Cull Page 4

  Another man called Pratt gets up onto the stage to review the welfare situation. Andre thinks it’ll be boring, but the guy starts right in with the jokes. ‘What’s the difference between an amputee and a freak? … Political correctness!’

  He is fucking funny, like a comedian, and gets everyone yelling out all together, ‘Benefits for the needy and not beds for the lazy!’ Andre likes that. He tries to keep it in his head so he can use it when Mosh is getting het up over something or other. Fucking Mosh. Such a pussy. Always banging on about the injustice of the system and stuff. The funny man also shows a couple of videos about people on welfare, and it brings it home to Andre just how many crips are abusing the system. He had no idea things had got so out of control. Another thing to learn Mosh about. There’s this one video showing a man who claims to have some nasty-ass disease taking part in a half-marathon. ‘He says he is in remission!’ says the voice-over. ‘His “remission” is costing the good British taxpayer over £50 a day!’

  There is a compilation of the top twenty ‘Biggest, Baddest Benefit Cheats’. The fucking cheek of these people is mind-blowing. Each one worse than the next, and the audience starts catcalling, then whooping and then actually yelling at the screen. The welfare-talk guy on the stage finishes with, ‘What’s the hardest part about cooking vegetables in a microwave? Getting the wheelchair in the door!’ and gets a standing ovation, and Andre feels shamed for ever having been on welfare at all.

  It all gets a bit hectic then and there’s loads of banter from the audience, and then a real comedian gets on stage, some old bloke called Bobby Britain, and he brings the house down with his impression of a Romanian whore trying to negotiate a price with a man from Bangladesh. Andre laughs so much he almost pisses himself.

  There’s a coffee break, and Andre and Ralph get to stretch their legs and their necks, searching for the posse of beautiful long-legged lovelies while their mother heads outside for a smoke. Andre thinks he sees the girls over by the main entrance but when they get there, pushing through the excited crowd, there is only the old hag on the reception table.

  ‘All right, boys? Very good of you to support your mum.’ She smiles at Ralph in a way that makes Andre grin.

  ‘She’s up for it,’ he hisses to his brother and ducks away from another dead-arm-punch and then it’s time to settle down again for the last speech of the day.

  Mr Pooleigh (‘Poo-LAY’) leaps up onto the stage and the audience goes wild. He could be a rock star. Andre can’t help but notice his mother’s rapt expression. She is clapping her hands so hard they’re going pink.

  Mr Pooleigh handles himself like the major star, millionaire and ex-radio shock jock that he is. He blows kisses at his entourage, all now arranged like a kind of harem along the front row, and then leaps up to the mike stand with a, ‘Hello Cambright! Hello Eastern Angleside! Hello Southern England! Hello England! And hello to the world! We Believe in Better!’ It takes a while for the conference delegates to calm themselves and quieten down, and when they do, Pooleigh launches into his speech with gusto.

  It kind of covers the same ground as what the other peeps have said, thinks Andre, but when Pooleigh says the stuff it makes even more sense. He is bangin’ and them chicks can’t get enough of him, even tho’ he isn’t tonk, like well-built or even that good-looking. He’s a bit old and his hair is greasy and his nose sticks out, like, well far.

  ‘I’m not against immigration,’ Pooleigh is purring. ‘Far from it. Migrants have qualities we all admire. Looking for a better life. They want to get on. I like that. We admire that. So I’m speaking here as much for the settled ethnic minorities as for those who have been here forever. Half a million new arrivals a year! It’s just not sustainable. Anyone who looks at it honestly knows it’s not sustainable. We Believe in Better! We are the people who talk about it honestly. Directly. It’s a serious problem and we are taking it seriously!’

  As he goes on, Andre finds himself nodding and clapping and thinking, Yeah, yeah, this dude is righteous. I get him.

  ‘So, who are we?’ Mr Pooleigh grabs the portable mike and jumps down from the stage. One of the lush chicks jumps up and kisses him on the mouth. Sick! thinks Andre. Pooleigh grins, kisses her hand and waves her back into her seat before moving along the rows of adoring supporters.

