Selling Scotland

By Roger Bolton

Britain is so broke that Prime Minister Malcolm Moody is persuaded by previous Prime Minister and mortal enemy Terry Gobb to sell Scotland.

While Malcolm locks himself in a cupboard in Downing Street, where he feels safe and secure, Terry and his wife Shona persuade Eric Musselbaum (Electric Eric) the world's foremost media manipulator, to create an unforgettable Selling Scotland campaign.

Eric flies to LA to get the help of Solomon Shapiro the most famous pop star in the world, a rich Scot who will live anywhere in the world so long as it's not Scotland. While in LA, Eric indulges his favourite pastime of sampling the most potent drinks in the world. He tries an Abrupt Annihilation, made from organic Siberian anti-freeze, known to seasoned drinkers as SNORT. Meanwhile, Solomon is sold on Selling Scotland and flies back to Britain with Eric.

Solomon's estranged wife, Farrington, the star of Suddenly Somnambulant, the most popular show on daytime tv, reluctantly follows her husband as she has been warned by her producer, Maxie Smartturtle, that divorce from Solomon will ruin her career.

When he sees that Solomon and Farrington are getting back together Maxie follows with a new contract. For his personal enjoyment Maxie takes along Bambi Baby, a supremely well-endowed starlet who has set her heart on replacing Farrington and becoming a big star who helps save the world from environmental disasters in her spare time.

Learning that Britain intends to sell his beloved country, Scottish nationalist, Robert the Bruce McFee and the Stupendous Seer, a five star, certified Scottish Seer who has read the bones to forsee the future, arrive at Solomon Scotland's house in London, intent on stopping the sale.

Eric is obsessed with Farrington, he watches her every week in Suddenly Somnambulant. They accidentally meet and indulge in a major SNORT session in Solomon’s kitchen.

Shona, having escaped from the Scottish nationalists who were going to exchange her for Scotland, accidentally tries SNORT which she finds to her liking. So much so that she ends up naked in the extensive grounds of Solomon's house being filmed by a TV crew making a revealing documentary about the Gobbs.

Eventually, Eric locks himself in the fridge with enough SNORT to satisfy the Russian navy. Farrington is rushed to hospital with SNORT-induced delusions and hair that lights up by itself, and Terry arrives to take his naked and increasingly embarassing wife home.

Everyone ends up at Solomon's house where large quantities of SNORT loosen them all up a lot more than they have ever wanted to be loosened, apart from Electric Eric who likes loose and wants more of it.

Despite the SNORT, the nationalism, the naked ambition and an ever-growing tide of chaotic madness, events resolve themselves in an almost meaningful way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roger Bolton
• Release date: Jul 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9780956978608

Book preview

Chapter 1

Things Can Only Get Worse

5.30 am, 10 Downing Street, London.

Malcolm Moody, the afflicted and tormented Prime Minister of Great Britain, twisted his heavy bulk in the chair. He gnawed at what little remained of his fingernails then ran his fingers through his rapidly greying hair.

He thought.

Then he thought some more.

Thinking came easily to Malcolm, not thinking was a journey through one of the outer circles of hell.

He thought.

He gnawed.

He ruffled.

And he worried.

His red-rimmed eyes strayed to the letter from the International Monetary Fund then jerked away hurriedly. Better to pretend he hadn’t received it. It might disappear if he ignored it.

Malcolm gripped the arms of his chair and looked around the room. He sighed. He loved this room, this house and the job that came with it. He loved the power that allowed him to change things, to make things better. Malcolm liked making things better, he had nursed his glowering mind through many dark mornings such as this one by reminding himself that he had changed so many things for the better.

Everything was immeasurably better because of him. And there was more to do, everywhere he looked he saw poverty and inequality.

His eyes inadvertently strayed to the unwanted letter, he groaned and chewed his bottom lip.

It was all so unfair. After all his dedication and hard work.

Malcolm’s brain geared into action. He glared at the letter - if inanimate objects could be enemies this was definitely an enemy. Malcolm hated that letter. More than the letter he hated the fact that it had forced him into making a decision. Malcolm didn’t like making decisions. There had to be a way out. Although he didn’t like making decisions Malcolm was very good at finding a way out.

Problem being he had found his ‘way out’ so many times that no new ‘way out’ remained open to him. The electorate, although stupid and incapable of making decisions for themselves (that’s why they needed him) would recognise another of his much used ways out and they wouldn’t like it - things had got so bad they actually wanted to see his plans for reducing the deficit, a frightening thought, they wanted actions when all he ever gave them were promises which eventually, invariably turned out to be lies. Malcolm was desperate not to upset the public, they might not vote for him in the forthcoming election.

He twisted and turned in the chair, desperate to find a way out of this predicament.

The doorbell rang.

