STOP ME AND BUY ONE: THE ART OF SELLING BOMB DETECTION EQUIPMENT TO FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS

Jim McCormick has just been convicted of fraud for manufacturing and selling an utterly useless and worthless bomb detection device to foreign governments around the world and making fifty million quid in the process. Shame on the police who helped prosecute him and the jury who convicted him! Shame on them! Why, in a society such as ours with its expenses cheating MPs, its multinational corporations heavily into tax avoidance, banks up to their eyeballs in widespread fraud, their executives getting millions in bonuses and pensions for running up gigantic annual losses and companies paying bribes all over the place in cash and call girls for business contracts, it’s a travesty that such an enterprising fun loving bloke like Jim should be accused of fraud in the first place when so many businessmen and politicians are doing the same to say nothing of policemen and journalists.

Don’t you know? It’s part of the British way of life these days.

Why him? Why should he be taken to task for being a crook who’s now salted his money away in tax havens for the rich where no-one can get to it, just like all the other sensible businessmen doing the same. After all, is he any different to them? No, they only decided to prosecute him because they were jealous! Here’s this genius, comes along with a bit of black plastic shaped like a kid’s toy gun, sticks a wobbly bit of silver aerial in it that’s basically not attached to anything inside, then with a bit of friendly help from the Department of Business, British Government, goes selling it round the world six to ten grand a time! Original cost fifteen quid and there’s Jim flogging it off at ten large! Bloody marvellous! He should be given a knighthood. After all, others have for doing far less!

Now truth to tell, even before he began running his caper, he already knew what was what. After all he was a former policeman who’d later tried his hand as a salesman in the technical equipment business. It was then that he came up with the clever idea of using a jokey little golf ball finder, an American novelty gadget called the Gopher that he could buy on the cheap, turn it into an explosives detector and flog it off for a fortune. All that was needed was a bit of modification. You know, some smart plastic casing, a really good corporate name like ATSC, that’s Advanced Tactical Security to you and me, a bit of cool packaging and in Jim’s hands it was now something special. 

Boy it really looked good. The top of the range model, the ADE 651, came with a handle and a swiveling antenna (like a bit of car aerial) mounted in a moving pivot so when your hand moved it wobbled. Wait, it gets even cleverer! The handle’s connected by cable to a card full of ‘dots’ carried in a pouch round your waist that’s supposed to ‘code’ information about the substance ‘detected’.  Now here’s where the genius comes in. The whole thing’s powered by electrostatic energy generated by the human body when the person holding it walks up and down. No battery or other power source needed. Just walk up and down like the guys you’ve seen doing it in Iraq! A bit to the left and a bit to the right and then you’re in business!

A brilliant idea and genuinely regarded as such by the British Government who gave Jim their full support, helping him market his great technical breakthrough at Government backed trade fairs which allowed him to use the logo of The International Association of Bomb Technicians to help sales along. How exciting Jim’s great technical innovation must have seemed to the experts at the Ministry of Defence who surely would have given such a crucial piece of equipment the once over before clearing it for tactical operations. They must have thought him a real wizard! He’d created something that detects bombs and explosives everywhere. Enhance Britain’s reputation in the world and make millions for the economy. Help make the planet a much safer place. Give it time and they’d put his name down for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Only thing was, inside the smart looking plastic case there weren’t any parts. Nothing moving! Just a case, an aerial and a wire. No matter, in best entrepreneurial style Jim was selling them all over the place. To foreign governments like Iraq in their tens of thousands along with Belgium, and that was only for starters! Trouble was, British and American soldiers couldn’t find anything there either after checking them over with X-rays but that was okay. In Iraq some money-loving generals bought them with crates of dosh supplied by British and American taxpayers through their Governments as OVERSEAS AID! Others however, such as the Iraqi Interior Ministry’s Inspector General of the Anti-Fraud Watchdog began asking questions after which Jim’s brilliant devices were tested at science laboratories at Cambridge University and found, well how should I put it… a bit wanting!

Never mind! In best British style these days Jim really can’t be blamed for trying. Anyway they’re still being used in Iraq and elsewhere, despite the fact that they can’t even detect a monkey with a finger up its arse. It doesn’t matter. More important than anything else is the fact that Jim still says they work!

Yes, that’s the important thing really. Jim still has absolute faith in his product. It’s the sign of a true Brit, that integrity, that faith in his product. And no better indication of it is the fact that he’s got most of the money he made salted away in places where no-one can touch it. You see, he was someone who really knew how to get on with people. He knew what people wanted and he sold it to them. Isn’t that something in our best British tradition? I mean, same as how our politicians and captains of industry once gave their native friends in Africa beads and mirrors in exchange for large bits of their country to say nothing of lots of their own people to work in our sugar plantations? So what’s the difference? Jim helping bring peace after the war in Iraq by selling bits of wobbly metal in plastic to help detect bombs, and even contraband ivory and drugs as he’s claimed.

Let’s not knock all his effort. I mean, you could never say he was anything nasty like an arms salesman, could you? Just a chap who wanted to make the world a happier more peaceful place. Giving assistance to Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Jordan, China and Mexico among other places. Yes, even America, Canada and Japan. Surely all their technical experts and military can’t be wrong too? It all points to one thing… the sheer genius of a man like Jim McCormick. Fifty million quid for a plastic box with sixpence worth of aerial stuck in. It speaks worlds for the man. How dare he be prosecuted? Someone like that, in our current economic climate, ought to be the Prime Minister, or at least Business Secretary. He’d get Britain out of its mess.

Think of the ideas he could think up. Like selling grains of sand to our American cousins as treasures of English Heritage. Please… I’m being serious. Everyone knows how Americans love a bit of ancestry, a bit of heritage, and each grain of sand would be individually inscribed and come with a title. Like Sir this, or Lord that! After all, there’s nothing that Americans like more than think they’ve got a title to something!

Now that’s what you’d really call clever. I’d recommend it myself but I’m quite sure he’s thought of that one already!