‘I’ll stay in a nice hotel outside the city! And not walk around at night.’

  I smiled. ‘I’ve heard you bark at people, and no man would dare bother you.’

  The staff laughed.

  ‘I’d smash their bloody faces in.’

  ‘Exactly. So make it your pet project. Swedish men, I want stats from Experian, I want Middlesbrough examined in great detail, then month by month from now on.

  ‘Russel, start buying repo houses there straight away, and any house that’s abandoned or just run down.’

  ‘They start at sixteen grand,’ my estate agent lady put in.

  ‘Bill, look for a soft prison site and women’s refuge site straight away.’

  Bill responded, ‘Build a soft prison outside the city as well, it’s a sprawling area, and full of crime.’

  ‘Find a site for a soft prison then, up to a thousand places, with a section for women. And a site for a Three Phase with a big Phase Zero.’

  ‘It’s full of pensioners,’ my estate agent lady noted. ‘Young people move away to find work.’

  I nodded. ‘OK, what Tony Blair said … was to get a move on with all aspects of what we do, women’s refuges, soft prisons, and city centre soft prisons will receive some subsidy.

  ‘Recruit a National Director of Soft Prisons, and put them to work quickly, finding sites around the country. That place in London, next to a police station, is ideal, so in the future we’ll look for land close to a police station or a magistrates’ court.

  ‘That new person also handles women’s refuges, which are just like small prisons anyhow. We need to get a move on and to open more, so we need existing buildings revamped with bullet-proof glass.’

  ‘They’re quick and simple to convert,’ Bill noted.

  ‘Our hostel in Grafton Road?’ I asked him.

  ‘Busy always, but if it was not there then those idiots would be in the town centre shoplifting or breaking into houses; it has a real effect and crime is way down.’

  ‘And the Grafton Road Hotel?’ I asked.

  Bill smiled. ‘The criminals here say: if you don’t like hotel food, don’t do the crime.’

  Everyone laughed.

  He added, ‘They all get a stay there, and it has an effect. Not to stop them from being criminals, but they’re not breaking into houses when they’re banged-up inside. One guy has done six stints in there, the staff send him Christmas cards.’

  We laughed.

  David suggested, ‘How about a fifty percent mortgage for his own cell?’

  I wagged a finger at him as the group laughed loudly. ‘That would not be a good newspaper headline, even if I like the idea. Is the Hampshire holiday camp open?’

  David answered, ‘Yes, and full already, and the men in there were all shocked after coming from tough prisons. They now walk around or play football or cricket.’

  ‘So long as they’re isolated from society that’s OK.’ I faced Chessington. ‘What’s the uptake on the poor fund now?’

  ‘Thirty-five thousand sign-ups, many just handing over a thousand pounds and tucking it away.’

  I faced Russel, ‘Start drawing down the money and buying domestic repos, good deals, long term rental properties.’

  Russel noted, ‘RBS are keen to dump what they have, some great bargains, and now HSBC have been in touch and will send us a list.’

  ‘Cherry pick to start, and then those properties then get tucked away for ten years, a good return for our investors. As to the rich Barclays fund … we’ll spend a lump in Battersea, the posh nursing home and posh apartments, a joint venture with BUPA and others.’

  I pointed at Chessington. ‘Ask your boss if he wants a nursing home there.’

  ‘We’d compete with BUPA…’

  ‘You do insurance and pensioners, so you can do an investment scheme for a person’s stay in a retirement home just as well.’

  ‘I’ll discuss that with them. And I have an outline idea of how a warm house mortgage fix may work.’

  ‘My worry … is that your fees will be high.’

  ‘It’s a repossession, but … if you buy the place from us and no solicitor or bailiff is involved, the fees should be cut right down.

  ‘The homeowner gets back what they paid less interest, we add on some early-settlement penalty fees, and it should be straight forwards – a sale to you done internally, no house structure inspection or local searches because we assume that they’re the same.’

