment with the Island Health Service, and he is surprised that it is easier to arrange than a visit to his doctor back on the mainland. Talking to The Chief Medical Officer at the Harbour Hospital Jaysen, sits sipping a cup of mint tea, the only hot drink available for free. All caffeine stimulants are not promoted but patients and visitors are welcome to bring in their own tea and coffee as a sign declares. The café only sells healthy snacks to keep the staff well and on tip-top health. A gym is used by the staff as well to keep them from becoming sedentary in their roles. The health service employs a personal trainer who oversees all the staff’s health programmes.

Beau: I’m glad to meet you, Jaysen. I see it as part of my role to promote our exemplary health service. The Island Health Service is quite simply the best. We have visits from the mainland all the time.

Jaysen: I am anxious to hear why the men from the mainland seem so anxious to visit and learn more about the island’s health care system.

I believe since Covid there was a thorough review of practices, and new regimes were put into place with new protocols.

Beau: That’s correct.

Jaysen: I’m intrigued by your success, here, since Covid.

Beau: It’s simple, we use all our resources effectively, a private patient pays for the use of our health service’s equipment, just as the health service is charged for operations conducted by the private sector. We have flexibility so everything is fluid and flows both ways a bit like osmosis. A group of doctors work privately in the morning and for the health service in the afternoon, the second group of doctors work for the health service in the morning and privately in the afternoon.

Jaysen: That’s incredible.

Beau: the fluidity and flexibility means people with means can use the best facilities at each hospital, the private hospitals rent space in our health service hospitals and vice versa, they help each other out, in order to reduce waiting lists and improve patient outcomes. It’s incredibly effective.

Jaysen: Does that alone explain the success of the I.H.S? What else have you done?

Beau: We keep it simple.

Jaysen: I hear that a lot on the island. It seems the Censern mantra.

Beau: It really is that simple. We go back to the roots and see what the original National Health Service was like in England; then we compare with the Mainland Health Service and use the best practice from both and try to iron out the problems that both encountered.

Jaysen: It sounds sensible.

Beau: It’s quite sensible, and definitely very simple. The Island Health Service has gone back to the roots of the British NHS of the 1940s and 1950s before all the expensive managers were employed in the eighties. I believe the Mainland Health Service followed a similar model. However, we feel that nurses are more important than strategic planners who tended to appoint people they knew into the senior management structure and that resulted in nepotism on a huge scale and incompetence and inefficiency was therefore rife.

Jaysen: Does that really happen, still, on the mainland? Is nepotism still alive in the human resources department?

Beau: So, I’ve been told. Certainly, on the mainland, it happens in some health authorities and departments. Sometimes whole families make up the management of one health trust, according to some sources. We don’t have that problem here; the I. H. S. is run on different lines.

Jaysen: That’s incredible and shocking if it’s true. How else do you differ, assuming those rumours are correct?

Beau: We keep it simple.

Jaysen: Always best.

Beau: We have small core groups that are made of the health team, and they are overseen by an office manager who actually co-ordinates all the different needs or the disparate parts of the department.

Jaysen: That makes things easier.

Beau: Precisely, we end up with a core of just four. The Just-Four-Core, we like to call it. We have an office manager, cleaner representative, doctor representative and nurse representative.

Jaysen: That makes sense. All the stakeholders put across their point of view and the office manager logs concerns and put requirements across.

Beau: Precisely that, we have just one manager or coordinator, if you like, who we pay £25,000. You have to remember that it is a part time job, overseeing weekly meetings and implementing policy and noting any action points decided upon. Each department is responsible for their own spending, creating budgets and applying for funds from a local trust. We have eight departments here, so we spend £200,000 per year, which is a fifty thousand saving on a £250,000 salary, which the mainland health managers receive. That £50,000 grand goes back into patient care. Obviously, I’ve converted from our currency to pounds.

Jaysen: That sounds brilliant. So, ten Censern Shillings is twenty Mainland Crowns, which is one pound.

Beau: That’s roughly right as a rule of thumb.

Jaysen: It makes sense to limit managers and illicit the workforce’s opinion and input.

Beau: I worked in a P.R.U. or PRU and we had three heads, one headteacher, a deputy-head and an assistant head.

Jaysen: What’s a Prue?

Beau: A pupil referral unit where children who cannot cope with mainstream school and need to be separated from their peers.

Jaysen: Got it, the children who are expelled need a home.

Beau: Despite three managers, we never had enough of us teachers so I was determined that we would not suffer a similar fate.

Jaysen: A top-heavy management if ever I heard of one.

Beau: There were times when fights broke out and the heads would sit in their offices pretending to work while we dealt with the fracas. There were less than twenty-one children on site and yet we had three heads, one head for every seven pupils and instead of hiring teachers, they made the teaching assistants deliver the curriculum to balance the budgets.

Jaysen: That sounds awful.

Beau: It wouldn’t happen here. We promote positive patient experiences, and we cannot do that with managers sucking up our budgets like a superabsorbent sponge. Instead, we coordinate with the local community health departments and get people back home or into care or on the right programmes immediately. That’s why we have no wating lists and, admittedly we have a drug problem, but it is managed.

Jaysen: A sensible approach.

Beau: We think so. For the past year, we have combined social care and health, which has improved outcomes. We have reintroduced local health practitioners into the community who visit schools to help with our preventative measures, good dental hygiene, healthy diets and regular, sustained exercise.

Jaysen: This has been thought out properly.

Small and medium size businesses have thrived since we have banned any product that does not meet our standards.

