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Jack's Fables

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The £12 billion mistake.

 

As part of their plans for global domination, the public relations department of EFFU had been busy honing the bribing strategy for local and national politicians and newspaper editors.

 

By buying up land and building supermarkets in virtually every town centre in the country, they were guaranteeing their continuing monopoly.

 

The ‘charm offensive’ of lies, distortions, omissions and manipulation worked seamlessly. ‘Business experts’ were falling over themselves to praise EFFU as a ‘Great British success story.’ And journalists never bothered to find out [indeed it was very difficult to find out] if a particular expert was on EFFU’s payroll. The reality is almost all of them were.

 

‘We will create 5000 new jobs!’ was the mantra, willingly repeated on the evening news. By buying up land, they were preventing their competitors from moving in. If competitors were already in, EFFU’s ‘market power’ would soon see them off. If it didn’t, EFFU would at first ‘persuade’ them to collaborate to cheat local customers. Then they would eclipse them and have their tame spokespersons parrot nonsense like ‘We welcome competition.’

 

Local traders were deceived. EFFU would not be selling what they sold, and besides, who could resist local craft and diversity? Especially when they sold their goods at much higher prices than EFFU. Premium prices for premium goods! This rang a little hollow when the bailiffs were moving in.

Closing shops was good business for EFFU in so many ways. They sold home insurance, car insurance and life assurance. When crime rose in the area of the now defunct local shops, who would cash in as fear and anxiety rose?

 

And at a much more subtle level, the majority of the population were now expecting to see a large red and blue EFFU sign every time they drove into town. EFFU was not only in every town, it was burned on the back of everyone’s eyelids.

 

How did EFFU get to their monopoly position? 

 

Many years ago, when EFFU was on the way up, a tragedy occurred. A bus carrying the top management team had crashed. Images of the disaster were flashed on TV screens every time EFFU’s name was mentioned. Almost unbelievably, years later, when EFFU moved into Asia, kids could still be found with T-shirts emblazoned with pictures of the ‘Fallen Five’ [as the wretched management team had become known].

 

However, the second stage of EFFU’s growth required the arrival of an Eskimo billionaire. Unuit had made his fortune when the North Pole had been privatised. He had owned a few icebergs, and several governments had collaborated to buy Unuit off, using the smokescreen of global warming to justify their actions.

 

The environmentalist lobby too had bought the ‘dream ticket.’ Unuit was an ethnic fur [the only kind which was acceptable] clad public relations gift from heaven. He could speak no English, and had a serene, benign, smile permanently etched on his face, courtesy of EFFU’s patented botox-filled breakfast cereal.

 

Unuit bought a majority shareholding in EFFU. Almost overnight, the best managers in the world were hired, money no object. For four years EFFU had made a loss, such was the scale of their investment. Members of regulatory bodies rubbed their hands in anguish, made loud ‘something must be done’ noises and did nothing as EFFU’s shops first blighted every town in England, and then the far east.

 

In fact EFFU had hired so many managers from other supermarkets that not all could be gainfully employed. So they were kept on permanent ‘gardening leave’, to keep their competitors from hiring them.

 

The real power at EFFU lay in the hands of psychopath [‘charismatic leader’] Bill Backside. Unuit used to run fish protection rackets in Greenland, but hadn’t got Backside’s animal cunning and total disregard for human or animal life.

 

Despite Backside’s success, the puppet masters who rigged elections and ran global scams in drugs, sex and rock and roll were worried. He took risks, was brash and arrogant, and ran the PR machine to its limits. It became increasingly difficult for EFFU to cover up using GM foods in their ‘CRAP’ [Cheap, Rubbish And Palatable] range of products. Intensive animal rearing kept prices at rock bottom, well below any of their competitors, but animal activists had found out what was going on. There were only so many times you could reduce squirrel prices each time a scandal broke.

 

The puppet masters were also worried about creating so many fat kids. Promoting Crapburgers and sugar-soaked drinks at their chain of ‘Happy Sheep’ diners, combined with 24/7 advertising wrecked the governments plans to ‘tackle obesity.’ But those who made the obvious connection were denied any air time, and written off as killjoys or conspiracy theorists if their voices ever became heard.

 

However Backside had been appointed as the Obesity Tsar.

 

Just down the metaphorical road to EFFU was GIVU. GIVU were the company the media loved to hate. Unlike EFFU, their workforce was unionised. They were based in a city known for its maverick qualities. They occasionally made mistakes, which their PR department refused to ‘spin.’ ‘Business experts’ praised GIVU only through gritted teeth. GIVU entered meaningful partnerships with local shops, and most of their stores were relatively [in comparison to EFFU] small.

 

GIVU had their disasters over the years, but 200 employees who lost their lives in a ferry ‘accident’ were no match for the Fallen Five when it came to public sympathy. Indeed large sections of the media blamed the employees themselves for the ferry’s plight. It was suggested that by too many passengers standing on one side of the boat, they had caused it to capsize.

 

Whenever GIVU was shown on the television, pictures of inebriated revellers at a staff function accompanied it.

 

Commentators on GIVU’s affairs included some who had once worked there, and they regarded it as their duty to be ‘balanced’ when talking about their former employers. What this meant was they sided with mainstream commentators who wanted to do all in their power to bring about GIVU’s demise. If they didn’t they would soon be replaced or marginalised.

 

A neutral listening to accounts of GIVU’s performance would be thinking bankruptcy was imminent. The impression was given that GIVU were always on the edge, their chief executive, directors and managers were incompetent, and the company had no right to be talked about in the same breath as EFFU, who were everything they were not.

