The Bedford Heist

by Frederick Linden-Wyatt

  I did check up on him and found that he was now selling solar power to households in the Cambridgeshire area. He said he was doing ok but felt that he was selling a system that only benefitted the installer and not the end user. He said that he would be looking for a new job as soon as he had a few more months in a regular job. I wished him luck.

  Chapter 17. The racist banker

  Neil Gardener was in his late forties and was married with two children who lived in Ely, Cambridgeshire. Neil left school at 16 and went to college for a further three years and gained a bachelor’s degrees in finance. He joined Barclays where he met his wife Susan and married in 1994. Life was great as he had progressed to become an Investment Banker, but things went terribly wrong after he got really drunk one-night celebrating landing a new client who had millions to invest. He apparently was leaving the bar when he bumped into a black woman and spilt all her soft drinks down both sets of clothing. What happened next was caught on CCTV and clearly showed that he racially abused the woman, saying: 'Go back to your own f*****g country.' He ignored another female who told him to shut up over his racist rant and said: 'It'll be a different story when they take over the world and you're all wearing burkas’ As the Muslin lady was leaving she felt a slap to the right side of her head from behind. At this point in time the hotel had called security and Neil was asked to leave. The lady later reported the matter to the police, and they checked the CCTV and Neil was arrested.

  When his time in court came around, he thought that the barrister - which was paid for by his employer, would get him off with a slap on the wrist. He was shocked when he was sent down for 36 months. His employers terminated his contract and with a criminal record he will never be employed in the banking sector ever again. I asked Neil what he would like to train as while he was here as it looks as if he is going to have to start something completely new once he is freed. He said that he had always wanted to write a book about the way the rich are robbing the poor and any help with writing a book would be helpful. I said that we could enrol him on two courses with the first one being on anger management and if he completes that course I will then enter him on to the writing and publishing program but he will need to use a computer without an internet connection for his course work.

  I asked him what the things are your book will cover and who it will be aimed at, as these will be the first two things your tutor will ask, so you could start by thinking ahead. Neil came back and said that that wouldn’t take a lot of time to think as the first part will be aimed at making the reader aware of just what goes on in the international banking and investment field. He went on to state that there is a very thin line between tax avoidance and tax evasion and even the brightest of people still get it wrong. Tax avoidance is legal and indeed the government encourages you - to save in a tax-free Individual Savings Account (Isa), for example. Or you could invest in a pension scheme, donating to charity via the gift aid scheme, or claiming capital allowances on things used for business purposes. What many people slip up on is tax evasion. Tax avoidance currently costs the taxpayer £4bn a year, according to the latest figures from HMRC. That is very nearly as much as illegal tax evasion, which costs an estimated £5.1bn. Together, they account for about a quarter of the £35bn that is lost to the Treasury every year, otherwise known as the "tax gap".

  What the government should be looking at is totally changing the rules regarding monies leaving the UK banking system. He had read an article that according to the Labour party a mind-boggling £13 trillion of assets in major firms who do business in the UK are squirrelled away in overseas tax havens. The £13 million million is six times the UK’s national debt and could make living in the UK better for every man, woman and child. The UK also needs new laws to stop overseas companies charging a high price for branded products supplied to its UK franchise or distributor. For example, if you take an international company such has Starbucks, which were publicly shamed for paying very little tax in the UK, they could charge their UK franchisee 10 pence for every pre-printed coffee cup, instead of the true cost which is less than a penny. This inflates their cost to the UK ensuring that the extra cost is pocketed by the international company which is probably based in an off-shore low-tax country. I’m fairly sure that this is done in every industry and needs sorting out fast.

  Leaks such as the Panama Papers and the more recent leak nicknamed the Paradise Papers show how companies and individuals have been depositing money around the globe to avoid paying tax in the country that the money was raised. The government should make it its number one priority in establishing a large department to track this money down and make the offender pay their fair share of tax. If everyone paid, it would mean that every man, women and child in the UK would benefit. What is needed is for the government to abolishing ‘non-dom’ status, tighten the regulation of accountants, lawyers and bankers, increase the resources available to HMRC to enforce UK tax legislation, review tax breaks for corporates and wealthy individuals, Introduce a public registers of beneficial ownership for trusts as well as companies, and compelling the UK’s crown dependencies and overseas territories to do the same. Make mandating public country-by-country reporting for all publicly quoted companies and stop the practice of granting amnesties to those who hide their money offshore.

  Neil said that he had a brother who was severely disabled and with the change over to the new PIP system he was informed that he was able to work. How they came up with that answer I’ll never know as he can’t speak, is in a wheelchair and only has partial vision. My mother who cares for him in an unpaid role challenged the decision and like most cases that are appealed the decision was reversed. If the government spent just a fraction of what it has cost to implement the PIP system on tax evasion, then the UK wouldn’t have any financial problems. He said that he had once asked a very rich Lord and landowner why the benefits he gained shouldn’t be spread out so that his estate and business workers got a better deal. He said that it had always been seen that by allowing certain people such as himself to become rich his wealth would be spent and therefore benefit the wider community. What he forgot to state was that once he had the money, he wouldn’t spend it but hide it an offshore account which only benefitted him.