Jaysen: How does that work?

Beau: For instance, ham has to have a high percentage of meat and cannot be reconstituted, we have the same purity laws for beer as Germany. Anything not statisfying strict quality demands, is taxed three hundred per cent. We have introduced a kite mark for quality and our customs teams slap a warning and a similar amount value added tax on any product deemed damaging to health, the environment or the economy. As you know small and medium sized companies power this economy.

Jaysen: From what I have learnt, the old multi-nationals are not making any headway in this economy and since they paid no tax or virtually no tax, the economy benefits from the smaller companies.

Beau: We will renationalise our mail service next year, they will have milk-float style delivery vans to deliver mail to every single household and any shop, supermarket chain or delicatessen can buy space on those milk-floats, so delivery of every single item that a household needs can be made by a regular daily delivery to every household on the island.

Jaysen: That sound like a wise allocation of resources, I assume the supermarket van will come of the road.

Beau: Only the diesel ones, the electric ones will be requisitioned for the Island Mail Service, which will deliver most things to the doorstep in their floats and use the larger vans to deliver items like televisions.

Jaysen: From the planet’s point of view less deliveries mean less energy used and that’s got to be good for everyone.

Beau: Absolutely, I visited the mainland last year, by ferry and train, I hasten to add, and the amount of diesel vans I saw idling while drivers scrolled through their phones was horrifying. Their company pays the fuel bill and does not discouraged idling, so they just don’t care.

Jaysen: I think that’s the real difference between here and the mainland, you care about sustainability.

Beau: We have no choice, thanks to the profligate politicians around the world, ignoring climate change, our island is sinking.

Jaysen: I had not thought of that.

Beau: As sea levels rise, we will have less land and that’s a problem.

Jaysen: I cannot believe that so many people turned a blind-eye to the warnings about climate change.

Beau: Most of them are no longer with us, they got their free holidays and preferential share deals years ago. If there was a president of the world and I was elected, I would exile all those politicians to a vulnerable island where they can experience the fruits of their negligence. It’s too late, now, but that shouldn’t stop us from trying to bring about change and lessen our impact on the planet if we can.

Jaysen: Sadly, it’s not a Clarion call that those on the mainland will heed, their too fond of their huge cars and sitting in traffic jams. Some echelons of society wouldn’t dream of utilizing public transport.

Beau: Or walking!

Jaysen: Perish the thought, four wheels good, two legs bad.

Visit Number Eleven — The Other Farm.

Jaysen takes the hotel cycle to the next appointment; it is an old ‘Boardman’ bicycle with standard handlebars and a comfortable seat. He reads a cautionary sign: ‘On the roads of Censern Island, the bicycle and the electric van are given priority. It is therefore important to keep your eyes open for vans when you are cycling as the vans are almost silent so you will not hear them and when van driving, keep your eyes open for cyclist’.

As he cycles along the road out of the port, he encounters a narrow road, a Tesla is negotiating the street, far too wide for roads designed to provide a route for donkeys from the loading dock to the quarry.

Weaving in and out of the parked vehicles to allow a tiny, two seat Citroen Ami to pass. With a whisker’s width between her and a parked car, Jaysen is impressed. The driver indicates, parks in two turns of the wheel.

Jaysen cycles up to the driver’s open window: Incredible driving, that’s amazing, it’s a big car and thought it was close back there, you did a great job.

The woman driver, smiling: Thank you.

Jaysen: I don’t often get a chance to praise people for good driving but that was exceptional, have a great day.

Not sure if Jaysen is trying to flirt with her, she tanks him again and hurriedly presses the button to raise the driver’s side window.

He cycles off, pleased that he has spread a bit of positivity into someone’s life. Being in a good mood, he cycles along the footpath in the park that forms a border of verdant vegetation around the port.

As it’s a sunny day, and the school holidays, the park is busy. Therefore, he cycles slowly, he still going to shave off twenty minutes of his journey time by avoiding the roads so braking when there is a crowd of people is hardship.

He comes across a particularly congested conglomeration of crowds and stops.

A mother smiles and says: Thank you.

Jaysen: Not trouble after all, it’s a footpath, sharing is caring.

Not sure if Jaysen is trying to flirt with her, she hurries away, protectively scooping up her two children.

He stops again at a junction where there are white markings on the ground indicating that cyclist should give way. A pedestrian is approaching so he slows and stops. Just at that moment a cycle whizzes past him, nearly knocking the pedestrian over.

Jaysen: Go ahead, we’re meant to give way to pedestrians.

The woman smiles at Jaysen: Thank you.

Jaysen: I don’t know what planet he was from, but he doesn’t really understand give way.

The woman walks forward: Probably Pluto judging by his cold look.

Jaysen: Must be.

The woman, not sure if he was trying to flirt with her, waves him goodbye in the hope of dismissing him.

Unaware, Jaysen pedals on towards the open fields of the countryside beyond the fringes of the pleasant park.

Finding himself at the park gates, he notices the cycle path chicanes onto the driveway that leads out of the park and then joins the main road at the T-junction.

There is a Georgian art gallery modelled on Sir John Soane’s efforts in Dulwich, then field after field of rapeseed and sunflower, each field bordered by solar panels and at each corner, a massive wind turbine.

Jaysen cycles towards the farm where he will be meeting one of the top farmers on the island who grows crops to create fuel to generate electricity to light and heat his produce in greenhouses.