  ‘And the homeowner won’t trash a place that he wants to keep living in,’ I noted. ‘Have it drawn up and finalised, to run a trial programme here in Leicester very soon, charity money to start.’

  He made a note.

  David warned, ‘As soon as that process starts all of the banks will want to join in.’

  ‘Yes, and the government is willing to subsidise the process some, but no one but us is doing it. Any other rental agency or landlord might only be involved regarding a few houses local to them.’

  Chessington put in, ‘I can’t see many landlords wanting to do it, they’d wait for the repo house to be listed and buy it cheap. You’re paying market value as it is now, no huge discount.’

  I nodded at him. ‘It’s part political, and if Blair puts in five hundred quid it becomes a regulated process, and then we’d be the only ones doing it.’

  My estate agent lady put in, ‘I can’t see anyone wanting to do it but you, there’s nothing to gain, no initial discount.’

  I told her, ‘Barclays would need to take a small hit, for us to want to be involved, even if that’s a thousand pounds.’

  Chessington noted, ‘If the house is repossessed we’d lose more like five to ten grand. Ask for one thousand and they’ll be happy. So ask for two grand.’

  ‘Two thousand from Barclays, five hundred from Blair,’ I noted. ‘On a house worth thirty grand, no conveyancing fees, so it may be worth it.’

  I faced Chessington, ‘Draw up a worked example for us, and for your bosses.’

  He nodded.

  I faced my estate agent lady. ‘Are we forcing up local house prices?’

  ‘You are, but part of that is the gossip - that you’ll buy up any house for sale.’

  ‘And our High Street?’

  ‘Is busier than before, everyone is noticing that now,’ she replied. ‘And on a wet Monday night there are people about, pubs busy, cafes busy.’

  ‘So it’s working…’

  ‘It is,’ she firmly agreed.

  I faced Bill. ‘The Old Tannery?’

  ‘Full of cranes and workmen, and they’ll refit the jazz club later, when there’s not so much dust and shit around. And Glen’s London people have deals worked on buildings nearby.’

  ‘Where is Glen?’

  ‘Belfast.’

  ‘Good, some progress over there maybe. And tell Glen to tell that London property company we set up that we have more money, and to get a move on.’

  I took in their faces. ‘What we need … is information, as to what effect our plans might have on small towns, and what effect we might have on the British economy overall, so Middlesbrough will be a test bed, but also Leicester, so look for stats, chat to people, and let’s try and work out what effect we might have.’

  I turned my head to my estate agent lady. ‘Recruit the biggest estate agents in Middlesbrough, like right away, brief them, and we’ll start to buy property there straight away, provided we get good deals.

  ‘And shit places like Drug Alley here - yes we’d get involved, but try and do the whole street. Get yourself a good deputy, charge us travel and extras at a good rate, go meet and recruit good rental agencies – starting with the shit hole that is Middlesbrough.’

  ‘My deputy is good now,’ she put in.

  ‘Make sure that these new rental agencies use our software, or send us what we need from their existing software.’

  ‘Richard altered it, and we output to a file and send it, and it goes straight into the software here.’

  ‘Great. Have we got an IT manager?’

  ‘He started today,’ Russel put in. ‘Good with networks, PC set-up and teaching, local man, thirty-six.’

  I pointed at our Swedish main man. ‘That programmer?’

  ‘Will be here tomorrow.’

  ‘I want him working on a way to read in the Experian data, and any and all other databases, and then creating a huge British house database with as much information as we can get; number of bedrooms, value, does it have a garden and conservatory.

  ‘Hand him a big budget from here, a million quid, to work deals and buy in databases. We don’t need private names or dates of birth, we need house structural data and value, last sale price, are there renters living there.

  ‘I want the biggest and best database in Britain, and monthly changes and trends, and stats. I want - a few months from now - to see a graph of Middlesbrough; how many houses, which type, what value, and how the values are changing.

