The Tea Break Party

(Scene 1. In a television studio in 2043.)

BBC Interviewer :- All the text books say that this can’t happen. Inflation is 25%. Unemployment is 10 million. You can’t have both of those things at the same time. What’s going on?

Governor of the Bank of England :- I haven’t got a clue.

BBC Interviewer :- You’re the Governor of the Bank of England and you haven’t got a clue?

Governor :- Normally you’d expect high unemployment to bring inflation down. People don’t buy as much when they’re unemployed. Inflation happens when demand exceeds supply. Inflation should be right down.

BBC Interviewer :- The government have a huge deficit.

Governor :- Yes, so huge that the World Economic Union in Brussels have told them that they have to get rid of it, no matter what.

BBC Interviewer :- Are they paying everybody’s benefits with money that they haven’t got?

Governor :- For the last three years there’s been a benefit freeze. The lower rate of unemployment benefit for under 25s has been allowed to go up with inflation, everything else has been frozen. Pensions have become worthless, disability benefits have become worthless.

BBC Interviewer :- Is the deficit any smaller?

Governor :- Only a little bit smaller.

BBC Interviewer :- Is that why there’s so much inflation?

Governor :- But there shouldn’t be any inflation. Nobody’s buying anything.

BBC Interviewer :- What are they spending their money on?

Governor :- Basic essentials, like food and rent.

BBC Interviewer :- Food prices are still rising. Is there a shortage of food?

Governor :- There doesn’t seem to be.

BBC Interviewer :- Rents are sky rocketing. Why doesn’t the government put a cap on housing benefit?

Governor :- And make millions of people homeless? They have tried. There are limits to the maximum level of housing benefit people can claim, but not terribly strict limits, or there would be massive numbers of people homeless.

BBC Interviewer :- Do we need more government housing projects?

Governor :- They do have community trusts that buy cheap properties to renovate them and rent them as shared houses. People have just the amount of room they need. A single person has one bedroom, a family with children have two bedrooms. Not all of the people living there would be on benefit, some of them would be working. With the economic situation as it is now, the rent still has to be at market value.

BBC Interviewer :- If you can’t explain how we managed to achieve record breaking inflation and record breaking unemployment at the same time, can you at least explain what has gone wrong with the economy? Is there a straw that broke the camel’s back?

Governor :- Let me tell you about something that happened to me when I used to work as a financial advisor.

(Scene 2. A boardroom meeting in 2025.)

Manager :- Where’s Whacker?

Financial Advisor :- Who?

Manager :- Jerry. This is an important business meeting, and I want my sales manager to be here.

Jerry :- Sorry, I was just getting a coffee.
(Enters the room to a great round of applause.)

Manager :- The amazing Jerry Pendleting. Whacker. The great Sales Team Leader. Whacker, how are the targets?

Jerry :- Increasing every day. Our best salesman sold three houses this morning.

Financial Advisor :- And one of his customers was unemployed.

Manager :- Ah, come on, Michael, salesmen only perform when they see the world through rose coloured spectacles, you must know that.

Financial Advisor :- What are you going to do when your customers default on their debts?

Manager :- Are you suggesting I’m irresponsible?

Financial Advisor :- Not at all, no. I’m just asking you what you’re going to do about it. I’m employed to give financial advice. That’s what I’m doing. When your customers default on their debts, what sort of financial products are you going to sell them?

Jerry :- Any particular products you had in mind?

Financial Advisor :- If an unemployed customer defaulted on their mortgage, you could buy the house from them and rent it back. Rent it for whatever paltry amount of money the housing benefit people are prepared to give you. In a recession, lots of your customers will become unemployed. Rent the houses on a five year lease. Then you can kick the customers out and sell them again when times are good.

Jerry :- I like it. The customer lives in the house, looks after the house, and the bank doesn’t lose any money. Excellent idea.

Financial Advisor :- Why don’t we mortgage credit cards? If someone owes you £8,000, let them pay it back over 25 years at £60 a month.