Malcolm jumped out of his chair, looked at his watch, patted his hair into place and stumbled to the door.

Terry Gobb stood on the step, the uniformed 10 Downing Street policeman a couple of respectful steps back.

Terry was grinning.

Grinning, impeccably dressed and blindingly, obviously, obscenely, rich.

At that moment Malcolm hated Terry more than he had ever hated him before. Hated him more than when he had waited for Terry to push off and leave 10 Downing Street to him, lonely years, filled with long nights of planning and scheming.

This job was his by right, his by talent and hard work, it always had been.

Malcolm lobbed a glowering nod into the street and stepped back to allow Terry and the grin in.

Terry wafted through the front door as though he still owned the place. Malcolm’s heart constricted, he wanted to kick the cocky little bastard in his gold-plated balls.

Instead he followed the previous Prime Minister of Great Britain into the office of the present Prime Minister of Great Britain and watched the grinning idiot sit on his chair behind his desk and pick up the letter.

He skimmed it quickly.

‘Doesn’t look good,’ he said cheerfully.

Malcolm growled like a wounded beast, wrapped his beefy arms around his beefy chest and gave himself a reassuring hug.

Terry let go of the letter, it floated onto the desk where it lay like an accusation.

‘What are you going to do about it?’

Malcolm shrugged. ‘I haven’t decided.’

The grin widened, so many teeth and so white. ‘What’s to decide, Malcolm, what’s to decide?’ Terry pointed at the letter. ‘The IMF makes it pretty clear that you have racked up too much debt and have hardly any collateral. Perhaps its time to get out and give someone else a chance, a new beginning, a clean sheet. Someone who could make some new false promises, that usually shuts the electorate up for a while.’

‘You, I suppose,’ Malcolm grunted.

‘No, not me, old chum, not again, never again, I’ve moved on to bigger things, you must have noticed,’ Terry rose from the chair and wandered round the room.

Malcolm stiffened. ‘President of Europe job’s gone,’ he snarled.

‘Yes, I know that,’ Terry replied evenly. ‘It’s a nothing role really, a mere figurehead. No good to me, I’m hands on as you well know. Another position is being created. Created for me actually. Just the thing. Exactly what I deserve.’

‘Which is?’

Terry stopped roaming and turned to fasten Malcolm with his triumphant eyes. He put a finger to his lips and winked, the smile untouched and unrepentant. ‘Just between you and me, Malcolm, not a word outside this room?’

Malcolm nodded reluctantly.

Terry rose on to his toes, the smile now in earnest and serious mode. ‘Emperor of Euroland, Malcolm, I really am surprised you hadn’t heard?’

Malcolm shook his head. No, he hadn’t heard. Nobody talked to him any more, he was so far outside the great Euroland loop that at times he felt that he was Prime Minister of Caracas. Ever since he had sold GB PLC’s gold-plated assets and sunk even further into the red nobody wanted to know him. Funny thing that, and they called themselves socialists. He was the only true socialist. He was the only one sticking to true socialist principles and where had that got him: no pals and a bankrupt nation that failed to acknowledge all the hard work he had done, all the good things he had accomplished. Heatless ingratitude. It hadn’t been easy for him, you know.

Terry ploughed on, oblivious to the turmoil that was boiling its way through Malcolm’s emotional world. ‘The Germans wanted it to be the Kaiser of Euroland but we all knew that wouldn’t fly, so the French came up with Emperor, they’ve wanted Europe to be an empire for a long time.’

‘Yes,’ Malcolm muttered, ‘I know, their emperor, their empire.’

Terry hadn’t heard him. Terry didn’t hear anything when he was in Divine Incarnation mood. ‘It’s all mine, a done deal, signed, sealed and delivered, for life.’

‘Why are you here then? What do you want from me?’ Malcolm knew Terry and realised there was more to come.

‘Well….’ Terry was flustered, the grin disappeared, a flush of embarrassment washed across his face, he turned his back on Malcolm and walked to the far side of the room, fiddling with something before turning back. ‘Well, the thing is, you see, I think we may be able to help one another.’

Malcolm had heard that one before, each and every time it had left Terry with what he wanted and Malcolm chewing the furniture, literally.

Malcolm didn’t say anything. His fixated mind began running a few schemes for increasing the tax burden on anyone in work - there were so few of them these days it hardly seemed worth the effort - while silently wallowing in Terry’s discomfort.

‘The thing is,’ Terry went to the desk and picked up the letter from the IMF, ‘these boys are going to close you down, Malcolm.’

Malcolm shook his head. He felt his jowls shake from side to side like a bloodhound looking in the mirror to decide which bits needed tightening. ‘They want to but they won’t,’ he replied sharply.

