try jumping out the window.
• Kidding.
• But seriously, four floors. Ouch.
SLIDE SIX:
CASE STUDY ONE—MOOLALA
1. CEO: Jamie Beaston (38)
2. Started in 2011
. Offers payday loans
• Slogan: ‘Slip a little moolala into your pocket.’
• Our little secret: Interest rate of 12,000%
• The media say: ‘Borrow a fiver.
Pay a million two years later.’
SLIDE SEVEN:
CASE STUDY TWO—BETTY POKE
1. CEO: Annette Gough (47)
2. Started in 2007
3. Bingo, poker, online gambling
• Slogan: ‘Feel lucky tonight.’
• Our little secret: Beginner’s luck algorithm designed to lure people into betting more than they can afford
• The media say: ‘I thought he was just playing games, but now I’ve lost the house.’
SLIDE EIGHT:
CASE STUDY THREE—UBANKER
1. CEO: Wilson O’Reilly (54)
2. Started in 2004
3. Online banking, investment and finance
• Slogan: ‘Hassle-free banking.’
• Our little secret: Unsecured savings placed offshore, investment portfolio set to report a massive loss, 83% of accounts over-charged fees, donated £3million to the government. Paid average bonuses of 217% of salary to senior executives while making 200 call centre staff redundant.
• The media say: ‘Guilt-free banking.’
SLIDE NINE: ANY QUESTIONS?
There weren’t any questions, but the three little pigs huffed and they puffed. But there was no-one in the room but each other. They sort-of looked each other in the eye and said things like “outrageous” or “nonsense,” or affected to be bored.
Annette ran a hand through her piled-high hair and said, “We’ve heard all this before,” with a weary chuckle. Wilson muttered, “This has been before a select committee, you know.” Jamie looked around the room, thought about saying something, but kept his silence. He affected a knowing smile that said, ‘well, I was expecting this.’
SLIDE TEN:
• Basically,
• You’re all shits.
SLIDE ELEVEN:
• And what are we going
to do with you?
At this point, Jamie Beaston stood up. “Hey guys, you got me,” he spread out his hands and did a monstrously fake laugh. “All very funny, I’m sure. But I won’t waste my time on this.” He made for the door.
SLIDE TWELVE:
• Please don’t touch the door.
At the time, no-one noticed that slide. Because they were too busy staring at Jamie screaming as he tried to tear his hand from the electrified doorknob. After a few seconds, the current cut out and he fell back, leaving a smell of cooking bacon in the air.
But that wasn’t all.
“Jesus,” he swore from the floor, “I’ve shat myself.”
The other two stared at him in disgust.
He stared back at them from the nylon carpet tiles, defiant. “Oh, don’t be such babies,” he said. “It’s not a full on jobbie, more of a wet fart. Jeez. I’m the one who got fried.”
The other two continued to stare at him.
“Listen, I don’t suppose either of you have a paper towel or...”
They both hastily shook their heads with the thoughtless haste of people being asked by a tramp if they had a spare cigarette.
“Fair enough,” Jamie Beaston stood up, eyeing them warily. He sat back down. “Thanks. I should have known better than to ask a banker for a loan.”
“Coming from you?” snapped Wilson.
“Yeah,” said Jamie, the Yorkshire accent strong is his voice. “And go fuck yourself.”
“Could you perhaps sit further down the table?” asked Annette.
“No.”
A surly silence settled over the three.
SLIDE THIRTEEN:
• Shall we continue?
SLIDE FOURTEEN:
• I have a proposition for you.
• It’s really easy.
• And accords with all of your institutions.
SLIDE FIFTEEN:
• ‘Charity is at the heart of MooLala’
– Jamie Beaston.
• ‘BettyPoke likes to give back’
– Annette Gough.
• ‘We’re an ethical reinvestor.
That’s at our core’
– Wilson O’Reilly.
SLIDE SIXTEEN:
• Actually, what that last quote means,
no-one really knows.
• But only 27% of Ubanker’s
money is invested in arms.
• Woo.
Annette had started nodding and now she stood up, smiling wearily. “This is all some childish attempt at blackmail, isn’t it? Yes, that’s right.” She nodded to herself.
