Corbyn World 2

I wanted to take a train to London.  I had my credit card in my pocket.  I could buy myself some clothes.  I could go to a club and have a drink somewhere.  I had sorted out my medical needs, inhalers, toothbrush, flannel and bath sponge.  But I had only the clothes I had arrived in.  I had slept in them.  I went to the ticket machine at the railway station.  I could have gone to the teleport building but didn't want to risk another dimensional transition.  I put my card in the machine.  A return ticket from Brighton to Kings Cross was £10.  Only £10?  I pushed the buttons several times on the machine and started all over again.  Could it really only be £10?  It was a return, use within 28 days, any time ticket.  For £10?  Not having to book a seat at 5 o' clock in the morning?  I bought the ticket and got on the train.  When I arrived in London, the first thing I bought was a big bag to put all my clothes in.  I shopped for the whole day, as many pairs of shirts, trousers, jumpers and pyjamas as I could squash into the bag.  It must have cost several hundred pounds.  It was late afternoon.  I was hungry and thirsty.  I went into a pub.
"A pint of lager please."
"We don't have any," said the barman.
"There's nothing as bad as a pub with no beer."
"Excuse me Sir?" said the young barmaid who was also behind the counter.  "We do not wish to hear that sort of language in here.  If you want to buy alcohol I suggest you go somewhere else.  This is a respectable pill bar."  I paused for a few seconds.  What on earth had happened to pubs in this dimension?
"I've been shopping all day.  I'm thirsty.  Give me a drink."
"What would you like Sir?" asked the barman.  "We have a wide range of fruit juice and fizzy pop."
"Cloudy lemonade," I said.  The barman handed me a menu.  Fish and chips, pie and peas, coffee and tea, amylobarbitone.  Wait a minute.  Amylobarbitone?  That was a barbiturate used in the 1950s.  There was a whole list of such compounds.  Chlordiazepoxide, Equanil, all sorts of mostly ancient tranquillisers and sedatives.  "Pie and mushy peas with chips, please," I said, "and an amylobarbitone."  I needed to steady my nerves.
"I would advise, Sir, that you take one amylobarbitone if you haven't had one before," said the barmaid.  "I'm the pharmacist.  I give advice about the drugs. Go on to butobarbitone when two amylobarbitone doesn't make you feel anything and only take pentobarbitone when butobarbitone stops working altogether.  When you're on pentobarbitone, don't take the tablets less than two hours apart."
"I don't think anyone would want to," said an old man who was standing beside me.  He looked me in the eye.  He was drinking a pint of cola.  "I remember when pubs had beer.  Then we had a hippy government in the 1970s.  They legalised everything.  The only drugs that should be illegal are the really dangerous ones, they decided.  One of those drugs was heroin and the other one was alcohol."
"Alcohol isn't a dangerous drug," I said.
"People become violent and aggressive when they're on alcohol," said the barmaid.  "They don't when they're on tranquillisers."
"If you made everything else illegal, wouldn't every drug dealer be selling heroin?"
"They can't sell it to addicts," said the old man.  "Anyone who's a heroin addict is given heroin on prescription by a specialist drug clinic.  A dealer can only sell heroin to someone who is experimenting with the drug, who hasn't yet become addicted.  It still goes on.  People sell their own prescriptions and burglars love to raid the drug clinics.  But the dealers can't make the huge amount of money they made before.  Alcohol goes on as well.  Go to a rough council estate and they'll sell you a bottle of home brew out of the living room window.  You'll never get rid of illegal drugs altogether."
"The pill bar was the best option," said the barmaid.  "We give clinical standard drugs and expert advice about how to become intoxicated safely."

