Rising East Online

Captain Nemesis Calling

Policy: Key To The Vision Thing

—Captain Nemesis

Policy is the largest permanent job creation scheme ever constructed. Nemesis himself was once a protestant work ethnic, but now prefers to hang about in bars idly dandling a glass of fine Côte du Ba’rroi et D’Agenjambon. In such mode, he recounts to his auditors a telling tale of rural regeneration, which began with a key report (so much is key these days…). Zounds! ‘Tis the parish council of Burff which, advised by Mr Suspender the Parish President and CEO, is contemplating the appointment of expert persons to help decide which development options to pursue.

Burff is a small village in Essex, just down the road from Deph and Maryge, and its worthy residents find that they can choose between options A, B, C and D in respect of The Development Site Formerly Known As The School Playing Field. A is ‘hysing’, supported by Sir Arriviste Pilithigh, the great entrepreneur who recently built a 62 bedroom Roman Villa where the ugly grade 1* listed building used to be. B is the Vicar’s idea: a huge extension to the church to accommodate a visitor centre modelling the journey of Noah’s Ark from antediluvian civilisation to Burff where world life was re-created. C is a modest 45 storey office block which will provide (key) back-office services to Europe’s major financial centres courtesy of the 17 bus service which runs every other Wednesday to Little Gubbins station (step forward Sir Maltly Ash-Buttocke, formerly Permanent Secretary at the Department of Inner and Outer Places and now retired to The Furbelows). D is proposed by Miss Celandine Golightly, Headmistress of Burff Infants and Primary School: ‘It’s our playing field you greedy mindless halfwits, leave it alone or else George from Year Five will be unleashed…’.

Mindful that making such a momentous decision is clearly going to take even the vastly intelligent at the very least years – cripes, it took Gordon Brown 10 years to decide that Crossrail was a beezer idea! - and will therefore require (key) expertise, the good burghers of Burff rightly do not shirk the realisation that a very small policy unit of 23 people must be the minimum required (key) input to ensure proper consideration of the facts.

As it happens, George from Year Five short-circuits what would otherwise have been a more protracted affair. Nemesis enjoys Sir Maltly’s funeral and the new Vicar, Mrs Violetta Notb’onker-Smuche, from Upper Consomme, announces that she is strongly against facts. Sir Arriviste doubles his fire insurance and moves to Monaco where it was rainier but is now sunnier. Monaco – where the rich find their rainbow’s end! Aaah….

Of course, regeneration is not just about key matters and proper consideration. Regeneration is also about vision! Sometimes, wonderfully, vision arrives from realms of fantasy and is made to happen. The Eden Project might be an example of this reification of phantasmagorias. Contrariwise, vision is known to disappear up the fundament of fantasy and never return.

Among Nemesis’ favourite fundamental evaporations is Fantasy Advanced Manufacturing (FADMAN), which remains much in favour at the Metropolitan Agency for Development (MAD). FADMAN is actually a very witty game with complex rules involving designation of public land for advanced manufacturing and then placing bets on the number of years which will elapse before a) the land is sold to a religious group, b) a rare species moves onto the land and it becomes a site of special scientific interest, c) somebody builds housing on the land, but nobody notices because nobody from MAD ever visits the site because it is too far from the office and the photo on Google Earth which Mr Norris at Desk 134c looks at every other Tuesday hasn’t been updated yet. FADMAN is a game for (key) people with staying power.

Fantasy Automotive Manufacturing (FATMAN) is a high-rolling variant of FADMAN. One player represents ‘A Major Corporate Entity’, for example Flawed Moddors. Frodo Mutters used to be a world powerhouse of industry sometime last century, but now doesn’t make it into the FT Global 500 or anywhere near and is ‘challenged to make a profit’.

A second key player in FATMAN is ‘The Taxpayer’. Rule 29B kicks in here: Empty the wallet of The Taxpayer and give the cash to the first player (A Major Corporate Entity (AMCE) such as Fjord Matters), eg by the public purse purchasing land no longer required by AMCE at a jolly good price, remediating said land at a large cost to the public purse, and then financing from the public purse the development for AMCE of a facility that AMCE used to operate at its own cost on its own land. The whole febrile enterprise is justified by allocating the freshly-minted land to prospective ‘Advanced Manufacturing’. The game ends when the land is sold to a religious group, etc. [It couldn’t actually happen here though!!]

Readers may think this odd. Fnurg Middens has been shedding labour for 25 years and now employs fewer people at its site in the London Borough of Farflung and Whersat than lost their jobs in industry in neighbouring Poshley over the last five-to-six years. Flood Madders used to train quite a lot of local residents, for example engineers educated by Ford Anglia Rusting University and the University of Beast London; but no longer.

The astute will have noticed that this is not investment in the wider economic needs of F & W and certainly not in assisting Poshley which actually lost more jobs. But our great industries (pause for reverential sigh…) still cast a weird spell over national politicians, most of whom couldn’t find Poshley if they were driven there with an armed escort. Visionary politicians are naturally quite unconcerned by trivial matters such as utility or value for money. They are concerned with vision, which local people cannot understand, being local, and with giving us all a splendid opportunity to experience a warm glow of satisfaction at seeing our taxes so wisely invested (in vision).

Great persons simply aver - not requiring evidence because local people would anyway be incapable of understanding it, being innately local and thus thick – that this investment will immediately lead to huge surges in advanced manufacturing all over F & W and no doubt even in Poshley because of the overspill when F & W is full of surging. All this advancedness will be attracted because of high skill labour force (er, no…), the high quality physical environment (er, no…), the excellent amenities (er, no…), the general buzz of excitement in the area (er, no…) and the many other advanced businesses clustering there like billyo (er, no…). Key (er, no…). Er…

Blimey, says Nemesis, lucky that policy – vested in MAD, not to mention DBERK (Dept for Blighty’s Economic Regeneration Knowledge) – has vision or it wouldn’t be able to see all of the things that ordinary folk just can’t get their silly local heads round, being the kind of people who buy chocolate teapots in which to make a nice cup of Lapwing Shoeshine to comfort the old vicar. You know who the old vicar is – he’s the bloke with third degree burns sat over at the bar quietly gibbering into a half of Old Armpit Ale with a Shrub top.

By the way, interjects Sir Corian D’Ergh, recently honoured for services to urban whimsy, I do recommend backing the rare species option. Claptrap Blairens Blairens is suitably endangered now while Brownjobbus Doomeri isn’t exactly prospering. Mayorus Londiniens Bonkerii however is spreading like Japanese Knotweed – avoid!

Captain Nemesis pilots Rising East Online through the sandbanks and mudflats of Thames Estuary governance

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