  ‘Who is the typical BIB voter?’ he asks. ‘I’ll tell you something about the typical BIB voter – the typical BIB voter doesn’t exist.’ He pats a man on the back, shakes another’s hand. ‘When I look at the supporters that are coming to our meetings, that are here at this conference, I see a range of British society from all parts of the spectrum.’ Mr Pooleigh kisses yet another woman’s hand and heads back onto the stage. He points at the crowd. ‘Workers, employers, self-employed. Big businessmen, corner-shop owners. Well off, comfortably off, struggling. Young as well as old. Not ideologues. Some left, some right, mostly in the middle. Some activists, some haven’t voted for twenty years. One thing we have in common: we are fed up to the back teeth with the cardboard cut-out careerists in Westminster. The spot-the-difference politicians. Desperate to fight the middle ground, but can’t even find it. Focus groupies. The triangulators. The dog whistlers. The politicians who daren’t say what they really mean.’

  Yeah! Andre and Ralph are on their feet, cheering with the others even if they are not entirely sure what Pooleigh has been banging on about. It is the energy in the whole building. The whole thing is a rush and there is Pooleigh smiling down at them from the stage.

  ‘We are the people who Believe in Better! Who Believe in Britain! And we must fight on, because when we know we are right, when we truly believe something, we must act! We must say it out loud. That’s why BIB is the most independent-minded body of men and women who have ever come together in the name of British politics. We must take the fight onto the streets, into the homes, into the minds of all the people that can make Britain Great again!’

  Pooleigh has climaxed, and the crowd roar until they are spent. Andre feels fired up, itchy, energised. He wants to ‘do something’ but he isn’t sure what.

  ‘Hey,’ says Ralph. ‘That’s Brian Mate from my old five-a-side team. I heard he landed an ace job with your TOSA lot. Be nice and maybe he’ll get you a pay rise.’

  Andre looks over and sees a fat blond man wearing a large yellow-and-black rosette standing by one of the exits with several other young men. The men look hot and bothered, faces flushed. Brian looks up, sees them and waves.

  ‘Err Mum—’ Ralph begins.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about me, boys. I’m just glad you came along. You go on and join your mates,’ Andre’s mum says. ‘No doubt you’ll want to go to the pub. I’ll see you back home. I am going to queue for Mr Pooleigh’s autograph.’

  Andre and Ralph join Brian, who slaps them on their backs and calls them ‘Bruvs’.

  ‘What did you think?’ Brian asks.

  ‘Yeah, the conference was jokes, man. Hectic.’ Andre nods but he isn’t sure how he feels now it is all over.

  ‘Then why you looking so flat?’ Ralph nudges him.

  ‘I just want to … you know … do something,’ says Andre feeling lame.

  Brian looks at him sideways. ‘Yeah, after the meetings we all feel like letting off steam, don’t we, boys?’

  The other blokes around Brian laugh and one of them makes a fist and punches it into his other hand, palm flat. The noise of knuckles hitting flesh is strangely exciting to Andre.

  ‘Fancy getting a pint or two across? Maybe we should take some of the BIB issues to the street, get a bit “face-to-face” with some of the people bringing our country down.’ Brian winks at Andre. ‘We’ll start with a couple of pints and then see what the boys come up with.’

  THE DAILY SPUN

  The People Speak: Don Poppet on Tuesdays

  Eleven children and never worked a day in her life!

  Dole Scum Queen gets her just desserts!

  In an overdue U-turn, the government has crumb
led under public pressure! It will, at long last, agree the bill proposing ‘voluntary’ sterilisation for any long-term unemployed parent caught cheating the benefit system. No longer can parasites like Ms Kelly be allowed to parade their tribe of half- neglected, feral children around while living the life of Riley off the back of the hard-working taxpayer.

  After the first episode of the documentary series Scumbag Street was aired in last month’s prime-time slot, our outrage rocketed. We demanded that our government take action immediately to prevent such disgusting ‘in-yer-face’ (to quote Ms Kelly) stealing from the system. Finally, a result! The Minister for Women and Equality, Amelia Baker, agreed the outrageous filching of resources from the British people must stop. She told us of her decision to look into voluntary sterilisation for long-term dole-scrounging parents. There was more good news from our mate, John Thorpe-Sinclair, Minister for Work and Pensions. He is capping benefits on families claiming for over five children! We, the people, think that’s a right and proper response to the current situation.