  ‘Have him work with your statistics guy and Russel and others here, and hunt down all databases available, especially from estate agents, their past house sales.

  ‘The reports that he produces will be handed to the Prime Minister, so it needs to be a fantastic software system, and huge.’

  I faced Russel. ‘At some point, a few years down the road, you read the output stats from that software and then tell me that house prices are rising too quickly, and I chat to Blair. Or you can brief Blair directly.’

  He lifted his eyebrows.

  Chessington cut in, ‘We can get you house sales data, no private data attached to it.’

  ‘Please do so straight away, I want the past ten years’ worth of house price movements if possible.’

  My estate agent put in, ‘The newspapers sometimes print that data, but it’s an opinion and it varies.’

  ‘We need to be accurate, so accurate that the government trusts our figures not anyone else’s. We need actual house-price sales figures, and an average for similar houses in a town. And it’s no good to average out a three bed semi in Middlesbrough with one in Crawley.’

  ‘Crawley would be a hundred grand!’ my estate agent noted. ‘Middlesbrough will be less than thirty.’

  I faced Russel. ‘You fund the data from this place, a big budget. No modelled data, actual data.’

  He nodded.

  Bill put in, ‘We get good data from Experian now, how many suitable pensioners per town.’

  ‘Get the figures for Middlesbrough, study them, and the surrounding catchment area. OK, any questions or issues?’

  David asked, ‘The roll out of large soft prisons?’

  ‘When the one here is nearly done we start the next one, same size and design. Find a good location.’

  ‘Newcastle area,’ he suggested. ‘Then Bristol area.’

  Bill put in, ‘Tescos said they spoke to you, and that they’ll have a shop in Battersea…’

  ‘Yes, we need more than one vendor there, and next door. But it’s a shop not a superstore, so limit their floor space.’

  ‘What they asked for is a large shop, not a superstore.’

  ‘Have the architect find them a spot.’

  David asked, ‘We’d build posh apartments on our land next to Battersea?’

  ‘Might not be needed, we’d sell Phase One and Two apartments and Phase Zero posh apartments. Same difference.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘As many as will fit in that land, but tastefully designed, and ten storeys high.’

  ‘London Transport have agreed a walkway over their tracks,’ he informed me.

  ‘So how do we move goods next door?’

  ‘Elevator, a buggy like a golf cart maybe. Or have a warehouse next door as well.’

  ‘Plan for a warehouse next door, less hassle, but we still need the walkway, same doctors and nurses.’ I faced Bill squarely. ‘Find a secure building near here, for our own house deeds, very secure.’

  ‘There’s a basement below us,’ Russel informed me. ‘Just very shitty.’

  ‘Big enough?’

  ‘Yes, to start with, and secure.’

  ‘Have it cleaned up, renovated, checked for leaks or floods, then get a secure door, cameras in there, and some good filing cabinets but second hand.’

  He made a note.

  ‘Oh, Northern Ireland businesses?’ I asked.

  Our ex-bank guy replied, ‘We have a short list, but most are more scientific than employing large numbers of people. Harland Wolf is the largest employer, but … with the obvious issues.’

  I faced Russell. ‘Buy up more crap houses on the west side and allocate them to small Catholic companies to renovate, that will have a direct effect on the heart of the problem.’

  I told my Northern Ireland man, ‘Keep looking and thinking, and if we need to start our own business over there we will.’

  He responded, ‘Building work has a trickledown effect, from pots of paint to sofas and new TVs. The more renovations the better.’

  ‘And this new business park in Newry?’

  ‘Some very good start-ups there, yes, I’ll be contacting many of them, but most are high-tech and not employing many people. The nursing homes you’re building have a much larger effect.’

  ‘Only so many we can build. Russel, plan a new housing estate in West Belfast, social housing but nice, a few to sell, and we’ll then tear down some of those old concrete blocks they have.’

  ‘How big an estate?’