  It never surprises me how so many leading business leaders want to be the richest person in the graveyard. I said that I sympathize with his thoughts as I had just been interviewing a young man who had been made redundant due to no fault of his own and was claiming job seekers allowance. He did find a new job, but he was told that if he took it his benefits would be stopped on the first day of his employment. He said that to take the job he would need to buy some new work clothes and some shoes as the firm didn’t allow trainers to be worn. He would also have to pay for petrol to get himself to and from the workplace which was 18 miles from where he lived. The new job had flexible hours so even if there was a bus service (which there wasn’t) he couldn’t use it. In the end he couldn’t afford to take the job as he wouldn’t be paid for a month, so he went back to his old ways and soon ended up again with the wrong crowd and got caught dealing drugs.

  We hear all the while about the government wanting to get people back in to work yet they don’t offer any financial help to do so. If the government had come up with a way to cover his cost for the first month it would have been a lot cheaper than spending £47,000 to keep him in prison for a year. The big problem is that the people who are making the rules have never had to sign on or live on benefits. If they had then they would make the rules more flexible and get people off the streets and back to work. Neil won’t be joining me for the heist I’m going to hold in Bedford as he really is a blue-collar worker and would be totally out of place. I however will be picking his brains on how town banks work and I truly wish him luck with his book.

  Chapter 18. Racial and sexual discrimination.

  This is always a touchy subject to raise as different people have separate views on what it is. To me the rule has always been to trea
t people of all colours, gender and faiths as equals, but I can understand where things go wrong. When I was growing up you hardly saw a black person but that was decades ago, and we are now becoming a multi coloured country. I always ask people that I know have made a racist comment against another human being, what would they do if they themselves or somebody close to them was suffering a heart attack. Would they tell the paramedic not to save a life simply because they were a different colour or religion? Whether we like it or not we now live in a multi faith country and in a few decades time everyone will be of mixed race.

  I do have some sympathy for those that say the PC has gone too far. I have had to reprimand an inmate who was heard saying “we have a lot of dykes in Lincolnshire” after I received a complaint from a female member of staff. I couldn’t do much about it as all the fens have drainage dykes and there is a lovely village named Dyke just north of Bourne in Lincolnshire. Another word that upsets many people – myself included, is the word “Nigger” which refers to a black Negro but what I find slightly confusing is why a black person can use the word – as many do in various rapping songs, yet when a white person sings along to the song they are being racist. One of the first time I heard the word Nigger was when it referred to a male black Labrador retriever belonging to Wing Commander Guy Gibson of the Royal Air Force, and the mascot of No. 617 Squadron. Being a dambuster fanatic I cried as a child when Nigger got run over whilst his owner was fighting for his country. It looks as if the PC brigade should steer clear of Lincolnshire as it is the home of the 617 squadron, and you’ll pass many dykes along the way.

  If we take the good old and trusted BBC as an example, they say that they are committed to reflecting and representing the diversity of the UK. The BBC is for everyone and should include people whatever their background. Unless you are an out and out racist you really can’t argue their reasoning, but the good old BBC doesn’t always get it right. I’m told that non-white and non-Christians make up only 15% of the UK’s population, yet I can almost guarantee that the 15% will be totally ignored by producers and we will see more and more programs for the minority. The same applies to gay people on TV. According to an article in the Guardian 1 in 50 people in UK now say they are lesbian, gay or bisexual which is about 2% of the population.

  Now let me make it noticeably clear as to where I personally stand. I don’t give one iota what people do behind closed doors, as long as they’re not breaking any laws. It also annoys me when people assume that two same sex people living together are sharing a bed. I would rather see two men or women sharing their home with another rather than see two individual lonely people.

  Having made that clear what I do get annoyed with is when every show on the BBC appears to have a gay person in it and they are openly promoting their sexuality. You can see them on the screen saying, ‘look I’m gay’ aren’t I pretty and I answer to myself saying “no you’re not”. Strictly Come Dancing is a show that is IMO to PC. You not only have two gay male judges but if that wasn’t enough up pops the token black judge. There is a rumour that the next series of SCD will have two same sex dancers and if that happens then the show will lose a lot of viewers, myself included.

  Chapter 19. The final straw

  One thing that really gets my back up and helped me make the decision of changing from gamekeeper to poacher is the greedy nature of most large companies (including banks) in the UK. This along with the loss of my dear wife (which could have been made easier), the terrible way I was dealt with after serving over 20 years as an award winning prison counsellor in HMP service, greedy CEO’s and directors have made it an easy choice to set up my heist in Bedford. Nearly every private limited company (PLC) in the UK pay their top person (usually known as the Chief Executive Officer CEO) between 100 and 120 times more than the companies average pay of a worker. This can’t be right and a way to control these leeches (I call them The Leeches of London) must be found either by regulation or better still by introducing a much higher level of tax for those paying themselves more than a million pounds in any one year.