Manager :- You’re a genius, Michael. Just give a credit card to anyone. No checks for credit worthiness, anymore. You can always get the money back. Mortgage the debt.

(Scene 3. Back in the television studio in 2043.)

Governor of the Bank of England :- So that’s how it all went wrong. People started lending far too much money to each other, the economy boomed, then it crashed.

BBC Interviewer :- Thank you, Michael, for answering that question, and thank you being so honest.

(Scene 4. Tommy sitting in a café, drinking a cup of tea. Chris Wiseman comes in and sits down beside him.)

Chris Wiseman :- Are you not working now, Tommy? What happened to that cleaning job you used to have?

Tommy :- I was sacked for taking too many tea breaks. But, you know what, it made me think. Tea breaks could be the answer.

Chris Wiseman :- The answer to what?

Tommy :- The answer to the recession.

Chris Wiseman :- Tommy, you’re talking rubbish. How is taking too many tea breaks and losing your job going to solve the recession?

Tommy :- All our economic problems are caused by chronic overproduction. At BMW the electric minis are piling up in the car park. We make more electric minis than anybody in the world could ever buy. If everybody was like me, we wouldn’t.

Chris Wiseman :- Tommy, if everybody was like you, the world would come to an end.

Tommy :- No. I’ve sat down with a calculator. I’ve worked it all out. We’d pay people a quarter of the average wage to do a quarter of the work they do now. It would all work fine.

Chris Wiseman :- When you put it like that, it might just work. I suppose it could happen.

Tommy :- I’m going to start a new political party. I’m going to call it the Tea Break Party. Fancy a cup of tea, Chris?

Chris Wiseman :- Yes. I think tea breaks could be the answer.

(Scene 5. A rented conference room. The first meeting of the Tea Break Party.)

Tommy :- I’m going to start a new political party that is on the side of the unemployed.

1st Voice from the Crowd :- They all are. Who pays your benefits?

Tommy :- I’m going to start a new political party that doesn’t believe in the work ethic. One that accepts that believing that everyone should have a full time paid job is absolute nonsense. One that admits the truth. We’re running out of resources. We produce too much. We consume too much. Brothers and sisters, we need to slow down. People shouldn’t be working 9 hours a day without stopping for lunch. They should have more lunch breaks. They should have more tea breaks. In an age when everyone has a computer on their mobile phone, why is work so hard, why can we not be more laid back?

2nd Voice from the Crowd :- No one would make any money.

Tommy :- They don’t anyway. This is the worst recession for over a hundred years. Look, no one would make much money, but someone would make some money, and as long as someone made some money, and it was shared.

3rd Voice from the Crowd :- Fascism.

Tommy :- I haven’t got a racist bone in my body. Sometimes, socialism worked. Take another look at history. The Soviet Union put people in space, the Cuban economy worked well for decades.

4th Voice from the Crowd :- Communist dictators.

Tommy :- I wouldn’t send people to prison for their beliefs and neither would you. Socialism is an economic system. It simply depends on the character of the people at the top, whether anyone goes to jail because of it. We are the party that defends workers’ rights. We want people to have more tea breaks. We are the Tea Break Party. Vote Tommy if you want more tea breaks.

(Scene 6. BBC News report a few days later.)

Newsreader :- Tommy T Break. (Photograph of Tommy on the wall behind the newsreader.) The T Break party believes that the answer to the problems in British industry is to have longer lunch breaks and more tea breaks.

(Film of Tommy standing in a busy street with a crowd of people around him, speaking into a microphone.)
Tommy :- We consume too much, we produce too much. We need to slow down. If work could be more laid back. If people took longer breaks. If we all had less money and we only worked when we felt like it. We’d end this chronic over production. The books would balance.

Reporter (Speaking over the same film clip) :- A different style of politics. A new way of managing the economy. The economics of laziness. What do people think?
(Interviews people in street.)

Young Woman :- It sounds like people would never do anything.

