For the Love of Money

by Bill Whiting

  “Well, no, of course not,” he answered, “but that’s for the far distant future. People can cross that bridge when the time comes. Right now, this is a complete waste of time.”

  “Well, some might feel that’s a little complacent,” the interviewer said, “but time will tell.”

  One newspaper then reported on the interview, with the headline, ‘Government refuses to rule out Moony-Bru moon’.

  After three weeks, Miller, King and Rachel sat in the bar at their remote hotel. “I think we should finish this thing now,” King told Miller. “This thing is really getting out of hand. They’ll go nuts in China soon because their moon festival begins, and they’ll be saying their ancestors will be leaving their tombs.”

  “Don’t worry,” Miller said. “It’s all part of the plan. Mind you, I didn’t reckon on it bothering dead people as well. But apparently, there’s some billionaire in America whose very interested and he’s trying to find out if he can be buried on the moon and have a huge tombstone projected by laser light; you know, create a kind of celestial immortality for himself.”

  “Yeah,” King said, “but if we really had the ability to put advertising on the moon, I’d rent it out for a million quid for thirty seconds. The cigarette people would love it: no advertising restrictions up there. And if the ads rotated all the time, you know, like they do around football ground perimeters, people wouldn’t be able to stop themselves from looking. ‘Ooh look, the moon’s turned into a famous tennis ball.’ Or perhaps I’d offer a message service for rich people… ‘Happy Birthday, Gloria’, maybe. Or ‘Dennis, please come home’.”

  “It’s full of potential,” Miller agreed, “but let’s not forget we made the whole thing up, and we need to make our deal now before things run out of steam. The media will only play with a really interesting lie for so long. When it gets near to wear-out, they’ll drop it.”

  “Well, we could be getting death threats pretty soon if people find us,” Rachel said, in a distinctly worried tone. “When are those people coming?”

  “They’re due in half an hour,” King said.

  The trio sat in silence and waited.

  At last the phone rang and Miller grabbed it and said, “Okay, I’ll be right down.”

  A minute later Miller returned with two dark-suited men, Wolfgang Weber and Herman Wirth. Weber was the chief executive of Max-Bach, a Hamburg-based brewing business and the world’s second-largest brewing company, with big sales in the fast-growing Asian markets. Wirth was the company’s marketing director.

  Weber was the first to speak. “Good to see you all at last,” he said. “I think I should get straight to the point. You say you want ten million pounds for the Moony-Bru brand name. We will offer you five.”

  “Why only five?” Miller asked. “This is now one of the best-known brand names in the world. It’s worth twenty million!”

  “It’s well-known,” Wirth said, “but we not only have to buy the brand; then we have to announce we have no intention of beaming the name on the moon, and then we have to launch an expensive public relations campaign to turn it from villain to hero.”

  “You’ll be heroes straight off,” Miller said. “You’ll be the ones who killed the scare.”

  “It’s worth exactly what we are prepared to pay and what you are prepared to accept,” Weber said. “Six million is our final offer. And you know it’s more than you ever hoped to make.”

  Miller looked at King, who nodded and gave a thumbs up. Rachel smiled and nodded too.

  “Deal done,” Miller said.

  After the papers were signed and the Germans left, King poured three glasses of champagne. “Here’s to us,” he said, “the three mad musketeers! We’ve now got two million pounds each. What do we do now?”

  “I’ve got a three-point plan,” Miller said. “One, we all get a five-star flight to the sun; two, we sit round a pool; three, we get pissed for a week.”

  And so they did.

  And after six days in Dubai the trio sat at their evening dinner table. It was a farewell occasion, as they each expected to go their own way with their new-found money in the bank.

  “What are you going to do now then, Bill?” Miller asked King.

  “Well,” he answered, “at my annual appraisal some years ago, my boss told me that he thought my abilities and talents were best suited to some form of early retirement. I need to do something, but nothing too demanding. I thought maybe marriage guidance counsellor to the Pope. Or a coronation programme seller.”

  “And you, Rachel?” Miller asked.

  “I think I’ll go to America,” she said. “I’ve learned a thing or two from you two nutters, and I might make myself a celebrity.”

  “What the hell?” King responded.

  “If I was a celebrity, I’d be a business,” Rachel said. “I just need to get there. My thought was to buy some big advertisements in newspapers and state categorically and unequivocally that I have not had two-in-a-bed sex with a male senator and a female member of the House of Representatives. That should send the newshound ball rolling, and they’d go nuts trying to find me. Then, when they did, I’d manage it so they think I’m really thick and probably did shag the politicians, but was trying to cover it up. Before you know it, I’ll be famous and on all the magazine covers, chat shows and reality TV programmes. Then there’ll be advertising endorsement deals that come my way: underwear, cosmetics and that. And then I’ll marry a gorgeous movie star or singer and settle down in a mansion in Florida.”

  Miller and King looked at each other with raised eyebrows. “That’ll be the day,” King said, “and how about you, Jamie?”

  “I’m a bit like you. I don’t really want to do anything, but I’d quite like to get a well-paid job where I don’t have to do anything. Politics, maybe.”