  Any government could help ‘shame’ these leeches by simply making it law that all executive remuneration schemes should be simplified and for companies to declare how much the pay of top 3 executives exceeds that of the average worker. This information should be placed on all products and media, so that people could then decide whether to support that company and its products. But governments (of all colours) don’t tackle these greedy bastards and in many cases continue to throw publically funded contracted work to them.

  A recent example would be the Carillion fiasco where even after the firm put out profit warnings (usually a red flag to investors), the government were still arranging new contracts with them. Carillion was a massive organisation with over 20,000 employees in the UK alone but in January 2018 the company went into liquidation leaving many major projects up the creek without a paddle. The BBC reported that the £335m Royal Liverpool Hospital: completion date repeatedly pushed back amid reports of cracks in the building with the latest opening date given by the new contactor Laing O'Rourke of the end of 2020. Carillion’s Chief executive Richard Howson who stepped down in July 2017 after a profit warning. He had been in charge since the end of 2011. There has been much criticism over the size of Mr Howson's pay award in 2016 which, including bonuses, totalled £1.5m. He also received a salary until October 2018. Carillion’s finance director Richard Adam, who retired in December 2016 after nine years at Carillion received almost £1.1m in salary and bonuses in 2016”.

  It just doesn’t make sense that by paying these so-called leaders of industry over a million pounds a year that they are worth it. Other greedy CEO’s were “Drastic” Dave Lewis, Tesco’s chief executive, whose pay, including salary, bonus and incentives, topped £4.6m before standing down, or J Sainsbury’s Mike Coupe £3.9m pay package as the grocer unveiled a further fall in sales. IMO any company paying their top staff more than this benchmark should be penalized and hit with a tax rate of 80 per cent once they are paid more than a million. This would apply to everyone including our highly over paid footballers and the government should ignore cries that these top earners would leave the UK and work abroad. If anyone including footballers doesn’t want to pay the greedy tax level of 80 per cent then the country could live without them and would help UK footballers move up the ladder and who knows we may again win the world cup. It was 1966 when we last grasped this trophy and it’s worth noting that the top salary for a footballer then was around £5,200 a year, which I have calculated to be about £90,812 in today's money.

  The government must stop this abuse happening and the easiest way of doing this is to increase the top rate of tax for these greedy leeches and set up a financial police force to ensure that any money earn’t in the UK is taxed and paid for. Paying the top 5% million’s more than their real worth to me is as criminal and they are no better than the inmates I have dealt with over the years I have spent working within HMP. The coronavirus pandemic will not change a thing to these leeches, and they will go on paying themselves millions whilst some of their employees will have to survive on statutory sick pay of £95.85 per week.

  Chapter 20. Why hold the heist in Bedford

  I decided to hold my heist in Bedford as it was a market town I knew well and that the town had also seen better days and had been treated badly by central government during the past few centuries. Bedfordshire is an English shire county which is around 57 miles north of central London. The Borough of Bedford has a population of just over 153,000 and is arguably the most cosmopolitan in the UK, with some 57 ethnic groups being represented.

  Bedford’s main employers were the brickworks and modern brickmaking in Bedfordshire started when the London Brick Company bought up various small local companies, such as Randall and B J H Forders & Co, to create the largest brickworks in the world. At its peak London Brick employed over 2,000 people and manufactured over 500 million bricks per year. By the 1930s, there were 135 chimneys in the Ma
rston Vale. After World War II, there was an enormous demand for bricks to help in the reconstruction of Britain’s housing stock. Bedfordshire had the clay but not the people to make the bricks, since returning soldiers were reluctant to take up such arduous labour. The brick companies looked overseas for workers, and found many willing recruits, firstly among people displaced from Eastern Europe, and then among Italians in the 1950s, and later Indians, Pakistanis and West Indians. In fact, there were so many Italians that even today there are nearly 40 Italian restaurants still in the town (before Covid-19).

  In the 1970’s the company again expanded by buying rival companies such has the Marston Valley Brick Company and Redland Brick. However, during the 1980’s demand for bricks fell and the decline started with the closure of the Ridgmont pit in 1983. The sale of the pit enabled the company to stay in profit but only after making 1,100 workers redundant. The brick making sector currently employs around 230 people but will never again be the force it once was. Another big employer in Bedford was the Charles Wells brewery which has been operating in Bedford since 1876, with the Eagle brewery producing more than 100 million litres of beer every year. In 2017 the brewery was sold to pub operator Marston's in a £55 million deal. Around 300 people employed in production, sales and brands marketing will transfer to Marston's but the 200 Charles Well’s pubs across the UK and France will still be owned by the old company.