Old Man :- It’s an absolute joke. They’re workshy. They’re just lazy.
(The film clip ends with 2 posters side by side. One shows Magnus Moore, leader of the Conservative party, with the words ‘I want teenagers to do a year’s community service.’ The other shows Tommy Banks, with the words ‘Vote for Tommy if you want more T Breaks.’)

(Scene 7. Tommy Banks with his campaign team, in his campaign headquarters [tiny bedsit] watching Election Night Special on Tommy’s mobile phone.)

Newsreader :- The story so far. The Conservatives have 80 seats. The Liberal Democrats have 55. Labour have 65. So it seems that some of the small parties could be making unprecedented gains tonight. We’re just going over to Leeds, where, for the first time ever, a member of the British National Party has been elected an MP.
(A smiling MP wearing a Union Jack tie appears on the wall behind the newsreader. The newsreader turns around his chair to look.) Mr. Jonathon Johnson, do you think that some people find it morally offensive that you exist?

Jonathon Johnson :- I’d like to thank the BBC, and all those journalists who said I was a nazi, fascist, evil, murderous, racist thug, and especially all the local Christians in Leeds who gave out those bright yellow leaflets telling everyone not to vote BNP, and who prayed for a bolt of lightning to come down from the sky and strike me dead, immediately, if I ever actually became an MP. I’d never have won without your help.

Newsreader :- Now we go over to Brighton, where screaming Baron Barry Batesmoor has just won the first ever seat for the Monster Raving Looney Party.
(A man in an old fashioned looking Mayor’s outfit appears on the screen behind the newsreader, standing in a street surrounded by gay and lesbian couples, some with babies in pushchairs.)

Baron Barry Batesmoor :- We have a big gay community in Brighton and we care about them. (The people in the crowd clap and cheer.)

Newsreader :- Tonight’s real surprises. The T-Break party have 160 seats. The World Socialist Party have 55, and the Green Party have a record breaking 95 seats. Three small parties that you’d never expect to take more seats than the Conservatives, Labour or the Liberal Democrats.

Tommy :- Why are we doing so well?

Chris Wiseman :- Politics is a joke, Tommy. We’re the joke party. The joke party won.

(Tommy’s mobile phone rings. The TV programme stops. He answers it.)

Reporter (on phone) :- Hello. Is that Tommy Banks?

Tommy :- Yes. Hello. Who is this?

Reporter :- I’m a reporter for ITV. I’d like to interview you. Where are you?

Tommy :- Room 526, Block A42, a few miles from the shops in Newcastle City Centre. Block A42 is in Heaton Village.

Reporter :- I’ll see you in a few minutes. Goodbye.

Chris Wiseman :- Get some decent clothes on. You can’t appear on television as the new prime minister in jeans and a T shirt.

(Tommy changes into smart trousers, a shirt and a tie. He answers a bleep from the intercom, and the reporter comes into the flat.)

Reporter :- Hello. How are you feeling?

Tommy :- Surprised. More than anything, just shocked. If I’d known it would be this good, I’d have put a candidate in every seat. We only contested 200 seats. We might have won a landslide victory. I don’t know what to say.

Chris Wiseman :- How about, that was the kind of night that changes history?

Tommy :- Will it?

Geraldine :- Yes. It’ll change history, all right. For the next 50 years, every politician will copy what we’ve done.

Reporter :- We’ll set the camera up in the street outside. I don’t want to show the new Prime Minister sitting in a tiny bedsit.

Tommy :- I rented this place when I did a degree ten years ago. I kept the room on. It’s difficult to get accommodation when you’re unemployed.

(Scene 8. Tommy and his campaign team are standing outside the flats, in front of a mobile phone that the reporter has set up on a tripod.)

Interviewer :- Well, Tommy, you’re just about to become Prime Minister, how do you feel?

Tommy :- That was the kind of night that changes history. We’re very excited.

Reporter :- You’ll have to form a coalition. What sort of other parties will you invite into your government?

Geraldine :- The Green Party and the World Socialist Party. They have the most seats, and we feel we could work together.

(Scene 9. A few days later. Tommy Banks in an office with the leaders of the political parties with which he will be in coalition.)

