Ha! my dear frens, pray ’ow dee doo,
Hi ’opes I sees yer well,
Peer’aps you don’t know ’oo I is
Well, then, I’m the Crystal Swell,
Me Chambers is at the Cobblers Exchange
And I fancies I’m a Toff,
From top to toe I really think
I looks Immensekoff
Crystal Toff…Crystal Toff… I looks Immensekoff. Please join in the chorus if you fancies
The lads are gettin together
concerned about yer wealth
So we’re working on a caper,
to nick the National Ealth
National Ealth… National Ealth… We’ll nick yer National Ealth.
Gobbin down champagne
We’ve got it on the brain,
To grab your ouses, stuff your spouses
an go on riding the gravy train,
We’re on the Gravy Train… We’re on the Gravy Train…
It’s a catchy little tune we all sing at the Cobblers Exchange these days but there’s no harm having some fun. We’ve all been busy of late and my time is now divided between working the market stalls and financial matters in the City. However, no need to worry. Here on the Exchange we’ve all got your best interests at heart, speaking of which let me tell you that one of the lads, a senior executive with a Futures Broker, is planning on setting up a little venture of his own. Just the kind of thing the economy needs right now.
Want to hear more? Well it’s about organ donations on the Futures Market. Once the National Health turns private they’ll be hiving off control of organ donations, and what with everyone working till eighty sooner rather than later to get any pension it’ll be possible to calculate from medical records the volume of people being on their way out, so to speak, and their time of departure. Then my friend here, with his Fair Trade Organ Donations Corporation already up and running, will be able to harness anything useful for his wealthy contacts on the Russian and Chinese Bond Markets. They’ll get healthy organs and joints in exchange for dependents receiving a few years’ free interest on any mortgage repayments.
Like it? Well the shares haven’t been floated yet but don’t worry about that ’cos it’s all in the future which means you can invest in it now even though the company doesn’t exist. Except in his head that is, which is full of champagne right now and well down on the software of a Hedge Fund manageress in the gents toilet. But then, don’t you see, the company doesn’t have to exist! Nothing does. The values of companies and shares are only based on ideas about what people think things are worth, people with money that is!
Here’s how it operates. If we want to make something worth more than it is we just talk it up with our media connections, just before which we get together with a pretend chunk of borrowed cash. You know! Promises to pay back on paper. Then we buy the shit with a low value also on paper ’cos actually that’s what it’s really worth, wait for the talk and watch it go up. Okay, now we flog off the shares when they’ve reached a dizzy height, sign back the pretend loan from someone or other and we’re in at 100 k each. And what then? You don’t want to know but I’ll tell you! The share price goes down the tubes, which is where the paper belongs, the workers and small investors get hammered and we all go out and buy Bentleys!
But then that’s only small time. For the big players it’s town houses in Chelsea and an estate in the country, preferably Oxfordshire, with head down on a piece of celebrity software. Most of these guys are in their sixties and seventies but we’re now getting some of the best of the younger crowd here on the Exchange.
Jesus! And these bloody nurses, teachers and firemen think they work hard!
True, we do find time to relax here on the Cobblers Exchange, that is, when we’re not working on schemes to help the economy grow or meeting important people. We often have friends visit from the Bullingdon Club who take us to parties with Russian oligarchs and sometimes it’s big players in the Liberal Democrats. And please don’t tell me that these people aren’t important! Only a few weeks ago I had a serious discussion with a senior member of the Cabinet over the thorny issue of strikes and industrial relations. We already knew each other from way back when I’d sold him a beautiful single rose quartz crystal mounted in silver as a pendant for his wife and he’d bought a tie pin made of the immensely rare and powerful Sugilite, a mineral with an energy level to the 12th power. Something he already knew and astonished to see it was willing to pay my price. In fact it’s the Sugilite which gives him the power he needs in his Cabinet discussions so he’s told me.