  ‘At least two hundred houses, or more, half to be sold off-plan, fifty percent mortgages available.’

  Our ex-banker put in, ‘Projects like that affect many businesses, from building to decorating to furnishings; they’re the best way to stimulate a local economy. And there is a shortage of housing over there.’

  I faced Russel. ‘One estate this year, an assessment made, one next year. And we could use government money.’

  Russel made a note.

  ‘And look outside Belfast, any house that’s a repo or is falling down, and look at the Derry estates, they’re a shithole.’

  Chessington put in, ‘A sustained building programme, where it’s needed, will have a good effect for many years, you just need to time it and not build new houses when everyone has a place to live.’

  ‘Is the population there growing?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Compared to parts of the UK, where it’s in decline. And I read that your jobs programme in Corsica was having an effect on the Northern Ireland economy, especially in Derry – a small place. Creating five hundred new well-paid jobs was bound to have an effect.’

  I nodded. ‘It must be stressful, those men in Corsica trusting their wives with the money.’

  They laughed.

  I added, ‘They get home … and the house has all new furniture, the bank balance empty.’

  ‘At least that helps the local economy,’ David noted.

  I pointed at our main Swedish man. ‘Make a start on an AIDS hospice in Paris straight away, use the French loan money. Rooms for a thousand people, same design as a Three-Phase.’

  He made a note.

  Meeting concluded, I headed back for some lunch.

  After lunch I called Ross Daniels. ‘I want to host an EU meeting in Corsica, but the hotels are mostly full.’

  ‘The estate golf course, we’re renovating it, could be ready in a week.’

  ‘How many rooms?’

  ‘Eighty.’

  ‘Might need more rooms.’

  ‘How about Scorfo Valley?’ he suggested.

  ‘For … what?’

  ‘The first nursing home will be ready, they can use the apartments.’

  ‘That … would be a brilliant idea, they get to see the place close up. How many apartments will be ready?’

  ‘Most all, two hundred of them.’

  ‘Make plans, for an EU meeting there but with some delegates staying at the golf hotel, in a week, I’ll sound out the EU. In the meantime, have the beach checked and cleaned, supplies stocked up.’

  I called my EU lady, Emmanuelle, and she would pass on the suggestion, a weekend trip for EU health and pensioners representatives, Friday to Monday. We would lay on extra aircraft from Brussels if the meeting was to take place.

  Thinking, that I not upset the French, I sent provisional invites to the French President and his Social Services Minister, and only then did I inform the Prefect, who cared little for Paris bureaucrats.

  I finally sent a note to Blair, asking if he could send a few officials on his behalf, a private jet to be made available. He wanted to go himself since Parliament would not recess till July 31st. It would be a mini holiday for him.

  Executive jets

  The next day I finalised the Corsica trip, and the EU would send whoever it could; so I needed to fix aircraft and supplies. But several top EU officials could also do the weekend trip, amused that they would be staying in a nursing home.

  I alerted the BBC and Sky News, but told them that flights would be difficult. Rooms would be available for them, a bed that had side rails, as well as Zimmer frames. The golf hotel’s staff would handle the bookings, the rooms available free of charge.

  At 10am I arrived at the surgery, now in a routine, and I helped several people, one old man handed fifty quid since the electric company had screwed-up his bill.

  Up at the AIDS hospice as 2pm, the weather good today, I greeted the gaunt and slow-moving residents before I met the research team in the huts, the mad professor still looking like a mad professor.

  He began, ‘We ran the test series, and the results were an average twenty to thirty percent reduction in infected cells.’

  ‘What does that mean … in terms of life extension?’ I asked.

  ‘We need to see how quickly the virus recovers and spreads, but in simple terms it means that a person would live another year or two.’

  ‘Great, a good first step. Now improve on that for me.’

  ‘That first step didn’t make use of any white blood cell manipulation, which is what comes next - we just took delivery of the new kit and we’re learning how to use it, got a Yank to teach us.’