  “That’s a tough job,” Rachel said. “They do work hard, you know.”

  “Yes,” Miller acknowledged, “but I’ve got a little idea.”

  “He’s going nuts again, Rachel,” King said. “It’d take a miracle to get him elected.”

  “Come on – courage, Bill,” Miller responded. “Remember what Mao Zedong said. Wasn’t it something like… ‘Once struggle is grasped, miracles are possible’?”

  “Yes, that’s it,” King said, “but Mao also said, ‘One man should not fight a thousand tigers’.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Three years, nine months, ten days and a thousand tigers later, Jamie Miller was sitting in a television studio waiting to be interviewed. Despite the strong lights, intrusive cameras and intimidating clutter which surrounded the clean and intimate-looking interview backdrop, he felt relaxed.

  For the first period in his life he had no boss: no controlling parent, or teacher, or domineering manager. And not even the more shadowy authority of a mortgage company and matrimonial court order.

  He had no obligatory appointments and no need for an alarm clock – and no feeling of gloom on Monday mornings, no relief on Friday afternoons and no sense that midweek was any different from weekends. There was no-one above him to be feared and fawned upon, and no-one below him to be motivated and managed. He had no office politics to negotiate, no career plan to execute, no company team-building exercises to endure, no corporate cost-cutting programmes to survive and no clients to suck up to.

  He could choose to go almost anywhere, whenever he wanted. But, even more important, he could choose to go nowhere and do nothing, whenever he wanted. He had discovered that the true value of money was not to be found in what he could do with it. Instead, it lay in all the things which money enabled him not to do. He was a free man.

  In the search for deep and inner contentment, some have taken an arduous journey to circle the temple at Mecca, or the heavy-hearted trek to howl at the Wailing Wall, or even trod the long and mystical path to Nirvana as prescribed by the great Buddha. But Miller had
chosen what for him was a faster and more certain road: the route laid down for him by the man whom he now considered to be one of the world’s greatest thinkers, Mr Andrew J Althorpe of the Saturn Home Improvement Company.

  Inevitably, Miller did suffer a little from boredom. But this was alleviated by keeping in regular contact with his two closest friends: the glittering Rachel Honeybun (née Haines) and Bill King, President of Hellfire Cruises International, the hugely successful, though very controversial, shipping line.

  Both Rachel and King had asked him whatever had happened to his politics idea, and he eventually decided to give it a go. He had no high or burning cause to serve, but he did expect to be amused.

  It was very unusual for an obscure independent candidate from a rural constituency to be asked to appear on a regional TV station. Indeed, Miller had been fortunate that the parliamentary election so far had been a very predictable and dull affair. But for this – and the fact that he was different to the point of being extremely quirky – he would not have been invited on TV at all. He was there simply because the TV station saw him as a means of adding a lighter and more entertaining touch to an otherwise heavy diet of election coverage, which was proving a turn-off to viewers.

  His interviewer was scheduled to be Gerry Pitman, who possessed a rude and aggressive style. It was claimed that Pitman’s style was conjured up simply in order to defend the public interest against evasive politicians. However, Miller thought that he was obviously, though maybe coincidentally, the kind of genuinely unpleasant article that would have been equally suitable for machine-gun tower duty at a concentration camp.

  Pitman was feared by elected officials throughout the area for his ability to trap, cajole or enrage them into making mistakes. And whenever he succeeded in doing so, he would pounce upon the error, and magnify it into such proportion that the interviewee became visibly flustered and unbalanced. The results of these duels were either a draw, or more often a win for Pitman.

  Miller, however, remained cool and composed as Pitman arrived on the set and began the interview in his customary manner:

  “Mr Miller, does it concern you that people are describing you as the most ridiculous, selfish and repugnant prospective politician that Britain has ever seen?”

  Miller pondered for a few seconds, and eventually answered. “Not much,” he said. “In fact, it doesn’t concern me at all. I’m a bit like you, Gerry, very confident and self-contained. People like me and you get called scum and ignorant pigs all the time. And we don’t bother, do we?”

  “Well, the point is,” Pitman responded, in a tetchy manner, “you are standing for Parliament and I’m not.”

  “No, but you could try,” Miller said. “There’s a lot worse than you who have tried – and got elected too.”

  Pitman looked annoyed, but pressed on. “Perhaps we can concentrate on you,” he said. “You say your party is called ‘Me Now’. That’s very odd – what exactly are your policies?”

  “It’s too long a list to go through here,” Miller answered, “but in essence, I want to scrap a lot of things which really annoy me personally, and then introduce things which would benefit me personally. I suppose, in a way, I’m a single-issue party – with me as the single issue.”

  “Yes, well that does sound pretty ridiculous,” Pitman responded, “but go on, give us one policy example.”

  Miller looked thoughtful for a moment, before speaking. “I would reduce my tax rate from forty-five per cent to five per cent. That would pay for my share of the police, the armed forces, the NHS and other things which I benefit from. But I earned a few million a while ago and the government took a lot of that. There’s no way I’ll ever get full personal benefit from that, so that’s why I shouldn’t pay much tax now.”