Terry opened his eyes wide, a look of surprise on his face. ‘Really, and how do you intend to stop them? Last time I looked the country was broke and incapable of even paying the interest on its debts.’ He stopped, his eyes opened wider, his features contorted into a look of sudden understanding. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve inherited some money, Malcolm. Forty or fifty trillion quid and counting.’

Now it was Malcolm’s turn to feel embarrassed. Malcolm didn’t flush, he went white, white as chalk. ‘I’m working on it,’ he mumbled through clenched teeth.

‘I bet you are, thinking things through, right. Look, mate, please don’t take this the wrong way but you’ve got to stop complicating things, that’s been your trouble all along, an over-active brain constantly searching for a problem to fix. Look at that fiasco with the tax credits….’

‘That was a bloody good idea.’

‘It was complicated, expensive and open to fraud. So much easier to raise the tax threshold and not tax low wage earners in the first place. What is the point of taking tax off people then asking them to apply to get it back? Exactly how much has that great idea cost the taxpayer, Malcolm?’

Malcolm glowered at the carpet.

‘Only money, right. Plenty more where that came from, right. Only there isn’t, not any more. You’ve wrung the poor buggers dry, Malcolm and now you’re trying to persuade them to go out and spend money they haven’t got in the hope of enjoying a rosy future. Then, if it comes, you will tax them so highly they won’t be able to pay their debts. Doesn’t make sense, Malcolm, time to wise up, take the simple route to financial security.’

‘There is no easy route.’

The smile was back. It lit up the room. Malcolm wished he had a pair of dark glasses, he could feel one of his migraines coming on. Tony rose on to his toes once again, balancing, bouncing, smile wattage increasing, blindness and pain throbbing insistently behind both Malcolm’s eyes.

‘That, mate, is where you’re wrong. That’s why I’m here, to offer you the easy way out. Simple, straightforward and easy.’

Malcolm didn’t believe him. He looked a the grinning idiot balancing on his toes and blinked in the light of that ever confident smile. Didn’t matter, he had no choice, no options left, he had to listen.

‘Okay,’ the words were choked out of him, ‘tell me what you’ve got in mind.’

Chapter 2

The Bigger Picture

‘Simple economics, Malcolm. You’ve got something someone wants. You sell it, they buy it. You’re back in the black, couldn’t be easier.’

Malcolm shook his head. How many times must he explain to this cretin that there was nothing left to sell. He had sold it all. And, for a short time at least, it had worked, creating a feeling of self-confidence in the electorate (well, those members of the electorate the state had been very expensively not educating) and unexpectedly won him an election everybody said he would lose. All he had to do now was hold on for another three years, make up something the voters wanted to hear and win once again.

‘I know what you’re thinking: there’s nothing left to sell.’

Terry’s words floated into a mental vacuum. Malcolm was obsessing, not listening. He was desperate to win the next election. It was everything to him, meant more than life itself. Privately he had stopped pretending it was for the good of the people, he only had to read the newspapers and look at the reports from the Treasury to see that he had caused more pain and hardship than he had eradicated - and it had cost a fortune to do so. No, forget doing good, it was the power he loved, Malcolm thrived on being top dog, everybody doing what he told them, putting his ideas into action, even though they didn’t work. It gave him an abiding sense of self-satisfaction even though it gave everyone else bankruptcy and ulcers.

Terry realised that Malcolm had ‘gone away.’ He recognised that blank look. He raised his voice, almost shouting. ‘You do have one remaining asset, Malcolm, something of no importance and a drain on the Treasury. Sell it and you’re home and dry, you will have enough to pay a substantial amount off the country’s debt, get the IMF off your back and invest in a few new plans to turn the country into one big poor house.’

Malcolm strayed back into the real world. Reluctantly, he preferred the theoretical world his incessant thinking had created. A theoretical world where all his ideas worked. Whatever Terry was gibbering about sounded good to Malcolm. It ticked all the right boxes. Money to spend on some more social engineering. His big brain strayed to thoughts of poor people. Malcolm liked thinking about poor people, it made him feel good about himself. He had pictures of them stored in his brain, lots of sepia-coloured pictures. Pictures of hard working poor people ground down by the selfish greed of the middle classes intent on providing a decent life for themselves and their children. Poor people who only needed an opportunity. Poor people driven to lives of crime in order to survive, in order to buy the mobile phones, 97-inch plasma television sets and pay per view sports channels, cigarettes and alcohol that were theirs by right. Denied to them merely by an accident of birth. Yes, he was going to do right by them, he would fix it, he would do anything to give them more money.

‘All right, what’s your plan?’

‘Not mine, actually, Sarky and Merky thought it up.’

Malcolm’s political antenna flashed into paranoid life. If Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor had suggested something it couldn’t be in Great Britain’s best interest, quite the opposite.

