“I’d like you to write me a speech to help explain to my team why they aren’t going to get a bonus this year”, said John. He was head of a division within a big American investment bank based in the City. It was December 2011. Three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the financial institutions. It was the age of austerity and it was biting people very hard. Round the corner in St Paul’s Square, the Occupy movement were encamped. I had just walked through the tents and stopped to talk with a few of the residents. There was a lecture about sharing going on in the university tent. The placards lamented the poverty of capitalism and the fact that 99% of people seemingly pay the price for the 1% who are privileged and have all the money and power. So it was a shock to be confronted with this tin-eared deafness to what was going on outside the bank’s front door.
Here were two worlds colliding. In the bank, there was a total self-regarding blindness to the anger outside. There was an absence of any self-awareness or of culpability for the unprecedented economic meltdown that had occurred due to the mis-selling of mortgages and the debacle of derivative trading which had brought the world to its knees and ruined the livelihoods and lives of millions of people. Which is a bit odd given that it was the banks, particularly the American ones, which had over lent, over indulged, over extended and got everyone into this mess.
“Have you seen what’s going on out there in the real world, John?” I said. “Why don’t you take your team downstairs and into St. Paul’s Square and have a look? Maybe they might be able to work it out for themselves. There’s no bonus this year because you lot fucked it for everyone. There’s no bonus this year because the banks had to be bailed out by the taxpayer and, unless I am mistaken, taxpayers don’t give out bonuses to companies they are rescuing from bankruptcy. “
With that, the meeting ended. I went back out into the real world. It smelled a lot nicer amongst the fumes and the unwashed protestors than it did in the bank.
I remember a voice over artist saying that his voice was an expression of him, an extension of his soul. He was protesting. He was supposed to be voicing a commercial for a product called Telemillion, a lottery game advertised through TV ads made by my then employer. Telemillion was a product which was subsequently adjudicated to be illegal. The proposition was pure greed, there was no skill involved and the scheme was just a rich kid’s fantasy for turning his millions into billions (which my employer had been very keen to exploit). In the end, the rich kid ended up considerably poorer, or at least his mum did, the woman from whom he had borrowed millions to bankroll the scheme. (My heart doesn’t bleed for him but it does for her – a mother just trying to be supportive with a stupid son exploiting his relationship.) All in all, a lot of exploitation going on. Which was exactly the problem. The voice over artist objected and refused to record the script. He didn’t feel that the cause was worthy of his voice. A few years later and it was my turn to take exception and withdraw my labour. I felt the same way as the voiceover artist but about the banker using my words, the speech he wanted me to write, in service of a message which shouldn’t have to be delivered. If the bankers on his team were so selfish and vapid that they couldn’t see or feel the anger of the general population outside their office windows, my pen wasn’t going to be used to say “there there, diddums”. Like the voice over artist, my skills are for deploying on useful enterprises, not to spread balm on the egos of idiots.
I encountered the Occupy movement in various places over a 12 month period. In Amsterdam, New York and London. Although the movement fizzled out, and has effectively been supplanted by Extinction Rebellion, it was such a necessary and laudable protest. As I passed through their tents in St. Paul’s Square, shiny shoed, dressed in a suit and camel hair coat, I felt I was on the wrong side. It felt uncomfortable to realise this. When I emerged from the bank, I knew whose side I was on. It caused me some angst and made me challenge myself and the causes I had devoted my skills to over the past two decades. Advertising cigarettes, alcohol and cars, illegal lotteries and canned meat, double glazing and pipe tobacco had paid for my lifestyle. But really, was that what I wanted to squander my talents on? My then business partner and I rowed more and more over my change of heart. Our disagreement peaked when we were approached by Primark. I objected as I felt there were unanswered questions about the labour conditions of their workforce in Asia. He ended up saying that “you’ve lost touch with reality”. To which my reply was simply: “No, I have just lost touch with your reality.”
Cigarettes – my clients Imperial Tobacco 
Gordon Geko – hero of the ‘greed is good’ brigade
It was the beginning of several years of soul searching and eventually I quit it all to go and work in the mountains, cleaning and cooking – honest labour. Ironically, my clients in the mountain chalets were the very same bankers I had fled from that day in St. Paul’s Square: alpha males, corporate thrusters, high earners, Master-of-the-Universe types. As I served them all their three course dinners, they discoursed on the undeserving poor and, on one memorable occasion invited me over to toast my fiftieth birthday. They raised their glasses and drank my health with Champagne. They didn’t offer me a glass, though. I was staff. I smiled. It didn’t matter. They were paying for me to ski every day for six months. So I could afford to smile at them benignly as they spent their bonuses (funny, bonuses came back – who’d have thought) and toasted my health with their unshared Champagne. My reward was up the mountain.
Many years later, John recontacted me. He had retired having made his stash. He wanted to know if I would help some of the companies he had invested in make their business development efforts more effective. As always with him, he pleaded poverty and wanted me to do if effectively for free. Same old story. Millionaires never have any money it seems. It was nice to speak to him and hear about his new life. But underneath it all, had he really changed? I suspect bankers change their spots as readily as leopards.
My words are used for other causes now. I am no longer feeding the fire of other people’s greed with a pen that’s for hire regardless of the cause. Now I teach writing. I blog for pleasure. I write books. I coach people to re-evaluate their priorities. I help people who have moved to the UK communicate better and understand our curious social codes. Work which fills up my soul.
I am no longer feeding the fire of greed that consumes everything. It feels better not to be working for the misguided or for Mammon. But to be helping people who need help rather than justifying the unjustifiable. And it all started outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, in a tent. It was a funny way to be introduced to camping. But I’m glad. Camping has taken me to far more interesting places than I ever saw on the fortieth floor of an investment bank.