Even better, as far as Jaysen and the environment are concerned, he eschews the use of phosphates and chemical fertilizers, preferring to use seaweed supplied by an island subsidiary of Car-y-Mor, which was the first community owned, regenerative farm in Wales.

Jaysen: Please, tell me why your farms on Censern are better than the farms on the mainland.

Giles: We use methane in our tractors and produce energy from our Anaerobic Digestion System, solar and wind power. These help us to be free from reliance on petroleum products and to heat our greenhouses and poly-tunnels and maintain the hydroponics.

Jaysen: I’m impressed.

Giles: We are fully modernised and independent of the grid and free from the big fertilizer firms.

Jaysen: So, you would say you are self-sustaining.

Giles: You could say so, even the old Aga runs on methane produced from our pigs. I think there is a realisation that we will never get to net-zero in all industries but those that cannot be fully carbon-free can try to reduce their footprint as far as possible. We cannot stop humans breathing out carbon dioxide and we cannot stop our cows, horses and pigs producing methane but if we can harness, harvest and utilise as much as we can then we are making a positive contribution to slowing climate change.

Jaysen: That seems like a pragmatic approach.

Giles: We farmers have to be practical that’s why we grow crops and take food waste to process in our ‘digesters’ to produce our own fuel. That means we don’t rely on Calgary, Riyadh, Texas, or anywhere else. We do not have to worry about what Moscow is up to, either.

Jaysen: Undoubtedly biogas and biomethane generation offer a more sustainable alternative to fossil fuels by upcycling green waste into renewable energy and allows you to rely on yourselves, it’s got to be win, win.

Giles: The crops that we grow for the generation of fuel for our greenhouses have very little value and yet the salad plants and fruit like strawberries have a premium price and that’s how we have progressed. We can have hedgerows and fallow fields and work with the land eschewing fertilizers because our technology allows profits which we can literally plough back into the business.

Jaysen: These are words an accountant like me loves to here, capital investment, lowering cost and increasing profit margins, the trinity of success.

Giles: What’s more we don’t compromise on quality, we stamp the name of our farm on every paper package of salad leaves, every cardboard punnet of strawberries and every recycled cardboard box of peppers.

Jaysen: Your name is your reputation, I love that, it used to be ubiquitous, but companies now want to save costs at all costs, including diluting their product and demeaning their brand.

Giles: There’s less room for playing silly buggers in farming. Take our fertilizers now, we use the bio-stimulant pioneered by Câr-y-Môr in Wales, which is designed to help us maximise crop yields, and allows us to turn our back on any synthetic fertiliser.

Jaysen: I’ve read some research that shows it can also increase the resilience of crops to extreme weather events such as floods, frosts and droughts.

Giles: We are also planting more hemp than ever and that rapidly growing plant can provide rope and clothes, food and fuel for our power stations and that helps.

Jaysen: Impressive. I’ve read about hemp making oil, paper, plastic, clothing, milk, protein-rich flour or tea, and even liquid soap.

Giles: So, in our poly tunnels we grow hemp for out textile and biofuels industries, and we cultivate seaweed to provide the fertilizer for that hemp.

Jaysen: That’s pretty cool.

Giles: We now have a zero-input farming network around the island, which Câr-y-Môr’s example has shown that this leads to improving the coastal ecosystem but also bolstering the local community through job creation and sustainable practices.

Jaysen: So, around the island, you harvest kelp for crops on the land and at the same time increase production of shellfish.

Giles: Absolutely, we have boosted yields by an average of 17%, reducing dependency on costly synthetic fertilizers.

Jaysen: You mentioned that there’s the added benefit of resilience against abiotic stress being enhanced.

Giles: The bio stimulant taps into the abundant sugar kelp and oar -weed fond off the coast and we can utilise this rich resource on our fields.

Jaysen: That’s clever, harnessing the ocean’s nutrients to nourish and invigorate your soil.

Giles: We need to work in concert with nature and not against it. That’s where it’s all gone horribly wrong, scientists have done as much damage to farming as some accountants have to businesses.

Jaysen: Spoken like a true Censernian, what I like about you islanders is that you are candid and honest. I would never question the integrity of any of the people that I have met on the island.

Giles: We have to get things right here or we will lose all our children to the mainland. If we get things wrong, we will haemorrhage talent and the next generation will drift off and we’ll just become a backwater.

Jaysen: On the mainland and even here, I have seen some companies struggling. They do not share your views.

Giles: Farming is basic, look after your animals or plants, your staff and your profit. I understand that our way of thinking is not popular in business these days, but it certainly used to be.

Jaysen: True enough.

Giles: Just look at Bournville, which was built by Cadbury for his workers, he had the right idea. Come to think of it, the rich were philanthropists back then, Peabody and his houses, the Guinness Trust. Haven’t seen much of that in recent years in England or the mainland.

Jaysen: Sounds like the recipe for any successful business and society needs philanthropists to stand up for the most vulnerable in society or there will be no society.

Visit Number Twelve — A homestead

On his return to the hotel, Jaysen leaves the bike behind and heads of on foot to the park. He has much to reflect on. A walk can help concentrate the mind, act as a filter for thoughts and awaken the circulation to the brain while not causing a raised heart rate such as the one he had experienced when cycling.

The weather is clement, the soporific sun is high in the sky; his shadow is short, and he can feel the warmth of the sun on his face.

A balmy breeze blows through the tall trees and the leaves rustle gently. All is well in his world. This Island of Censern has a relaxing atmosphere. The path is narrow and like so many pathways in parks on the mainland, it is a space with cyclists.

