Death on the Block

DEATH ON THE BLOCK. ?

Right-under-Heap or Rightun as it was called by the people who lived
there, had once been a prosperous pit village. Coal however had become
an unfashionable commodity, and was being superseded by a new type of
foreign muck called Oremulsion. This new product was high in Sulphur
and other evil smelling residuals. Although being low in thermal
efficiency it proved very proficient in generating green house or Ozone
depleting gasses.
When El Presidente of the Board of Trade was finished interceding,
before breakfast, dinner and tea (without any apparent success) to save
Rightun Pit, he was interrogated by the Press Corp. They put him on the
media rack and asked him why imported low grade Alligator Crap was to
be used in preference to locally mined coal. He gave a rambling
diatribe, which in essence amounted to little short of El-Toro Faeces.
Boiling it all down, what the government was prepared to do was
introduce an Enterprise Zone. Now it must be explained that E. Zs as
they are called in Civil Service Parlance are empty factories and
offices that are built, using taxpayers' money supplemented by EEC
Grants.
The theory behind the E. Zs was that when built they would be left
empty, preferably close to a dormitory of unemployed peasants. This was
done in the hope that some migrating foreign entrepreneur. One who had
more than likely been forbidden by law from exploiting further third
world rustics. This shady migrate industrialist or organisation would
then take up tenure in the empty E. Z., and provide the indigenous
peasants with grant aided training and part time remuneration for full
time employment. Without premium rates of course, and on a swing shift
continental seven day week arrangement. Thus relieving the government
of paying part time wages for full time unemployment.
This system was based loosely on the Papua New Guinea Cargo Cult
System. Which was thought out by a group of Papuan Tribesmen who on
seeing the white man unloading cargo from their aeroplanes, decided to
build facsimile aircraft. Using trees, tarpaulin, grass and twigs, they
thought in so doing that they would just have to wait until their
planes filled with cargo. Just as the white mans planes obviously had
done the way the Aborigines perceived it.
To date neither the Cargo Cult nor the EZ Systems have born fruit. It
is thought by many aficionados of commerce and industry, that the
former system has more merit than the latter. Added to this the
Aborigine system has more chance of working than the latter, because it
is quite obvious that more thought, planning and feeling have gone into
devising the Cargo Cult.
Enterprise Zones just as many other past government-schemes such as the
Groundnut, Youth Training, etc., etc. Are doomed more often before
bearing fruit or for that matter nuts, but not before billions of
pounds have been wasted on them. This practice is not in the domain of
any one political party. However the losers and winners of these
half-cocked projects tend to vary in accordance with the incumbent
party. So it is quite obvious that schemes may die but schemers live
on.
One such schemer was George Mack, who with his wife Mary, pretty
nineteen years old daughter Daphne and twenty-one years old dyslexic
son Gerald moved to Rightun. George had bought 69 Team Valley Gardens
as an investment for the future. This purchase had been made in the
heady get rich quick days of the middle eighties. When George's star
was in its ascendancy as the Chairman of a Government Think Tank. He
would have been accused of insider dealing when he made the deal to buy
the property, if he had been a member of the Stock Exchange and made a
similar investment.
George Mack and his family to the people in Rightun seemed like an
ordinary middle class household. The Macks had not chosen to live at 69
Team Valley Gardens, Rightun. Circumstance or rather shame had
precipitated this move from their comfortable existence in the Home
Counties' stockbroker belt. It was not the humiliation of their
daughter's second pregnancy and ensuing issue of twins. Who it was said
had been conceived while the young lady was attending a very expensive
Swiss Finishing School run by monks.
Neither was it indeed the blot on the family's good name. Brought about
by young Gerald being sent down from Oxbridge, for taking up Black
Magic or to some degree attempting to take up Occult Worship. Gerald
who had had a bad trip on acid attempted to raise Satan. This was not
to be however, because his dyslexia let him down. Instead of raising
the prince of darkness, he raised another cloven hoofed creature named
Rudolph, who with a group of identically cloven and antlered Reindeer
were pulling a sledge driven by a fat guy attired in red robes and
white whiskers. Who kept shaking his belly and incessantly shouting "Ho
Ho Ho." Gerald's' dyslexic lingua had induced him to raise Santa.
Mary Mack's reputation was beyond reproach, apart from a couple of
indiscretions with a brace of Cabinet Ministers and the tenor section
of the Russian Red Army Ensemble, who were in Mary's care during a
recent goodwill tour of Britain, which George had organised. These
peccadilloes were brought about by minor lapses in an otherwise
unblemished career. Added to this it could be argued that it was part
of a Senior Civil Servants Spouse's wifely duties, to entertain those
with whom her husband had to associate, in the pursuance of his
career.
The shame that had brought this once very affluent family to Rightun
lay four square on George Mack's shoulders. Every layperson thinks that
a Government Think Tank is made up of a group of erudite academics,
shut away and using their superior mental prowess for the benefit of
mankind. Nothing could be further from the truth. In quite a lot of
cases the Think Tank is made up of schemers, and those who would be
more at home in a Septic Tank. Decisions arrived at in a majority of
these Star Chambers are in pursuit of self-serving gratification,
career enhancement, money, and future ennoblement. To achieve these
ends those employed on some of these quangos have to have fertile
imaginations. Coupled with the ability to do creative written reports
that appear to be interesting, but stop short of committing the writer
in any way. These reports and findings must be so ambiguous that any
future court of inquiry would find it impossible to nail the author, or
lay any blame at the door of the essayist.
Our erstwhile anti-hero George Mack had enjoyed all the impedimenta of
high office. He had strutted in the corridors of power. Been
interviewed on all kinds of subjects for very handsome fees. By every
facet the media uses. Was wined, dined and entertained by royalty,
moguls and international high fliers of every description. All this had
stopped when his and subsequently his families' shame started. This
shame was brought about when George developed that dread disease called
WRITERS BLOCK. This it was which had killed George Mack's career stone
dead.

by Don Passmore ?