I sat down at a table with the old man and waited for my food.
"What was it like when you had a hippy government?" I asked.
"The hippies decided you could work if you wanted to work.  It was up to the individual.  Go to work today or take LSD?  They gave us Universal Income.  You got £5 a week whether you worked or not."
"That's not much."
"It wasn't.  I used to live in the back of a mini van."
"Is a mini van long enough to put a bed in the back?"
"No it isn't.  You have to turn the sleeping bag diagonally to get it in.  But it was too small for anyone else to share, so I liked it.  I used to have an old Commer van, always somebody knocking on the door, 'Can I put my sleeping bag on the other seat?  I'll help pay the bills.'  Imagine sharing a Commer van with someone who snores."
"Wouldn't it get cold in the winter?"
"Fill the tank with petrol once a month.  You've got heat for the heater and electricity for the radio and the light."
"Somebody must have worked.  You can't all have been unemployed."
"In practice, rich people worked and poor people didn't.  It became a class thing.  Doctors, teachers, accountants, they have to work.  You can't run the world without them."
"What about factory workers?"
"Factory workers were unionised and well paid.  So were bus drivers.  They were regarded as middle class.  There weren't very many people in those professions.  We didn't buy very much and we didn't go out much.  I used to cook in the back of the mini van with the door open.  I had a little camp stove with a gas cylinder.  Little tins of peas and beans, boiled eggs and boiled rice, that was all I used to live on."
"Were you happy in those days?"
"No, we were absolutely miserable.  That's why we voted for Michael Foot.  He won a landslide victory in 1983.  He took 150 companies into public ownership.  Every teenager was guaranteed an apprenticeship for £50 a week.  Michael Foot made work fashionable."
"When was the Golden Dawn?"
"Jeremy Corbyn became Prime Minister in 1997.  Everything was nationalised, even this bar.  He introduced a minimum wage of £6 an hour.  He introduced 10 year degrees.  Kids who couldn't even read when they left school got 2 years of Adult Literacy and Basic Skills, 2 years to do their GCSEs again, 2 years for an OND diploma, 2 years for an HND diploma and then 2 years to finish their degree.  90% of young people now have degrees.  It was called the Golden Dawn.  That's why all those notices in the shop windows, 'Help Wanted, Apply Within' have a picture of the sun in the sky, the Golden Dawn."

I hired a locker for my bag in the railway station.  I was particularly anxious to lock it away securely.  As well as clothes, I had also bought a computer and some hi-fi equipment.  I queued up outside a London night club.  I was going to take some amphetamines and dance the night away.
"Clinical grade dextroamphetamine," said the barmaid, selling me a tablet for £3.  "The ultimate dancing drug.  If you're not used to it, don't take more than one."  One tablet seemed to be quite sufficient.  The weird electronic music that young people listen to sounds like a record being played at the wrong speed, but I was in the mood for it.  For the first time in my life, I was happy.  I wanted to dance the night away on amphetamines and cloudy lemonade.  I stayed in the club all the time, from Friday to Sunday.  Lots of people did.  On Sunday morning the barmaid offered me a tin foil tray of tablets to put in my wallet.  "You can't buy these in the chemists," she said, "you can only buy them from me.  Have you taken barbiturates before?"
"I've taken amylobarbitone once."
"They're sleeping tablets.  Take one this afternoon.  Don't take any more than one.  They'll help you sleep.  Without them, you'll be awake for days and you won't be able to do anything.  You've been taking amphetamine all weekend.  They're £10 for a tray of 4."  I got home with my bag full of clothes and electrical equipment.  Before I unpacked everything I lay on the bed in the flat and took one of the tablets, placing the rest of the tin foil tray on the bedside table.  In just a few minutes I was feeling dozy.  The tablets hadn't really begun to work.  Half an hour later, when they really began to work, I went out like a light.  Goodbye world until I woke up again, at about six o' clock on Sunday morning.  The sleeping tablets had no hangover.  I did not feel tired at all when I woke up.  I unpacked the bag and put everything away.  I began to realise how smelly I was, not having had a shower or changed my clothes since Wednesday and having danced all the way from Friday night to Saturday morning.  A dance club with that kind of energy usually has excellent air conditioning.  I had a shower and put on some of my new clothes.   I felt better.  I had a walk along the sea front to work and had porridge in the canteen.  It was half past eight.

It was my first day at work.  I sat down beside John in the office.
"How much do you want to be paid?" he asked me.
"£20,000 a year would meet my needs," I said.
"I'm going to pay you £30,000 a year, is that all right?" he asked, laughing.  An old looking man with glasses and greying air came up to introduce himself.
"I'm Bob," he said.  "I'm your shop steward."
"I don't want to join a union."
"Fine Malcolm, that's entirely up to you.  But if anyone is making your life miserable, let me know and I'll see if I can do anything, it doesn't matter whether you're in the union or not."
"You lose more money than you make by going on strike."
"Strike?" asked Bob.  "I haven't heard of a trade union going on strike for years.  We work by negotiation."