Jaysen is ambivalent regarding cycling and promenading, the routes could be better delineated, he adopts the idea that the cars drive on the right so he would proceed on the right, and the bicycles, if any came could overtake safely.

Sharing a path relies on people being sensible, and the islanders seem a pragmatic bunch. What is not clear to some cyclists who are trying to beat their personal best is that the path is not some superhighway or velodrome where speed is the essence.

All is well unit two speeding cyclists approach from two different directions. They are both young men in a hurry, hurling along the path like arrows at Agincourt.

He hears a bell but if he steps to one side he will be mown down by the other cyclist, shrubbery prevent his exit from the path.

He freezes.

A cyclist skids to a halt behind him and hisses: Why didn’t you get out of the way when I rang my bell?

The other cyclists shoots by.

Jaysen: I wasn’t prepared to be scythed down by the other cyclists, why didn’t you slow down and wait for the other cyclist to pass.

Cyclist: I’m in a hurry.

Jaysen: Clearly, that’s why you’re stopping to chat to me.

Cyclist: You’re a Mainlander aren’t you?

Jaysen: How does that affect things?

Cyclist: Coming over here and choking up the cycle ways.

Jaysen: Excuse me, but this is a cycle path. You shouldn’t be using your bell and charging down the route.

Cyclist: Didn’t you hear the bell?

Jaysen: why are you using your bell on a shared path, you’re not a toddler on a scooter.

Cyclist: no and, I’m not a tosser taking up the highway.

Jaysen: You were using your bell, why?

Cyclist: To warn you.

Jaysen: But you don’t need to warn me.

Cyclist: Why not?

Jaysen: This is a shared path, that means it’s for both of us. You have the power here. I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, and I have a right to walk on a footpath. You have the power to slow down and even stop. My only option is to dive into the hedge.

Cyclist: I wouldn’t have needed to stop if you’d got out of the way.

Jaysen: You have the power, you can go slow, fast, stop and go much faster than me. In my view a person with power who expect others to give way is no better than a playground bully.

Cyclist: You’re a mainland moron, a tosser.

Jaysen: A bully and a bigot.

Cyclist: You’ve made me late.

Jaysen: For what?

Cyclist: To get home.

Jaysen: I suggest you leave more time or use the roads if you’re in a rush.

Cyclist: The road route is longer.

Jaysen: So, you’ve saved time.

Cyclist: You really are a knobhead aren’t you.

Jaysen: You’re an entitled bully who seems himself as more important than others. Off you go your majesty.

Cyclist: I’ve a good mind to knock your block off.

Jaysen: I wouldn’t advise that, I have a blue belt in judo, a degree in law and a short fuse. It will make you even later if you try to ride with two broken arms.

Cyclist: Go back to the mainland you tosser.

Jaysen: Try to be aware that there are others on the footpath, if you cannot show respect for walkers you should stick to the roads.

Cyclist: I will if it means avoiding knobheads like you.

Jaysen: I wonder if cars hoot their horns at you to warn you that there behind you? You’re a bully with a bell, how manly that is. Everyone who hears that bell thinks of you as ridiculous buffoon, barging his way through territory shared by all. You have the audacity to call me names. Imagine what people call you under their breath.

Cyclist: Piss off.

Jaysen: Again, you have the power to do so, so much faster than I. Don’t you have somewhere to be or is insulting strangers included in your daily return home.

Cyclist: I’ve had enough of this.

Jaysen: Surely this is a footpath, a shared space, if you want to go fast, you can stick to the road, it’s only a short detour of five minutes. You can share the space with cars and ring your little bell with impunity.

Unable to win on wit or by arguing, too timid to put Jasen’s true claim to being a blue belt, the cyclist cycles off.

Slowly, building back to his new speed and heading straight for an elderly couple on walking sticks, his bell resonating with impatient dings.

Jaysen: Ding-bat, that’s for sure.

His blood pressure is raised, his thoughts are disturbed, and his composure is lost.

Jaysen stands still and breathes.

Taking long slow deep inhalations through the mouth and releasing them with measured exhalations, he is soon thinking about other things. The beautiful birdsong is relaxing as is the sight of the verdant vegetation.

Peace is restored to his world. Maybe, he thinks, not all the islanders are reasonable individuals, and he wonders was there a trace of mainland accent in the bicycle boy after all.

Visit Number Twelve — Continued.

At the end of a footpath, there is the road. Left for St. Michael’s Bay and right for the farmland. It is the village across the road where he is bound and his appointment with a tax lawyer.

Andy: I hope you like this humble home, my charming cottage is kept warm through a ground source heat source pump, none of your air-source nonsense here.

Jaysen: You’re lucky to have the space and the money to install one.

Andy: The island has its own microclimate.

Jaysen: Really?

Andy: Absolutely, right and I am lucky enough to have a huge south-facing garden, but you came to talk to me about tax, not my energy mix.

Jaysen: Always fascinated by technology. But you’re right, there’s certainly enough time to talk about that later.

Andy: Come through to the sitting room, I’ve got a pot of coffee, some sandwiches, biscuits and cake waiting for us and the dogs behind a gate in the kitchen. He’ll not eat our brunch before we get a look in.

Jaysen: That’s very kind. Thank you. I was already getting a bit peckish.

Once Jaysen is settled with a cucumber sandwich, delicately cut into quarters and the crusts cut off, in one hand and a mug of Earl grey in the other, the bergamot oil, giving the tea a tantalising taste, Andy settles into a chintz covered armchair.