SLIDE SEVENTEEN
• No. Not Blackmail.
• Charitable giving.
One of the others started to speak, but Annette held up a hand and carried on talking. “To the charity of you, is that it? Well then. We’ve been stupid. We’ve walked into this. Call it a tax on our stupidity. How much do you want?”
SLIDE EIGHTEEN
• Ah.
The suggestion of rounding up some rotten bankers came from the Killuminati. I was kind of happy with it as an assignment. For one thing, these were the kind of people it was easy to hate. I wasn’t going to end up having the same pangs as I did towards Harry Paperboy. Or even Todd.
Also, after Vampantha I needed an easy win.
The great thing about the three money makers I’d selected was that they were fairly easy pickings. They managed a great overlap.
• They were all publicly known about and loathed.
• They all had lots of money.
• Were clearly horridly corrupt.
• All high-profile ‘Talk to me’ business leaders.
• And yet thunderingly stupid.
On that basis it was fairly easy to hire a business suite anonymously, and invite them all to a meeting there, having sent them a set of proposals for an investment portfolio that just looked too rich to refuse. I was careful to make the investment opportunity satisfyingly, but not suspiciously, juicy.
I was making no mistakes. I had never at any point met any of them personally. Nor was I actually in the business suite at the same time they were. I’d kitted it out and specced it up, but had made sure that I’d done so in a disguise.
The big thing was making sure they couldn’t summon help. This was actually pretty easy. The building had wifi, but needed a password. And, thanks to Google, I was able to build a fairly decent mobile phone signal jammer, just the sort of thing they use in cinemas and schools. I’d buried it under one of the floor tiles.
Not that there was anyone around. I’d picked a slightly miserable building on the edge of London’s Silicon Roundabout. The kind of place that charged an outrageous price for a view of Wetherspoon’s and a dual carriageway. This meant that the meeting room I’d booked was the only busy thing on the floor. And all I needed was to keep the three there for an hour.
The thing is, they were stupid, but they were cunning. I gave them a five minute break, watching on the webcam as Wilson paced back and forth, Jamie remained sat down, and Annette started jimmying away at the window latch. The locks were fairly tight, and I was pretty confident that they wouldn’t be able to open one. But if they did, who would she call out to? This was London, after all. People tended to avoid paying attention to other people who shouted...
SLIDE NINETEEN
• We’re going to start with three case studies.
• Each one a noble cause.
• Between you, choose which
one to donate to.
Jamie looked at this with a wry smile. “I know where this is going,” he said.
“Oh, aye,” Wilson paused in his pacing. “You’re the man who knows where everything is going, don’t you, laddie? Well, I never listened to my dad, so I don’t see why I should take advice from someone sitting in his own shit right now.”
Annette carried on doggedly working away at the window. She was now on her third meeting room pen, their shattered carcases mounting up like crashed rocketships.
“Fair enough,” said Jamie, rubbing away at the burns on his hand. “Don’t say I didn’t try—”
“I’m firing my PA,” announced Wilson. “She set this meeting up.”
“Harsh,” said Jamie. “You came. We all did. Our own look out.”
Annette snapped another pen but carried on working. She nearly had leverage, but then bent back one of her fingernails and fell back with an anguished cry. She sucked at the damaged finger, her face flushed. For a few moments there was none of the glacial calm people associated with her. There was just rage. Rage in a tight black dress.
She reminded me a bit of a parent throwing a wobbly at their kid in a shop. Just a lot of screaming, and the others looking at her like frightened children.
“Wow,” whistled Jamie. “Just wow.”
Wilson nodded approvingly to himself. “Ach, seems I’m the only one not an infant.”
“Jeez,” said Jamie. “You’re always scoring points, aren’t you?”
“Getting ahead,” intoned Wilson, “is all about staying ahead, laddie.”
Jamie rolled his eyes.
Annette strolled back over to the table and sat down. She was rubbing her injured hand.
Jamie smiled conspiratorially at her. “Here’s us two, looking like we’ve lost a wanking competition, and there’s him over there”—he nodded at Wilson—”wanking with his mouth.” Jamie let out a laugh. Annette made no effort to hide her disgust.
