Walker , livre ebook

Andrews UK - James London

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138 pages

English

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Leading the UK track and field team to gold medal winning glory at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and again at Beijing in 2008 was enough for British Athletics to turn again to Walker and persuade him - the UK's greatest ever track and field athlete - out of retirement to save the nation from ignominy and disgrace after the greatest ever disaster in the build-up to any modern Olympics; a disaster that could destroy a nation. Forsaking his scientific research into the subject of longevity at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, and with the help of his mentor and Olympics athletics coach Cassius, Walker returns to the venue for the 30th Olympiad in London in time to compete against the greatest Decathletes in the world. His return to athletics awakens and inspires the nation. Is their support enough? This is the story of Walker's single-handed attempt to restore Britain's pride in itself and its reputation as a great sporting nation.

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	25 juin 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781781661529
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Title Page
WALKER: LONDON 2012

by
James London

Publisher Information
Walker: London 2012 published in 2012 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright © 2012 James London
The right of James London to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Chapter 1
Henry Stillman was feeling good. He’d finished his second meeting with Brendon Doolan on a high, having sucked the Aussie Bastard in for money which, as it wasn’t Stillman’s own money, he didn’t care how much of it he ended up spending to achieve his objective. Doolan had insisted on payment on delivery, so he’d not be stitched up. This job had to go without a hitch. The rewards were huge, but for those involved commensurate with the risks. It was as well that Doolan was a man who’d do anything for money. To him money was the be-all-and-end-all, an end in itself. Stillman was fortunate at this particular time that Doolan was so desperate for money he’d do anything to straighten out his personal finances. And that included blowing up the Olympic Stadium for the London 2012 Games.
As Chairman of the inner London Authority’s planning and housing department for over ten years Stillman had learned everything he needed to know about builders, who formed companies without assets, and used bank overdrafts to begin building projects, relying on overstated measurements and contract variations to obtain advanced payments with which to line their own pockets. Under pressure to deliver, they’d threaten the client with bankruptcy, and ask, and usually get more. Few got rich, and most of those who did then lost it gambling in Casinos or to bookmakers. In the beginning Stillman paid over the top to avoid arguments until he wised up, and employed his own quantity surveyor to measure the work in progress. Then he got a better idea.
Instead of issuing tenders to every applicant, he chose three builders who were established, reliable and capable of good quality work to tender, and to these three he awarded the contracts in rotation. To stay in this privileged position the contractor had to agree to pay Stillman 1% of the contract value in cash on contract signing. From then on he earned on every Local Authority contract. The cash he squirreled away in a Swiss deposit account. By the time he retired from local politics his cash balances amounted to several million pounds, earning 5% annually and rising. He also lived in style, in an expensive house furnished in a royal manner. He’d enjoyed the ease with which he’d amassed his private fortune, and by the time he decided it was time to move on, he was comfortably able to join the House of Commons as a Member of Parliament, believing his dishonestly accumulated wealth a just reward for twenty five years of devoted service to the local council.
Now he wanted a seat in the House of Lords. To become Lord Stillman was the summit of his ambition but it was an honour that money could not buy, so he had to do everything his boss wanted and trust him to reward him commensurately, which with the current Prime Minister De-Vert would be a gamble.
After the ten plus years running the housing department he was selected to represent a safe seat constituency in South London as Member of Parliament, taking over from a 70 year old retiree who’d held it for twenty years through four general elections.
Stillman did not have the right education, school, university or connections to become a member of parliament without two and a half decades in local politics. But a safe Labour seat, in a working class constituency where a significant proportion of the electorate lived off benefits, always voted labour, were indifferent to education, hated the upper classes, knew their rights; if you were one of them, you could be their MP for life.
He had lived in this constituency for most of his life. Thinking and speaking as they did, he had become one of them, and when he wasn’t engaged in sucking up to Prime Minister De-Vert he represented them well. That did not stop him seeing them as lazy and ignorant, and cringing at the thought of being considered as one of them by anyone other than them.