Andy: Now you wanted to know about the success of the island and the malaise of the mainland.

Jaysen: Precisely, I’m here to learn more about the island and its success for my report that will go to the Business Secretary when I have collated my findings.

Andy: Well, I think I can safely say your problems are due to tax dodgers. If you earn over fifty thousand in the UK and on the mainland where the laws are similar, you can start up your own company, take a stipend, a small salary, of twelve thousand a year and give yourself a share dividend pay-out of seventy thousand, on which you only pay eight and three quarters per cent tax as a basic income tax payer. You have made yourself a basic rate tax payer by paying yourself on twelve grand. The rest of the money, thirty-eight thousand, you pay less than nine per cent tax on. A good wheeze, don’t you think?

Jaysen: That’s an ingenious stroke of skulduggery.

Andy: Now if you’re paying less than ten per cent of tax on a tax bill that should be above twenty per cent, the government is losing a huge amount of revenue. Coupled with allowing Amazon and huge organisations to offshore their income, we have a recipe for disaster.

Jaysen: So, what’s the solution.

Andy: It’s simple, just require everyone to pay their fair share of tax whether it’s directors of companies or multinationals whose employees benefit from the health service, which they do not contribute enough to and those earning over £50,000 a year should having an increasing scale of national insurance contributions. After all that was the idea of the health service in Britain, when it started, that the wealthier will contribute more because they can afford to. At the moment, someone who earns £250,000 per year contributes the same amount as someone on £50,000. So, if I earn 75, 100 or 150 grand, I still pay the same contributions as the person on 50, that is not equitable.

Jaysen: But the multinational companies have to pay a proportion of the national insurance contribution of the individual, don’t they?

Andy: The share the employer pays has got smaller and smaller while the share the employee pays has risen under successive governments. All I ask is that they should pay their fair share. At present they do not.

Jaysen: So, if the directors and large conglomerates pay less tax, a direct result is that fewer people get the care they should from the I.H.S.

Andy: Precisely.

Jaysen: It sounds good, I’m sure the Business Secretary will be able to propose that.

Andy: The Mainland government has to decide if they are going to look after their citizens or the lovely businessmen who take them out to lunch and tempt them with shows on the mainland and Caribbean holidays.

Jaysen looks shocked: Does that still happen?

Andy: In the U.K. Just Stop Oil, indisputably got one thing right.

Jaysen: That was?

Andy: The U.K. need a Citizen’s Assembly. You, on the mainland, need a Citizen’s Assembly. We already have one.

Jaysen: Why stop there? We could have a Medics Health Service, where groups of doctors or wards employ managers instead of the other way around. That way nepotism can be controlled, and managers need not be so senior and therefore not so expensive. If a headmistress can run a school on £70,000 why does a health manager need £250,000?

Andy: We have to get value for money in everything and everyone has to be responsible for paying a fair share of tax. It’s not right that someone who is a sole trader, pays twenty to twenty-five per cent tax and someone who has a company only pays twelve and a half per cent tax.

Jaysen: If everyone paid their fair share, then the system works but if anyone shirks their responsibility or if companies try to dodge tax, then, the system collapses.

Andy: Even if it’s not illegal what they are doing, it’s not moral. Dodging your share of tax impacts everyone, rich and poor. I’ve come across it a lot, in the U.K. and the Mainland, mercifully it does not happen here. It’s the terrible tricks that businesses pay on the poorest and most vulnerable in society who after all are helping companies get rich, which make me sick to the stomach. One dastardly deceit is to get the employee to pay all the national insurance. Zero hours contractors are encouraged to become self-employed so that the company does not have to pay the national insurance contribution.

Jaysen: Surely that’s part of their contract, to contribute to the coffers so that the health system can afford to treat someone if they get ill. Isn’t it the least they could do for the people who work so hard for them.

Andy: You’d think so, wouldn’t you? They want to dodge tax any way they can, they don’t collect tax for the exchequer, and they don’t want to pay tax on the wealth they have accumulated on the back of poor wages and treating their staff live slaves with not one bit of benefit.

Jaysen: They don’t pay enough corporation tax, they don’t pay enough capital gains tax and they don’t pay employer’s contribution to the national insurance pool and that’s a tax that we need that.

Andy: We won’t stand for it here. You put up with it on the Mainland because you’ve brought the same story the U.K. government is pumping out, which is that the big companies will leave. Let them, we have dairies and the Post Office doing deliveries here, we will not countenance a parasite company on our shores.

Jaysen: I’m not sure the Mainland Administration would go that far, banning large companies. What about indirect taxes like VAT, or TVA or value added tax, whatever you call it ? I guess we could introduce a type of state tax or whatever you want to call it on the mainland. Doesn’t that have a role?

Andy: Of course, the Island of Censern Treasury, insisted we were a V.A.T. free-zone but now they’ve slapped VAT of ten percent on everything including food. There is no wriggle room for any business, organisation or school. Then, the government has enough cash to ensure that they can have a breakfast club, school dinners and afternoon tea at the end of the school day for the most vulnerable and people are happy to pay.

Jaysen: Thirty per cent of children in the UK live in poverty, that’s four point three million kids suffering.

Andy: I read that on the Mainland, it’s twenty per cent, one in five. We do not have that problem here because we pay decent wages,

Jaysen: That’s very civilised and everyone seems to have tea at three thirty, even at school.

Andy: Schools pay VAT plus they pay rates as do all our islanders and the rates are based on current property values, which is fair.