Wilson turned on Jamie with a snarl. “What? I’m not going to take a lecture on leadership skills from a man who needs a nappy.”
Annette stood up, ever the peacemaker. “Come on now. We should at least try and be civil. And let’s spare each other the business speak. That kind of thing’s all very well when lecturing staff about little people problems. But not here. Not now. It’s just us. We’ll be human. Can you all do that?”
Wilson stared at her, baffled.
Jamie leaned across the desk to Annette and, in a stage whisper, said, “I don’t think he can be human, do you?”
“Not very, perhaps,” agreed Annette, sucking her injured finger.
Wilson brushed invisible dandruff from his jacket. “I think you’ll find” – he looked sulkily at both of them for a bit, then toughed it out – “that there’s nothing wrong with positive motivational speech. Personally I find it empowering and it’s really moved my organisation forward.”
“Get her,” whispered Annette. Jamie giggled.
“Eh?” snapped Wilson.
Annette turned to face him. “Your bank,” she said, “is going down the pan. You’ve just told us all you’ve flushed it there with all those nice speeches.”
“It’s a difficult market, but we’re a nimble operator and fiscally it’s crucial not to judge a single snapshot but instead drop more of a time-lapse lens over the operation.”
Jamie whistled.
Wilson growled.
Annette nodded. “However you put it, Wilson my dear, you’re still looking at one of those comedy graphs going downhill. If your business was a slope, I’m rather afraid I wouldn’t fancy skiing down it.”
Wilson was about to say something. I could tell. Instead he quietly sat down, his eyebrows thunderclouds.
SLIDE TWENTY
• Where were we?
• Ah, yes.
• Three case studies.
An embedded video played. It showed a really scummy room. It had once been one of those ‘student pods’ that developers were throwing up across the country, all pristine walls and shiny surfaces. And then a student had moved into it, and covered it with laundry, half-read books, mugs and crumbs. Most of the floor space was taken up by a laundry hanger, empty of all but a pair of trainers dangling like a muddy wind-chime.
A figure shuffled into view, wrapped in a stale hoody.
“Hi. My name’s Rahim and I’ve utterly screwed up my life. Right. Okay, I’m a student, so I know that about half of youse watching this will hate me now. But you know, proper subject— biomechanical engineering So, like, not media studies or town planning or any shite. But a science, get in. This country needs scientists. That’s what the government says. That’s what this uni says in the brochure. That’s what my careers adviser and my teachers told me.
“Problem is, that’s all very well, but they’ve made it bloody hard to get a job. ’Cause, right, you have to go to university to learn proper science, and that’s really fooking expensive. Like mentally expensive. Thing is, they say ‘that’s no bother as it’s a growth sector’ as though it means I’ll be able to stroll out of here into a highly-paid job and pay off all my tuition fees. That’s what they all tell you. But that’s not how it works.
“This is how a growth-sector works (and yes, I’ll get to my point). Okay. So, biomech is cool. It’s a going-places field. So
everyone
wants to work in it. Which means that yeah, there are loads of jobs for graduates (yay!) but they’re all really badly paid (boo!) because there’s so much competition. And what with one thing and another, it’s actually quite hard to make ends meet. I know what you’re thinking,
Filthy skiver, go get a part-time job.
Well, guess what? All the part-time jobs are taken by all the people who graduated last year and haven’t been able to get a proper job. Honestly, go down the pub and you’ll get served your curry club special by an MA Geologist. How cool is that? Not very.
“So. I’m living off my student loan which gets spread very thin.
“But that’s okay. Nae bother. Cos there’s all these adverts in the student newspaper and around halls saying...”
And here he held up a flyer:
Need a bit of extra MooLaLa?
We all know that student loans are brilliant, and sometimes far cheaper than your standard personal loan. BUT... what if you end up borrowing more than you need? You could end up out of your depth in hot water, with a nasty debt that’ll take you years to pay off! BUT... with a MooLala loan, yes, our interest rate is a little higher, but you only borrow from us for a little time and you pay it back to us on a date that suits you.
So, if the end of the week is looking a long way off—Why not treat yourself to Friday on a Wednesday? COOL!