‘Thoughtful of them,’ Malcolm muttered.

‘They sympathise, Malcolm, really they do. They too want to help the poor, in this case the poor being good old GB.’

‘We’re not that poor.’

‘Poor as a church mouse, Malcolm, and you know it.’

‘So what’s on the table?’

‘Scotland!’

‘Scotland!"

‘Yes, Scotland, they want you to sell Scotland, Malcolm. The French are particularly interested in buying the place, they feel that, historically, it’s theirs by right.’

A wave of despair washed over Malcolm. He had been clutching at straws. He had convinced himself that Terry was really going to come through, and now this. He shook his head, despair jostling the poor out through the back door of his big brain.

Terry continued, unaware that Malcolm was drowning in despair. ‘It’s a no brainer, Malc. First off you’d save billions by not having to subsidise them. Second, you get cash for the sale.’

Malcolm blinked his way through the despair and focussed on Terry. ‘You’re serious,’ he said.

‘Deadly serious. Never more serious in my life.’

‘So what’s in it for you?’

‘I’ve already told you, Emperor of Euroland. For life. The French get it after me, that’s the deal - they get it for life, as Sarky remarked to me only the other day What’s the point of Napoleon putting in all that hard work and nothing to show for it.’

‘But I’m a Scot, Terry.’

‘Don’t I know it. But what do you want to be, Malc, a Scot or Prime Minister, you can’t be both, not with this offer on the table?’

Malcolm’s blood ran cold. Watercoloured visions of his native country came piling into his big brain, jostling the despair out through the back door of his big brain where it went off to join the poor.

‘I’m a Scot,’ he repeated, not sure what else to say.

‘And, as a Scot, selling the place would be the best thing you could do for them. I mean to say, broke as you are how much longer can you continue to throw money at them? When the money dries up the Scots will be in trouble, Malcolm. By selling to the French you’d be doing them a favour, the French economy is so much stronger than ours.’

Malcolm groaned. It was a long, low groan of the utmost despair. And, as he groaned, the Prime Minister of Great Britain threw up his right arm and clutched his head with his meaty hand, gripping his head tightly, as if to stop it falling off.

Terry’s heart soared. He recognised that move, it meant Malcolm had reached a decision that he didn’t like. He was going to go with it.

Malcolm’s bloodshot eyes peered round the arm that was holding his head on. ‘More detail, Terry, I’m going to need a lot more detail.’

Chapter 3

Safe and Sound

Malcolm watched Terry saunter along Downing Street, amazed once again how fast that slick smile disappeared once he had got what he wanted.

The thinking was back big time. Malcolm needed time to weight things up, measure them, decide their implications, what effect they would have on him and his loosening grip on power.

Quietly closing the front door, so as not to disturb his lovely wife, Sasha, he returned to his office.

In one corner of his office there had been a large, walk-in stationery cupboard, Malcolm had had it converted as soon as he became Prime Minister.

From the outside it looked just as it had before. Inside was a completely different matter.

Inside there was a small but comfortable bed, an armchair, a television, radio, bottled water, tinned food and a small gas cooker. Copies of his favourite books lined the walls.

Malcolm breathed a sigh of relief when he entered his gloomy sanctuary. He closed the door and slid the double bolts home, shutting out the world.

He sat in the chair, the darkness closing in on him, put his big meaty hand to his big meaty head, closed his eyes and began to think.

The wonder of it was, as he had discovered on a number of occasions, no one noticed that he was missing. If he stayed locked in here long enough Terry and his grotesque, greedy hyena of a wife, Shona, would sort out or mess up the country’s finances by selling Scotland. If they messed up he would deny all knowledge of the plan. If they succeeded he would bound out of his cupboard like Superman from a telephone booth and remind the world how great he was.

Yes, that should do it, Malcolm thought as the darkness swallowed him and, outside, the world went about its business.

Chapter 4

Electric Eric

Shona Gobb slid out of her chauffer-driven car a five minute walk from the university. She stood for a moment enjoying the weak autumn sunlight that fell through the branches of a tall plain tree. She watched as the world went on its way, a sight that always pleased her because she felt elevated from the boringly normal world of the struggling, easily satisfied, proletariat.

Shona stopped herself right there. She really must stop thinking in communist terms, the commies were dead and gone, a few desperate pages of unbelievable failure inscribed in blood in the history of the world.

Even so she felt a stab of regret. There had been something rather nice about the communist ideal - particularly if you were, as she and Terry were, at the top of the pile. To be honest, what was the difference between communism and socialism? The big mistake the communists had made was imposing their will by force. That could only succeed short term, unsustainable long term, as history had proved. Those socialists who wanted power, wanted to rule, had recognised this weakness and developed a workable alternative: impose the will of the few on the many by stealth, using