Jaysen: I know that schools were worried about VAT before they realised that they could offset the VAT against VAT charged on capital projects.

Andy: We won’t allow such a dodge here. We spend money on our revenue services, the profits from alcohol duties are ploughed back into staffing our tax offices fully so that we can ensure tax evasion is not part of the islands infrastructure. Fairness to all is our watchword, whether you’re the islands biggest entrepreneur or someone working part-time. We all pay the same amount of value added tax on goods and we all pay a percentage of our incomes. It’s simple and not as costly to administer as the labyrinthine tax on the mainland and in the UK, too. That way you can have an efficiently functioning health service and a world-class education system. It underpins our economic success.

Jaysen: I was impressed by the hospital I visited, a mixture of tried and tested regimes and the most up-to-the-minute technology. I just wish was had a similar system back on the mainland.

Andy: You’ve yet to see the schools, we’ve adopted the Finnish model and our school day finishes at four with thirty minutes a day of rigorous exercise, supervised by a local personal trainer.

Jaysen: It sounds like Utopia.

Andy: It will be, once we get rid of the old way of thinking. The old companies are gradually dying out and the disruptors are coming in, but we won’t make the same mistake as Hedgehog Brewery did, grow your brewery on the backs of all your staff and then refuse them the living wage once you go public, which is hardly thanks for your staff’s hard work.

Jaysen: That’s unbelievable. I cannot believe a new company would do that, it’s positively Victorian and inhumane.

Andy: What a cruel and insufferable insult. I read that and I haven’t bought any of their beer since.

Jaysen: I can understand the stance you have taken.

Andy: I’ve even encouraged all the people that I know on the Mainland and in the U.K. to boycott them. The beer is banned by the Citizen’s Assembly here on Censern. We put our health service, our schools and our people’s well-being, first, and we expect all companies that export to us to do the same, or they are blacklisted. We’ve moved away from China because of the 12 million Uyghurs, who are being persecuted, sourcing our goods from Bangladesh, Indian, Morocco, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Jaysen: So, a small group of like-minded professionals, working together, have changed the islanders’ stance on everything.

Andy: We’re getting there.

Jaysen: I have a journalist friend, Imogen Garfinkel, who might be able to help you with your publicity and P.R.

Andy: I’d be delighted to talk to her.

Jaysen: I’ll organise it.

Andy: You should really see our schools, debating, rhetoric, high- intensity workouts, every single school day, and afternoon tea, an opportunity for all the community to get together and for teachers to check on pupils, introduce different societies, or groups into the school to broaden the children’s experience.

Jaysen: I thought you were introducing the Finnish method.

Andy: Yes their system prioritises learning over testing, teachers assess students based on curriculum objectives.

Jaysen: That sounds sensible.

Andy: The only nationwide test, called the matriculation examination, happens at the end of senior school.

Jaysen: It’s an exam that determines admission to advanced studies.

Andy: Precisely, we have a highly educated population on Censern and over twenty-five per cent go to the top universities world-wide.

Jaysen: However, the physical education and socialisation through meals is your addition.

Andy: Yes and our teachers are as highly trained as the Finnish, undergoing a demanding, research-based five-year master’s programme and only a few applicants are accepted. Then, we allow the teachers to select the appropriate teaching methods for their pupils.

Jaysen: There’s no National Curriculum?

Andy: As a governor of my local school, I can assure you that the teachers go far beyond that. Most of all there is no private education on the island.

Jaysen: That’s huge, how do the rich get influence and maintain the status quo.

Andy: They don’t.

Jaysen: I have to see the school.

Andy: I think business could learn from the Finnish school, prioritising children’s mental well-being, implementing a nationwide antibullying policy and addressing inequality.

Jaysen: You don’t mean paying someone a fair wage for a fair day’s work?

Andy: You catch on quick.

Jaysen: How do we stop the managers thinking they deserve a salary three times that of the workers and the directors ten or a hundred times that?

Andy: Simple: Make them pay their fair share of tax.

Jaysen: You’ve got a one-track mind.

Andy: One track, heading for the town of Humanity and onto the cities of Fairness and Justice.

Jaysen: The Censern Express.

Andy: Come with me, I’m hearing readers at the school this afternoon unless you have to get going.

Jaysen: I’m on my own schedule. My agenda is driven by research into Censern and how the island is so successful. I’ve been commissioned by those on the mainland to ascertain what makes your island so successful.

Andy: Well, you know as well as I do, success starts with education. We teach our islander pupils that we are all in it together.

Jaysen: We heard that one before. Remember the UK in Covid. Some of the government were involved in getting rich from the pandemic and trying to stop lockdowns at the same time.

Andy: They certainly were not in it together and what was the thanks for all the people who worked through the disease, a wage freeze; people who had seen hundreds of patients die and dozens of colleagues killed by Covid.

Jaysen: They actually reduced their money or tantamount to that, such was the small rise as compared to the government-stoked inflation.

It really is disgraceful how people on over £80,000, who are in the top ten per cent of the population, four times the amount most nurses receive, were too mean to let nurses avoid having to visit the food bank.

Andy: That’s part of your remit then, finding out why poor people are punished for their hard work on the Mainland. Why do you allow the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. That policy just means everyone has to pay more tax, which is precisely what happened in the U.K. post-pandemic. Miniscule growth, short recessions and rising taxes, all because they did not want working people to have a decent wage even though they know that working people spend money in the economy and the rich just hoard it.