Maria :- Imagine a world with no money. Don’t laugh. That’s what the World Socialist Party believes in.

Tommy :- Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d always imagined that if there was no such thing as money, I’d go down to the shops in my car, I’d fill it up with hundreds of pounds worth of stuff that I wanted, I’d fill up the tank with petrol, and then I’d come home without paying for any of it. I’d give up my job, I’d go shopping every day, and wouldn’t the world just run out of things?

Maria :- In a socialist world you’d go to the shops to get a bag of flour and bake a loaf of bread. You’d get some packets of seeds and grow your own vegetables. You’d get a ball of wool, and knit your own jumper. If you had a car, you could load it up with bricks to build your own house.

Tommy :- It sounds like hard work, a world with no money.

Geraldine :- Who would manufacture the flour, the wool and the bricks?

Maria :- Volunteers. Voluntary work already contributes millions of Euros a year to the economy, and if people didn’t have to work every hour of the day to pay the rent, they’d have more energy, they’d be bored. We wouldn’t be as rich as we are today, but do we want to be? My system of economics is sustainable. Capitalism is not, as we have seen.

Chris Wiseman :- Brilliant. That’s a really good idea.

Tommy :- Except it sounds like very hard work.

Maria :- I will come into coalition with you under one condition.

Tommy :- What’s that?

Maria :- I understand your manifesto says that everyone will work a 3 day week. I want people to spend the other two days at college, learn how to live in a world without money.

Geraldine :- Would they really have to spend two days every week at college for the rest of their lives? Is self sufficiency so difficult?

Maria :- They’ve got to understand nursing, so they can care for an elderly relative at home, they’ve got to know how to build their own houses and how to bake their own bread. As certain also of your poets have said, a world without money is really hard work.

Chris Wiseman :- And gardening, so they can grow their own vegetables. You forgot to mention gardening.

Tommy :- I’m not lazy. We all think it would be very hard work.

Robin :- This is my one condition for forming a coalition with you. The Green Party want a national speed limit of twenty miles an hour.

Tommy :- Oh no.

Chris Wiseman :- Tommy, you’re a Prime Minister in a coalition government. If their policy is to chop one of your grandmother’s legs off, you say, yes, absolutely fantastic. You have to agree or you don’t have a government.

Geraldine :- I thought a car engine was more efficient at sixty miles an hour.

Robin :- We’ve designed one that isn’t. It does a thousand miles to the gallon.

Chris Wiseman :- How much did you have to compensate the performance of the car to get it to a thousand miles per gallon?

Robin :- It accelerates so slowly you could overtake it on a bicycle. It takes thirty seconds to reach twenty miles an hour. It climbs hills at walking speed. But it does a thousand miles per gallon.

Geraldine :- Does it really do a thousand miles per gallon? I could see my mother more often. It might take all day to get there, but it would be cheap.

(Scene 10. A few months later. Some students are building a hut together in a field.)

Simon :- Pack that insulation in really tight.

Brain :- It’s really thick. It’s hard to get it in. There’s loads of insulation, and just a thin piece of board with tiles on it on the outside, and a thin piece of plasterboard on the inside.

Simon :- I live in a yuppy flat, about 2 miles from the city centre. Since this government came, the rent has gone down to a fifth of what it was, but I’m worse off. I’ve got nothing. I fill up the car with petrol once a month. I live on baked beans and pasta. I buy new clothes when my old clothes have holes in them.

Brian :- Everybody does. At least inflation’s gone down to single figures.

Ken :- Listen you, I come from a very poor area. The houses were built a hundred years ago, and are owned by a community housing association. They’ve got solar panels and triple glazing, but the area’s never been redeveloped. None of my family have ever been to university. None of my family have ever had a proper job. I’m a lot better off. I’m looking forward to having a degree in Environmental Economics.

Brian :- I’ve got one of those new green cars. It’s a five seater estate. We fill it up with fuel once a year. We pick the kids up from school in it, we go shopping in it, it’s great.