 

EFFU had only one fault, which they unfortunately shared with GIVU. They were based outside London. This was universally ignored by the media, as the hero worship of Bill Backside always pictured him getting out of large cars in the capital.

 

Two decades ago, GIVU had a national network of shops to rival EFFU in terms of numbers, and then their sales, calculated at the value of the pound at the time, exceeded EFFU’s even now. However, when comparisons were made, it was always at present day values. The  money put in by Unuit was glossed over by endless debates about Bill Backside and GIVU’s chief executive, Charles Cobbler. The mantra was ‘You can’t win anything by throwing money at it.’ And Cobbler had a ‘dubious’ past. He was born in Ireland, southern Ireland, and had dared to argue with GIVU’s board of directors, frequently.

 

GIVU’s wonderful history was used only to show how far they had now fallen. But a very strong undercurrent of anxiety ran through the corridors of power at EFFU and at the top of all western governments. What would happen if, despite the bribing strategy, the media campaign, the unthinking ex-GIVU nodding dogs, the business experts, the 50p packs of genetically modified tandoori squirrel masala [‘two heads for price of one’], the unsecured loans, the reserve army of managers, the acquiescence of local traders, the silencing of dissent, the steady growth of UK youth’s waist bands, the rubbishing and side-lining of anything which offered a different set of values…What would happen if all this were to fail? It was a question no-one dared contemplate.

 

The company values of EFFU had been immortalised in a mnemonic, which again was widely known, but was never formally made public.

[A sizeable majority of people believe that more than one planet in an infinite universe supports life {hence aliens were real and visit us}, but UFO sightings are treated as if the viewer is at best weird, at worst insane].

 

‘GRABBERS’ stood for Guilt [feel this when you make mistakes], Right [our right to manage and manipulate], Always Right [EFFU is always right], Blame [we’ll blame anyone as long as it’s not the company], Best [we are], Economical [with the truth at hearings, in court and at tribunals], Rubbish [most of what we sell], Suppliers [our favourite fall guys].

 

Backside’s tenure as the Obesity Tsar was proving interesting to say the least. He was never filmed or interviewed without an army of spin doctors present, and nothing was ever said ‘off the record.’ In truth everything was said off the record, but the supine media never reported it.

 

Backside couldn’t resist forays into his local Happy Sheep diner. He had acquired a dangerous taste for the poison his restaurants served up as meals. Kids he met there talked a language he couldn’t understand. One young girl, who hated the whole idea of Happy Sheep Diners, had gone in with her friends. She spotted Backside and spoke to him in a soft, yet forceful tone:

 

“Mr Backside, welcome to the local Sheep Dip. I gather you want to find out why we kids are getting fat, and remedy it. Is that it in a non-tandoori nutshell?”

 

“Yes my dear, you have summed it up perfectly.”

 

“Well, what can you do to encourage us to accept ourselves? To love ourselves without designer clothes, food additives, mobile phones and worship of celebrity?

 

Can you help us to forgive, when just about every news item, every ‘drama’, every documentary finds someone else for us to hate, and to seek revenge against? Can you help us forgive ourselves when we don’t measure up to arbitrary standards at school, or in our media-influenced peer groups? Can you tell me what it actually means to call someone evil? Can people be evil if there is no devil?

 

How will you enable us to let go of the past, and stop worrying about the future? My parents can’t get through the day without being worried about the collapsing house market, higher inflation, global warming, rising energy prices and ‘predatory paedophiles.’ If, as we are told, all this is getting worse, how do you think that makes us kids feel when our parents can’t cope with it now?

 

What example does your company EFFU set? You treat your suppliers like dirt. You do the same to anyone who gets in your way. You preach the message of there’s enough to go round for everyone, yet the real message is grab it while you can, and get it from us. Can we ever as a world feel abundant?

 

Your employees offer good service to your customers, us. Tell the next generation how to serve without getting high on the cheap booze you sell as a loss leader.

 

And those who pay you to ‘serve’ us as Obesity Tsar. What about them? We are rushing towards a society in which one half spies on and controls the other half. We are taught to mistrust anyone who is different. Even the built environment is the same in every town and city. And you should know, your company owns most of it.

 

Just imagine if all the controls, brainwashing, lies and deceit were washed away. Imagine 6 billion people reaching their potential. Can you even begin to guess what kind of world that would create, when probably less than 1% do so now? Because even those like you who do the controlling can never fulfil their potential. What kind of a life is it to control and manipulate others?

 

Yes, Mr Backside, do you ever sit in a room, quietly on your own and reflect what you are doing?

 

And just two more things. I remember last night listening to one ‘expert’ talking about your rival, GIVU. He was commenting on Charles Cobbler’s decision to expand the sale of fair trade products in their shops. The expert said ‘if’, implying throughout the bulletin he meant ‘when’ Cobbler go it wrong, it would be a £12 million mistake.

 

Is it possible you and your backers would ever admit to a £12 billion mistake? Which I’m sure you know, means a total revolution in the way we relate to each other, to God, to the planet and all sentient beings… In fact the whole insane way the world is run is a £12,000 trillion mistake. Don’t you agree?

 

But I have one last confession to make. Despite what you have done, I forgive you. Because you are part of me, and I you. I bring these things to your attention in an attempt to break through the army of sycophants and yes people you employ. I know in your soul lies a good person…”

 

With that, Bill Backside got up from his chair, turned to the assembled press hacks, let out a cloud of trapped wind and made his way to the exit…

 

JS, August 2008.

 

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