  “So,” Pitman said, “you think rich people like you should have their taxes slashed, and presumably the poor and needy can go to hell?”

  “Not at all,” Miller answered. “Everybody else with money can carry on paying forty-odd per cent, or more if they want. And I know that most of them might be quite happy to pay it, because they’d feel guilty if they didn’t; and I’m a great believer in freedom and I wouldn’t wish to force you or anyone else to pay less tax than they wanted.”

  “Aren’t you just plain greedy?” Pitman asked.

  “Oh yes, I’m very greedy and selfish,” Miller answered, “but that’s what politics is all about. The poor vote for higher taxes and more state benefits and spending, and a lot of well-off people agree with them, rather than feel like a guilty fat-cat. And let’s take the Greens. They’re supposed to be unselfish, but they actually like riding around on bicycles, and they get a terrific feel-good factor out of feeling holier and wiser than the rest of us. Being selfish is just about doing what makes you feel good or righteous.”

  “So,” Pitman said, “you think a rich man, campaigning to have his taxes cut, is on exactly the same moral platform as one who thinks he should pay more to help society as a whole?”

  “You’re missing my point,” Miller answered. “I think freedom is the highest cause. And if people think helping society is good for them, and vote for it, then that’s fine by me. In fact, I believe there should be nothing, absolutely nothing to stop any person, however rich, from giving their money to the government. And you know, there isn’t anything to stop them.”

  “So, you’d like them to pay more, so greedy people like you can pay less?” Pitman asked.

  “Well, you say greedy,” Miller answered, “but I only want to keep my own money. Unlike a lot of people, I don’t want someone else’s money taken so it can be spent by the government in ways that benefit them. I only use my own money to benefit me.”

  “So,” Pitman responded, “you’d just buy a yacht or twenty houses for yourself and hang the rest, would you?”

  “I was thinking of getting a yacht, but I only really want three houses,” Miller answered, “and I might well give some money to worthy charities.”

  “Well, if you’d do that, what exactly is your point?” Pitman said.

  “The point is that it’s my choice,” Miller explained. “You obviously have a bit of difficulty with the concept of freedom, don’t you, Gerry?”

  “I think our viewers might have more difficulty with your twisted logic,” Pitman said, “but answer me this. What is the point of asking people to vote for you when all your policies are for you? Aren’t you supposed to be representing voters and their wishes? Isn’t that the whole point of democracy; and aren’t you just making a complete mockery of it?”

  “I told you, I believe in me and my freedom,” Miller responded. “What would you have me do? Be hypocritical or lie and claim my motives are altruistic? No, I must tell voters the truth.”

  “But with your daft policies and convoluted logic, you won’t be elected,” Pitman said, tapping the desk hard.

  “Well, I agree it is extremely unlikely,” Miller said, “but my logic is sound, though admittedly unorthodox. I might get a few votes, though.”

  “But if you think you can’t get elected, there’s no point in anybody voting for you, is there?” Pitman said. “So why don’t you just go away and leave the field to people who are putting forward sensible, intelligent and coherent policies, which have some relevance to society?”

  “Well,” Miller said, “there will be a few bright people out there who will welcome the opportunity to elect someone like me, someone who’s honest and straightforward enough to admit that he’s just in it for himself. If I was someone else, I’d definitely vote for me. In fact, I also know an ex-girlfriend of mine who will. Lovely little bimbo, she is.”

  “A bimbo!” Pitman said. “That’s a nice word to describe a woman. Hasn’t it occurred to you that in order to succeed in politics, you’ll need to be a little more politically correct?”

  “You may be right there, Gerry,” Miller answered, “but I
really haven’t had the time to learn all the growing number of correct words; and then they keep changing them anyway, and it’s difficult to keep up. In fact, I thought it would be more efficient to give it a few years until a lot of new or changed words are introduced. The problem is, by the time we all learn the correct words, the politically correct people are obliged to invent new replacements – words which most people obviously don’t know or use. If we all used the correct words, then the politically correct people would be stripped of their sense of superiority. And remember, a lot of people have built careers teaching political correctness, and they’d have their livelihoods threatened.

  “And apart from that, what about the victimised people? Most people feel they want to belong, and a very powerful sense of belonging comes from being part of a victimised group. The un-oppressed and un-disadvantaged have become society’s new minority, the real outsiders and misfits. They’ve got nothing to be proud of and have no special identity; and they’ll have no excuses to make if they fail and will get no special admiration if they succeed. Who wants to be in that position?”

  As Miller spoke, Pitman heard the urgent instruction, ‘End the interview’ on his earpiece. He was happy to do so. He felt content that Miller’s appearance would generate a big response from thousands of outraged viewers. And even an angry response was better than the apathetic reaction the election coverage had received that far.

  “We’re out of time. Thank you, Mr Miller,” he said, abruptly.

  Miller left the studio pleased. He felt that, thanks to this coverage and his performance, he had now achieved the singular status of the election candidate least likely to be voted for.

  Stage one of his election campaign was complete. Stage two was about to begin.