Free Meltdown by Ben Elton

National City Bank in 1968.
    ‘Dull! DULL!’ Derek Corby spluttered into his Scotch and lemonade. ‘What has “dull” to do with the price of eggs! We’re discussing stockbroking .’
    Father and son were existing on different planets. Living in different ages. Never once in his entire life had Derek Corby imagined that the financial sector should be interesting . Quite the opposite. He believed that by its very nature it should be dull, very, very dull. That was why it was the financial sector. If you wanted your work to be interesting, find another profession. Become a soldier or an engineer or an entertainer in the halls. Derek Corby had sacrificed eight hours a day, five and a half days a week all his adult life to dull. It was what he was paid for. That was why he worked, not to be stimulated but to earn a decent living so that he could support his family and enjoy his leisure. What he did at home was interesting. Bridge nights, fishing trips and home brewing. Holidays were interesting, not work, two weeks rambling in the Lake District. That was why he worked, so that he might appreciate the rewards of his labour.
    Jimmy always ended up drinking the whole bottle of champagne. His father declined to share it and his mother had only a thimbleful.
    ‘The difference between you and me, Dad, is you earn money. I make it.’
    ‘And as far as I’m aware,’ Derek replied, ‘ making money is inflationary. They made money in Germany in 1923 and the result was people needed a wheelbarrow full of Reichsmarks to buy a box of matches. The rules of economics don’t change.’
    ‘Oh yes they do, Dad. Cos you see we don’t just make the money, we make the rules too.’
    ‘Yes,’ Derek replied, ‘you used to make up your own rules at Monopoly, I seem to remember. I tried to explain to you at the time that it was called cheating.’
    ‘Dad, come on,’ Jimmy said, using his twinkling smile on the one person on whom it had no effect at all. ‘It isn’t cheating if you win.’

An essential hairdryer
    Henry sat in his little office and despaired of the way things were. Here was the party flogging the nation’s highest honours to the very people whose excesses Labour had been elected to curtail, and yet here he was struggling to make ends meet. Agonizing about whether he could put the cost of his wife Jane’s hairdryer on his expenses chit.
    He, Henry Baker, who struggled every day on behalf of the people’s party and on behalf of his own constituents, was forced to live in a kind of genteel poverty. While Rupert Bennett and Jimmy Corby, Jimmy Corby of all people, were multi-millionaires.
    It was insane. He was spending his precious time trying to argue to himself that because he sometimes used his wife’s hairdryer to dry his own hair, it was a legitimate professional expense. After all, he had long hair and clearly it was his duty as a Member of the Mother of Parliaments to appear at Prime Minister’s Questions with it looking its best. That was obvious, surely?
    What a waste of time. What a criminal waste of the time of an important parliamentarian to be forced to count every penny.
    MPs’ pay was a scandal. It was the press’s fault, nasty, mealy-mouthed hypocrites. They acted as if MPs didn’t deserve to be paid at all! Of course they hadn’t been paid in the old days and the country had been run by mill owners and the aristocracy, the only people who could afford the luxury of a political career. Was that a good way of doing things? No!
    If the people wanted to be governed by the people, then they should damn well expect to pay the people to do it. Henry wrote a note to accompany the claim form that he would submit to the accounts committee:
    Sir,
    My hair is rather thick and luxuriant, a physical fact which causes me no small inconvenience. When I wash it, on warm days I am content to stick my head out of the window for a few minutes until my hair is dry. This affords me time to listen to the previous