Jaysen: A huge part is looking at pay in the public sector and amongst the poor, my boss is very interested in that, especially with the interest in a Universal Basic Income that’s going the rounds yet, again,

Andy: It’s quite simple: pay the poor a decent sum, tax the companies what is due, help the rich pay a fair rate, too. It’s not rocket science.

Jaysen: We also need industries and services to power the economy.

Andy: Indeed, you do but we can have successful industries and pay a decent wage, it does happen in Germany, the powerhouse of Europe. I wonder why?

Jaysen: So far, I’ve learnt that paying your staff well, producing a product that is not adulterated and can compete with other similar products should result in higher sales, higher profits and greater revenue for the tax man.

Andy: Exactly and those employed will spend their money in the economy, not hoard it away like the rich. Therefore, you get the benefit of their spending boosting the economy.

Jaysen: So why doesn’t it work on the Mainland?

Andy: You know that the tax system is fair on the island. On the Mainland, the tax system is complicated and broken. You’re a forensic accountant, you know how people dodge tax. You’ve seen it there, over and over, again, even large organisations avoid tax. Everyone wants the services but without paying for them. The individual wants free health-care, the multinationals and industry want efficient infrastructure and cheap electricity and water bills. Pickpocketing is rightly illegal so should tax avoidance or tax- dodging be illegal and fines should be paid for doing so.

Jaysen: The revenue people are a bit inept at that on the Mainland, preferring deals with the multinationals.

Andy: Don’t worry, I’ve seen that; accountants like yourself are complicit in literally taking food out of people’s mouths in order to afford your client a third holiday or a new boat.

Jaysen: That’s harsh.

Andy: If it was not so tragic it would be faintly ridiculous. As it stands, the lack of accountability, culpability and the lack of humanity is scandalous. The Mainlanders should be ashamed of themselves.

Jaysen: You can’t blame the accountants.

Andy: Are you pulling my leg?

Jaysen: I never came anywhere near you.

Andy: It’s an expression. ‘Are you pulling my leg, it’s got bells on’.

Jaysen: I don’t understand.

Andy: I know and that’s true in so many ways.

Afterword — On the Ferry

Jaysen sits on the upper deck, enjoying the cool spray spitting in his face. As the ferry to the Mainland slices through the surf just beyond the harbour walls, Jaysen reflects on his visit and goes over the notes he has written on his tablet and types out the conversations he has recorded, listening to them through headphones.

He shields his ears and tablet from the wind by turning up the collar on his Censern Farmer’s Raincoat, a present he has bought himself. It is made of sustainable materials, bamboo, linen, hemp, and rubber, and it has a wax coating and cotton lining.

He is cosy in it, despite his hands feeling a little numb, he briefly blows on them and then his dexterous fingers fly over the keyboard until he notices a bearded gentlemen standing over him. He has a beard and is about thirty, only slightly older than Jaysen himself, but thin, and tall.

Louis: Good afternoon, do you mind if I join you?

Jaysen: Hello, of course not, I’m just finishing some notes, I know you from somewhere.

Louis: I’m the captain of this ship. I greeted you when you embarked.

Jaysen: Of course, I didn’t recognise you without the cap.

Louis: That’s perfectly understandable.

Jaysen: So, you know who I am and what I’m doing here. How can you add to my research?

Louis: It’s just a story that I want to share with you. I was in North Africa, we docked there after dropping off some flax for a shirt mill. While there, I bought a belt from a seller, it was a good price that we negotiated, fair for him and fair for me. He kept me talking in such a charming way, I began to trust him, I handed over 100 dirhams and he promised me twenty back.

Jaysen: That’s a good price.

Louis: My friend bought one for seventy the next day. That’s not my point. He had someone with him who adjusted the belt size and handled the cash, the charming man negotiated and his partner in crime took the baksheesh.

Jaysen: How did he give himself a tip.

Louis: He cleverly handed over two one-dirham coins, instead of two ten-dirham.

Jaysen: That’s a dirty trick.

Louis: Now, he thought he was cheating me, stupid infidel, you might say, I was after all in the park near the mosque, however he was not cheating me, he was cheating his Muslim brother as, I left the tip that night, not bothering to count the coins, assuming I was making a generous tip when it was eighteen dirhams short. I only learnt of the incident by talking to someone from the restaurant where they share the tips when we went the next day.

Jaysen: Otherwise, you would never have known.

Louis: Now, twenty dirhams to us sounds paltry, two pounds but that can buy a meal in North Africa. He was literally taking the food out of a fellow Moroccan’s mouth.

Jaysen: I see the parable, and I also see the parallel. Not paying your share of tax is literally taking food out of poor people’s mouths.

Louis: We may well bring in a law on the island that will make it a crime not to pay your fair share of tax.

Jaysen: Censern is forward thinking.

Louis: Censern will become Utopia, my friend.

Jaysen: Once the older companies fade and the new companies take over, I think you’re right.

Louis: How long were you there and what did you learn?

Jaysen: I was just there for a few days, but I learnt a lot.

Louis: For instance?

Jaysen: That every action you take has consequences.

Louis: That reminds me of a cycle ride on the mainland.

Jaysen: Is this a joke?

Louis: A girl and her boyfriend were at the lights on those electric bikes you can rent. There was a red signal, and the green man was visible so, pedestrians were crossing.

Deciding he cannot wait longer, he shoots off. Dutifully, she follows, perhaps unfamiliar with the area perhaps thinking the light must have changed.

Either way, she careers into a push chair, does not stop and races off. The lights change and I try to catch up with the ignorant miscreants and have an exchange.