  Ms Kelly said in her ‘defence’ that being a mum was a full-time job and she hadn’t had a day off since having her first sprog at age 14. She said she had looked for work but was told she lacked the right skills. However, when I visited her mini mansion with its five bedrooms, all paid for by guess who, the children were at home alone and she was in the pub across the road!

  Today she is moaning that her house was ransacked and the windows broken by the Believe in Better campaigners and her children scared witless. Well, Ms Kelly, we say to you: Get a job, you lazy scum. Maybe your children need a good scare to teach them that no one gets the life of Riley for free!

  A Rumour of Promotion

  From where he is standing, Mosh can see Andre and the mechanic laughing, over by the parked private ambulances. It has been six weeks since the incident with the Tunnys, and Mosh has been growing more and more uncomfortable every day. They were not fired, not even reprimanded, in spite of the fact that Mrs Tunny’s fingers were broken and she was already deep into a fatal coma by the time they got her to Grassybanks. Mosh goes over and over it all in his head. The husband killing his own wife right there, in front of them. How desperate does a man have to be? The poisoned milk squirting from her mouth. It is done. It all keeps him awake at night … that and Serena’s colic.

  It isn’t so much the death. Mosh is wearily used to death. In the last couple of years so many of the ambulance call-outs he has done as an NHS paramedic have been to the dead or dying. A new ruling had been brought in to the welfare programme called ‘extreme sanctions’. A majority of those people facing the sanctions had some form of mental health or learning disability. All it took was filling in a form incorrectly; speaking in the wrong tone of voice to a Job Central staff member; not getting to an interview within three minutes of your set time; or not being able to prove you were applying for at least fifty jobs a week. ‘Extreme sanctions’ meant all benefits were stopped. All. This information was sent to you, depending on whether you had an address, in a simple brown envelope stating the sanction but not the cause. Some people couldn’t read, couldn’t believe, or just didn’t realise what they had done. Some might try to call someone to ask how they were to eat, to pay rent, to pay for electricity, for water – but Job Central was not allowed to respond to any person who had been sanctioned. Catch 22. The most unlucky, the ones that Mosh and the ambulance crew were called to, usually because of the smell offending a neighbour, would already have starved, died from hypothermia or killed themselves. Mosh had stopped counting the number of body parts he had collected from train tracks over his last year in the job.

  Of course, Mosh had been appalled. He had even asked a mate of his who worked in one of the re-employment teams at Job Central to help him find out why this kept happening. But it simply turned out that ‘due to the current recession’ Job Central had a target to sanction at least ten people a week, and the mental health cases were the easiest fodder. ‘Completely off the record, mate, but it’s either them or me,’ his mate had said.

  Mosh then decided to move from hospital paramedic to this job with TOSA Community Transport Ltd, the now privatised medical extraction unit. He had felt that moving vulnerable people to a safe and caring environment was going to be a hell of a lot better than finding rotting corpses in bedsits three times a week. But perhaps he had made a mistake, and anyway, now there was another layer to the grimness. Andre. Mosh knew without a doubt Andre had broken Mrs Tunny’s fingers.

  He raises his mug of sweet tea and watches Andre from behind the steam. Andre is telling a joke. He is making faces and doing a funny walk. The mechanic is braying with laughter. Andre’s confidence has grown with his cruelty. Mosh can see that he is mimicking one of the old men they had to clear earlier in the week. The man, very senile but still strong, had broken free from Andre and run away from the ambulance. He hadn’t gone far, though, as his pyjama bottoms had slid down around his knees. Andre had run up and tackled him. The old man had fallen clumsily and hurt himself so badly he could barely stand.