On entering parliament he volunteered to work in the Whips Office, toadying to junior and senior ministers, so that after four years everyone knew him. After retaining his parliamentary seat at his party’s third consecutive general election victory he was appointed a minister in charge of The Ministry of Information Technology (IT). IT was a poisoned chalice as he found himself responsible for failed, over-budget, badly designed computer systems throughout government departments and the civil service. The job was impossible for someone who wasn’t a computer professional who could understand the requirements, evaluate the solution, and assess the overall package of software and support required, measure the capacity of hardware proposed, and prevent the techies buying everything on offer, regardless of need, just because they wanted it. He was never going to be in control, and that’s how it had been for his predecessor, Guy Westbrook who had done great damage by his incompetence and dishonesty. He had been guilty for not bringing in an expert to advise when major projects collapsed because suppliers delivered out of date processors and incompatible peripheral equipment. Instead he created a smokescreen and defended the indefensible.
The Ministry of Information Technology had been set up to feed De-Vert’s obsession with controlling the media through the analysis of data; to do which he needed information, statistics, and lies. Spying on people was the real task of the Ministry of Information Technology. It was given access to every computer in the civil service, all passwords had to be copied to the Ministry of Information so it could look at every page of secret and restricted passing through the Civil Service and government. When the disasters piled up De-Vert didn’t fire Westbrook, who had become his chief spy; he shunted him along to a less exposed job in a Government reshuffle. Stillman’s time in the Whip’s office had brought him to DeVert’s attention, and his willingness to cover up the fiascos at the Ministry of Information Technology endeared him to him. There was always a place in a De-Vert government for a fall guy and Stillman could be one of them. But Stillman was no fool, he kept every piece of correspondence and wrote up minutes of every meeting between himself and De-Vert. He had fought and won too many tough battles as a County councillor during which time he’d learned how to be a skilful politician, not putting his head above the parapet until the shooting had stopped. He knew when to remain in the shadows, and when to take the limelight. Taking responsibility for the IT scandal closed the book on an issue that DeVert knew could have tarnished him personally.
De-Vert was vindictive and, like a mafia godfather, surrounded himself with unsavoury henchmen. He saw power for himself as more important than performance, and to keep it, he and others in the cabinet had to deliver. Stillman knew that although De-Vert was his accomplice he had to tread carefully or on the turn of a card he could be toast. Everyone thought the next election would be De-Vert’s Armageddon, so they lied to him about everything including the economy. In the election campaign he would fight like an attack dog, protected by his henchmen. Most of his cabinet he regarded as his enemies so he kept them close for fear of a conspiracy. He used them to make promises about health, education, public spending, taxation, with no particular intention of honouring them. They believed that one day he’d self destruct but until then he was the boss, the giver and the taker-away.
He liked people who were willing to take on dangerous jobs that he did not want to be involved with. The danger of the IT job was not from De-Vert but from the people who were being spied on. After Westbrook went, Stillman became their target.
Westbrook had taken money bribes from the IT suppliers which gave them license to supply sub-standard services and Stillman knew how much Westbrook had taken, and how he’d fiddled the books.
So that he could never be implicated in Westbrook’s fiddles and mismanagement, on his appointment he paid for an independent audit by CMPG, one of the big five auditors, so if asked he could prove who was responsible and evidence of the bribes.
De-Vert was fighting for his political life. He was in the last chance saloon and the only thing he had to keep him in power was power. It was that which drove him down the path of evil and why after a few months taking flak at the Ministry of Information Technology he asked Stillman to run the Ministry of Sport. De-Vert saw Stillman as corrupt, leading the lifestyle he did was impossible for a council house boy, unless he had his hand in someone’s till. He had devised a plan that he believed would win him another election. To carry out the plan he needed a person with scruples like himself. His plan was to wreck the London Olympics and in the chaos that followed call an election. He believed Stillman was the man to do this. If he succeeded he promised him a seat in the House of Lords as Lord Stillman of somewhere in South London where he’d