Ken :- I quite fancy having a ride in that.

Brian :- You live in Fawdon. I’ll come and see you when I do the shopping on Saturday. You can have a ride in it then.

(Scene 11. Saturday afternoon. Brian and Ken sitting in the car, driving down the main road in Fawdon.)

Brian :- Fawdon is very flat. No steep hills at all. We can zoom along.

(A bicycle goes wooshing past them in the bus and cycle lane, with a police car with flashing blue lights in hot pursuit. The police stop the cyclist, and Brian and Ken drive past in their car.)

Cyclist :- But Officer, it’s not a powered vehicle. It doesn’t even have an engine.

Policeman :- You breathe more when you do thirty miles an hour. How much carbon dioxide do you produce then?

(Brian turns the car radio on.)

Newsreader :- The Conservatives produced a new manifesto, today, saying that they would abolish money. They intend to phase in the necessary changes over the next forty years. The Labour Party have produced a new manifesto discussing the creation of experimental agricultural communities.

Brian :- Politicians. They’re all the same.

(Scene 12. The Toyota car plant. The workers are drinking in the bar at lunch time. Tommy Banks and Chris Wiseman enter with a BBC reporter.)

Barry :- Oh no, it’s him. We’d better hide the picture.

Chris Wiseman :- What’s the Prime Minister’s photograph doing in the middle of the dartboard?

Barry :- Do you know how much money I used to make from overtime and bonuses before you came along?

BBC Reporter :- Prime Minister, how did you manage to solve the problems of over production at Toyota? The plant employs five times as many people as it did before.

Tommy :- We nationalised the industry. The workers all get a two hour lunch break for a game of darts in the pub, and they get a compulsory ten minute tea break which they have to take every half hour. They work a three day week, and when they’re on night shift they’re allowed to bring sleeping bags and a camping stove to cook breakfast.

BBC Reporter :- How do you manage to make any money?

Tommy :- The profit on each car is about 30,000 Euros. So if each worker is paid 30,000 Euros a year, we think we’ll be all right if the average worker produces one car a year.

(Scene 13. 2047. The Toyota factory workers are watching television in the pub during the lunch break. Chris Wiseman appears on the screen.)

Chris Wiseman :- The industrial problems of the 21st century were caused by chronic overproduction. Cars piling up in the factory car park, quicker than anyone in the world could buy them. (Cars shown in a factory car park. It starts with only a few cars, becomes full, and eventually stretches to the horizon with endless cars going on forever.) We gave workers a two hour lunch break, allowing them to play a game of darts in the pub, so that they wouldn’t produce too many cars. (Film shown of Tommy Banks visiting the pub at Toyota.)

Barry :- That’s us!

Bob :- I think I’ll vote for him again.

Barry :- Look you, I used to make a quarter of a million Euros a year. Okay, I had to kill myself to do it. But now, thirty thousand Euros a year. I buy new shoes when the old ones let the rain in. Know what I mean?

Bob :- Barry, none of the politicians want to go back to the old ways. If they did, it would all go wrong again. We’ve got economic stability. That’s what everybody wants. I’d rather have Tommy Banks than a world with no money. I’d rather have him than that Maria woman. Do you really want to build your own house? Do you really want to teach your own kids instead of sending them to school? Do you really want to have to look after your mother when she’s old?

David :- Have some respect for your elderly relatives. You’re heartless.

Bob :- No I’m not. I used to work in a hospital. I used to look after an old man who had dementia. He was incontinent. He used to wander around getting lost. Come on, it’s a professional job, looking after older people. A professional ought to do it.

(Scene 14. Election night 2047. Tommy Banks, Geraldine and Chris Wiseman are watching Election Night Special on the television in 10 Downing Street.)

Announcer :- It looks like a landslide victory for the Tea Break Party. They’ve won 400 seats. (Knock on the door. Tommy Banks answers the door to a reporter and TV cameraman.)

Reporter :- Prime Minister, how do you feel?

Tommy Banks :- Fabulous. This is the kind of night that changes history.