  ‘Swollen Balls!’ Andre had named him. He gave nicknames to almost all the clients they picked up. That was one of the kinder ones. Exasperated by Andre’s refusal to listen to his remonstrations, Mosh had gone upstairs to the freshly carpeted administration suite to speak to the newly promoted TOSA community transport administrator, Brian Mate. He had noticed the man’s Believe in Better tie pin, his knock-off designer suit, his overpowering and offensive cologne. Another relative youngster, white and jowly.

  ‘Are you ratting on a colleague?’ Mr Mate had asked from behind his large desk. He hadn’t offered Mosh a seat.

  Ratting? What kind of word was that? Mosh had thought, incensed. ‘Our clients are vulnerable and often elderly. Surely it’s important … ?’

  Mate had stopped him, holding up a hand. ‘Mr Jameson, are you implying these clients are more important than any other? Honestly, Mr Jameson, these clients, and yes, especially the geriatrics, are practically husks of their former selves. Human husks. It is hardly likely they are even aware of what is happening to them, is it?’

  Mosh was dumbstruck. He had felt as if the air had become rancid and he didn’t want to breathe it in.

  ‘I’m only joshing with you,’ the man had said, seeming to wince a little, as if Mosh’s reaction had hurt him. ‘I’ll have a word with young Andre, but I am sure it’s just a bit of over- enthusiasm. From what I see, he’s a very capable staff member.’

  Mosh doesn’t know if anything was ever said. It doesn’t seem like it, and if anything, Andre is getting worse.

  And something else is troubling Mosh. Andre has applied for a job at Grassybanks, and there is a rumour that he has been shortlisted.

  ‘For the assistant supervisor position,’ Gill in HR had said to Mosh on her tea break.

  Sweet Jesus, Mosh had nearly choked on his doughnut. ‘Andre hasn’t got any experience! And he’s a fucking psycho.’

  Gill had peered at Mosh over the top of her glasses. He noticed the dark circles under her eyes. She looked exhausted. ‘He has “connections”, apparently. Some Believe in Better bigwig put his name forward … anyway, I think “psycho” was one of the key requirements,’ she said. ‘All that lot from TOSA seem to believe a sociopathic trait is vital for medical administration these days.’

  Mosh isn’t sure if she was joking.

  Job Central: Alex Asks for

  Help and Is Punished

  From the crossing point at the bottom of the bridge you can gaze left along the glittering punt-strewn river towards the colleges, ancient and modern, or turn to your right to Peter’s Green with its tennis courts, green playing fields and towering horse chestnut trees. Unless circumstances dictate otherwise, there is no need to look over the bridge to where Job Central is conveniently shielded by a high bank topped with fences and thick bushes. This is a good thing, as Job Central is one of the ugliest buildings in the city.

  It’s a formidable fiv
e-storey rectangular building with small windows. There is a sullen greyness to its exterior, and the elaborate frontage – a series of ramps and sharp concrete steps – is confusing and, for the less mobile, potentially dangerous. As Chris guides Alex carefully into the building her sight dims; her addled rod and cone cells, unable to process light properly, cannot cope with a sudden change from sun to shade. Back come the teasing, shifting shadows through which she can just make out another cat’s cradle of ropes criss-crossing the lobby and a couple of small signs she can’t read. Chris can’t read either, and although there are several people in the various queues watching Alex, no one says a word. She can make out people’s outlines but not faces, and scans around until she happens upon what she presumes, by the crackling radio and stance, is a bored security guard.

  ‘Which queue, mate?’ she asks.

  She waits for a response. After a couple of moments she realises he is pointing.

  ‘Err …’ She also points, at Chris in his guide-dog harness. ‘I’m visually impaired. Pointing is not going to work. You need to use your voice or actually guide me.’

  ‘Yeah?’ His voice is slow and suspicious. ‘Well, you don’t look visually impaired … and you saw me.’

  ‘And you don’t look learning impaired,’ says Alex. ‘But how would we know?’

  ‘No need to take that attitude,’ he grunts sullenly, yanking her elbow and pulling. She refrains from saying that he also reeks of something ghastly that he probably believes passes as aftershave. Only a man with a job already would be wearing aftershave in here. He hovers while Alex’s handbag is screened for weapons and then shunts her along into the main hall.