I learned quickly about putting computers together, installing software and getting networks to work.  John was an excellent teacher.  I enjoyed the work, but it was demanding.  Afterwards I needed to relax, a pint of cola with a burger and fries along the sea front became my daily after work routine.  In Corbyn world, Brighton has sandy beaches.  The stones on the beach are laid there by the council to prevent erosion.  In the Corbyn dimension they are more concerned about damaging the experience of the beach.  They put up with the erosion.  I would walk along the beach for miles.  At the weekend, I wanted to go clubbing again.  I tried various places in London.  Saturday clubs they called them, instead of night clubs.  I was enjoying myself.  The credit card bill arrived at the end of the month.  It was £1500.  Not to worry.  With wages of slightly more than £2000 I could easily pay it.  At work I looked at my payslip on my computer.  Horror of horrors.
"Two thirds of my income is tax!"
"Everybody pays taxes, Malcolm.  It's just one of those things," said John.
"I earned £2500.  After tax, I've only got £1000.  How is that?"
"The government like to encourage people to work part-time," said John, "so the first £350 a month is tax free.  After that, you're allowed to keep a third of what you earn.  You've got £350 tax free, and two thirds of the next £2150 is taken as tax.  That's £1435 tax.  You've got £1065 left."
"Isn't that enough?" asked Tracey.  "It's 3 times what I earn."
"Why do you earn only £350 a month?"
"Malcolm, the majority people in this country only work part-time," said John.  "Many of them only work one day a week.  That's why you always see those signs in the shop windows saying, 'Help Needed.'  You wouldn't have full employment if everybody worked full time."
"What about people who have families?"
"They're given child benefit," said Tracey, "at generous levels, and maternity grants."
"Doesn't it damage the economy, huge taxes that make everyone's life a misery?"
"Make life a misery?" asked Tracey, almost falling off her chair as she became indignant.  "You can't have the excellent public services we've created in this country without having to pay for them."
"People want more money in their pockets.  They want to spend the money themselves, instead of having governments take it away from them."
"I remember Margaret Thatcher saying that," said John.  "It was the worst election defeat the Tories ever had in history."
"As a Christian, I would like to have enough money to visit India and Africa once in a lifetime, so I can see what it's like for people to live in absolute poverty in the third world."
"Where's the third world?" asked Keith.
"Absolute poverty in India and Africa?" asked John.  "Where would you see that?  India and Africa are wealthy countries."
"I owe £1500 on my credit card."
"I couldn't sleep at night if I owed that much," said Keith.
"That really doesn't help me, saying that."  I looked at the credit card statement.  "I'll have to pay the minimum amount.  The minimum amount is £500.  That seems a lot."
"You've only got four months to pay it back," said Keith, "and you'll have to pay the interest.  It's not meant to give you more money than you had before, it's only so you don't have to carry money around with you."
"I'll have to budget myself to live on £90 a week.  £500 for the credit card, £150 rent, £1065 wages, leaves £410 a month."
"You should manage all right," said Keith.
"I don't even earn that," said Tracey.  "I live a life of simplicity.  I live in a room in an old nurses' home for £20 a week, buy one decent meal a day in the canteen here, and live on beans on toast when I'm at home."
"I won't be able to go to the Saturday club every weekend."
"Every weekend?" asked Keith.  "We do that once a year, when we're on holiday.  Certainly couldn't afford to do it every weekend."
"You've got 3 months to pay off the card," said John, "and you can afford to.  You'll be all right.  Don't worry."
"Most people do something like that once in a lifetime."
"No they don't," said Keith.
"We've never done it," said Tracey.
"Weren't you ever students?  I thought 90% of young people went to university."
"Grants are generous," said Keith.
"They were generous when I was a student.  People still got into debt."
"When I was a student, I scrimped and saved," said Tracey.  "Why are you always so cynical?"  I must come from another dimension where people love money, I thought to myself.