Anyway our discussion! Yes there were serious industrial relations problems on the way. Strikes and marches over salaries and pensions. All that public sector kind of thing. He was clearly worried about the whole economic future and wanted to know what I thought. Well there we both were. Sitting in the foyer of the Exchange dressed smart casual. Him picking at his plate of lobster and caviar after outlining some of those pressing concerns that confront Liberal Democrats. Having talked about the nation’s problems with a crystal healing financial analyst I could see his worried face reflected in the mirror. Could there be other ways of healing the nation’s woes than giving these workers the increases they wanted? Why did it always have to be money? The Government couldn’t give them something they didn’t have, not after giving us the new fifty pence tax rate.
I thought for a while. This was indeed a serious matter. Helping the lads in the City was one thing but then my friend also had other concerns. He and his fellow Lib Dems had to think about those elections. People needed to be kept happy. That was why he was in politics. Just then, if only for a moment, I saw an expression on his face. What you might call a light in his eye, and I knew he was thinking of the welfare of the people, same as he knew I was also something of an expert in these matters. A kindred spirit at the Cobblers Exchange who understood healing.
Crystal healing for the masses, for all the public sector workers… Could that possibly be the solution?
Here we were then, two great minds thinking the same thing, the way it often is in a national crisis. He of course caring only about the welfare and happiness of the people like the good Liberal Democrat he was! Me only interested in the main chance. Distributing millions of rose quartz pendants to all those public sector workers. As long as they were full of love and peace they wouldn’t go on all those marches any more.
It would have to be carefully organised I told him. Most of the stuff would come from Brazil. Airfreighted into Heathrow in giant containers. He instantly liked the idea. It would save the Government a fortune and not only in wages. They could do it for all the pensioners too! Could it be managed?
I was suddenly more sanguine. I wasn’t just a crystal healing specialist he needed to understand. I was also a businessman and we were at the Cobblers Exchange in the City of London talking matters of finance as well as national wellbeing. The prosperity of the nation no less. Could it be done? Yes, I believe it could I said, but only if we could find a way of distributing the pendants. First though I needed a contract, and an advance payment. His manner changed slightly. He’d have to get it through Cabinet. With the Sugilite working for him it shouldn’t be much of a problem. George would love the idea. Anything to save money. Problem was, it would have to be kept well under wraps. There might be objections from the Unions.
It made me think. We could of course get all the Union leaders and their Executives to wear crystals first but where would that leave me? Some lousy little deal on a few hundred crystals, and even if I did flog them at fifty quid each it would be worth nothing compared to the four or five million I’d get out of all those teachers, civil servants, firemen and national health workers. No, if the masses needed healing there couldn’t be any short cuts. It was business, nothing personal.
My political friend had already anticipated my thoughts. It was also personal for me he murmured. Didn’t I also want everyone to be healed, just like he as a Liberal Democrat wanted everyone to be happy? So why couldn’t the two go together? Crystal healing as the road to national happiness! With everyone happy the crime rate would drop. The budget for the Home Office Department would fall same as it would for the Ministry of Justice. They could spend the money they’d save on reducing the National Deficit. Even donate more money to worthy causes like drought stricken Greenland or helping banana growers in Eastern Siberia.
We shook hands on the deal. Ahead of me, without saying anything, I saw the rewards. Elevation to the peerage perhaps! A job in Government! In my mind I immediately rejected the latter. There was still so much work to be done and besides, I was enjoying my time at the Exchange. I now had many friends here. There was so much to talk about, so much more to discuss if we were to save the economy and create David Cameron’s Big Society. I wasn’t just a jack the lad street trader anymore. Here at the Cobblers Exchange I’d come to know my worth. Crystal healing was set to appear on the national stage so talking crystal cobblers was everything. Crystal cobblers and financial cobblers would soon fuse together to make Britain great again.
Yes my friends there’s still much work to do. I’ll bring you more news as soon as I have it. Meanwhile I want you to know that there are people here on the Cobblers Exchange who really care about you. Good people. Decent people. People whose advice you can trust.
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