Jaysen: Did you give them what for? I hate bullies.

Louis: As I draw level with the girl, checking first I was not being overtaken by a car, it’s foolish to ride two abreast in a mainland city, I put my thumb up and say, “You are so cool, I love the way you took out the push-chair and the mother.” She glances over. “I’ve never seen someone deliberately run over a family at a traffic light,” I continue. She ignores me so I cycle up to the boyfriend. “That was so cool the way you went through the traffic light and your girlfriend took out the pedestrians on a green man.

Jaysen: What did he say?

Louis: Do you mind not spitting on me when you’re talking.

Jaysen: That’s classic, the one who perpetrated the crime got the punishment. If he had not crossed the junction before the red light changed, he would never have had spittle on his face. That is almost poetic.

Louis: I think so. What else have you learnt.

Jaysen: The higher up the corporate ladder you get, the more you forget where you came from.

Louis: Meaning?

Jaysen: We all start with low paid jobs and it’s a struggle.

Louis: You’re right there.

Jaysen: I’m put in mind of the Apex Aircraft boss who gave his employees a one per cent raise when inflation was five per cent and awarded himself a forty-five per cent pay increase. Exploiting the vulnerable seems to be systematic in this version of commercialism.

Louis: So, what do you recommend?

Jaysen: Paying people a decent wage so they can eat, they can pay their rent and afford at least one holiday a year. The need for workers to suffer seems barbaric.

Louis: But that will cost, and the boss will have to cut back on the three holidays he gets a year, and he might even have to donate his airmiles to charity.

Jaysen: I know it would be tragic if a CEO or MD on four million was replaced by an executive committee of four people on 100,00 a year. What would the company possibly do with the

600,000 it saves?

Louis: Provide healthcare for the employees? Give them a pay rise, invest in the business rather than reward shareholders.

Jaysen: Most of the bosses that I meet on the mainland earn between 73 and 120 times the average worker.

Louis: Leigh Day, lawyers against injustice, have influenced our behaviour on the island over ensuring that all staff are paid fairly but there are still some dinosaurs in the brewing and food industry that are withering away with their old practices.

Jaysen: Hopefully, the new disruptors will reframe the wages and salary.

Louis: On Censern but I feel a Hedgehog situation coming on the mainland.

Jaysen: Hedgehog?

Louis — Yeah, that trendy brewery that was crowd funded, went public and refused to pay the minimum wage to their employees. It’s a company in a long list of organisations that kick the workers in the teeth and spend the profits on boardroom bonuses and shareholders dividends.

Jaysen: Not another one! I think I read about that. The company has decided to abandon its commitment to the real living wage of £12.00 per hour, opting to pay the government’s national living wage of £10.42 an hour.

Louis: I haven’t bought a pint or can since.

Jaysen: That’s some wage cut and some haircut for the workers.

Louis: You’re telling me.

Jaysen: You’re in the grove Jackson.

Louis: This is murder.

Jaysen: The Road to Rio, you must have been in the same island cinema as me on Thursday.

Louis: That’s another wonderful thing about Censern, the early evening films.

Jaysen: I love the fact that everyone finishes their work at 5 pm if they want to.

Louis: The wage earners do, those working for larger salaries are encouraged to work until 6 pm, having started at their office at seven.

Jaysen: All the schools are open for drop off, I have to wait until eight on the mainland.

Louis: Unless education, health and work are connected, we cannot hope to have a mentally and physically fit society; through coordination, we have improved life chances for all our citizens.

Jaysen: It’s like being in the America of the ‘Founding Fathers’.

Louis: That’s right, anything else?

Jaysen: A government of the people for the people, an administration that puts people first, and an assembly that treats all its citizens as contributors to society.

Louis: Thomas More wrote of Utopia, which had created a social order based on natural reason and natural justice, encouraging human fulfilment for all.

Jaysen: It was written in 1516 and it’s taken us more than five hundred years to get close.

Louis: It’s sad, isn’t it that we have so much needless suffering and poverty so that the rich could get richer, live profligate lives, and buy up paintings from around the world while allowing those who bought in the harvest to starve.

Jaysen: The Irish potato famine didn’t happen due to harvest failure, it happened because the rich landlords took the worker’s share and sold it, leaving them with nothing.

Louis: Indeed, and Queen Victoria’s government gave more money to Battersea Dog’s home in those years, allegedly. Since we started trading with Ireland, I have become more interested in the Irish Republic’s history.

Jaysen: We can learn a lot from that. I fear a worker’s revolt, similar to the French Revolution, on the mainland. Those in charge are not ensuring that the poor and vulnerable are supported and they’re not providing a fair and just world for the citizens.

Louis: That’s what we’re doing here, not endeavouring but delivering fairness.

Jaysen: You’ve reminded me of another thing I have learnt that a fair and simple tax system pays dividends and allows reallocation of funds to the most vulnerable.

Louis: Our one level VAT across all goods and fair tax system is a simple way of ensuring we have enough resources.

Jaysen: Yes, I can see the attraction of simplicity. I like the way the island looks after its citizens and treats them fairly.

Louis: As more and more Mainlanders hear about the Censern Success story; the more disaffected they become. The old ways of doing business, screwing the workers, and maximizing dividends for the shareholders, has no place in a modern democracy and a new capitalism needs to be born where the worker is rewarded properly for their toil, not exploited and growth in wealth comes from growth in sales. Only that way can we bring about equality, fraternity, and true liberty.

Jaysen: That’s why I’m here.

The End

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