...It was then that I had visions of a more equal future and one that would work because it wasn’t related to politics or finance. Just working with what is already at our disposal. As houses have already been built it would be wasteful to simply knock them all down and rebuild them in the same generic mould. Instead houses should take on the same role as the numbers in The National Lottery and the keys to each placed in one gigantic Lancelot. That Lancelot would be the Millennium Wheel and would be perfect to shake up the millions of home owners keys. It would also be the start of the first truly real, Reality TV.
For the system to work people would be allocated a specific carriage on the Millennium Wheel which would designate a specific region of England. This would ensure that relocation was a speedy process and that people aren’t put out too much. Just think, one minute a bed-sit in Moss Side, the next a mansion in the hills of Chester. It’s surely worth a gamble. What have you got to lose?
The only logical downfall I can see to this game is that it would put Lloyd Grossman out of business as his immortal words ‘Who lives in a house like this?’ would suddenly lose all cultural significance. However some argue that this would not be such a bad thing and that ‘Who uses a removal van like this?’ is looming in the pipeline. Apart from Lloyd it seems everybody would be happy at the prospect of winning a different home although there will always be some that will disagree. A few hippies’ maybe, whimpering and whinging, spoiling it for the rest, camped up in nests, blockading the wheel, claiming they will never come down. ‘They just don’t like change’ Tony Blair will say as he addresses the public with his fumbling hands and before you know it there will be a national campaign to shoot the buggers down.
The beauty of this game is that you have to hand back your keys each week, so there is no time for smugness at your new found home because you could be back in the bed-sit the following week…..
...This idea has scope and I’m thinking scratch cards. I’m thinking lottery tickets. So much potential to redistribute the wealth, but more importantly once we’ve got em hooked we can introduce the spin off series. The Wednesday edition called The National Lottery for jobs. Once more the numbers are replaced with P45’s and entered into a carriage. Dale pulls each one out and then tells them the good news.
‘Mr. Brown last week you was the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well I’m delighted to tell you that this week you are a mechanic in Watford and you specialise in fitting catalytic converters.’
The variety will do them good and will eradicate all the little prejudices we have clung on to for so long. There will no longer be any difference between a night watchman or solicitor, a teacher or plumber, dust-man or doorman apart from name. There will be no more of those little gatherings in working men’s clubs or wine bars because the collective will no longer exist because next week it will all change. Besides imagine a Dentists contribution to Saatchi and Saatchi’s latest advertising campaign? But then again imagine what Maurice Saatchi would do to your teeth…
People will inevitably grow accustomed to this variety and soon it will not be enough. That’s when the game goes global, forming my basis for World Peace…
...It could be Ilford one minute the Costa del Sol the next or if you are very unlucky the West Bank. It would be the Champions league of Accommodation and maybe Rupert Murdoch could buy the rights and feature the best two exchanges each week?
Once people start to switch countries on a regular basis the xenophobic boundaries will be worn away just as the regional differences faded away. People would become multi cultural; the French onion seller may start wearing a hajib or clogs. Such a homogenization of culture would also see the death of comic acts like Jim Davidson, which is a reason for the game in itself.
As well as becoming multi lingual and multi cultural people would no longer be able to fight over pieces of land as they wouldn’t be stationed there long enough for it to become of any significance to them. The erosion of loyalty is the ethos of such a game and besides people wouldn’t have time to have wars with one another over a rock or a mile square of sacred land because they will be off again by Friday. If it goes well we could have a religion lottery as well.
Once people have visited the country’s they hate it is harder for them to maintain their prejudices. It’s a lot easier to have a camcorder party and show off your snaps and tell bored friends where you have been. Once people have stopped fighting because they are too busy taking photographs or packing their suitcases, Dale can proudly introduce world peace just before the first advert break. Television finally proving it is a worthy medium after all.
Now that there is no use for weapons they may as well all be melted down; every gun and every bullet, every tank and plane, every bomb, medal and grenade. Once recycled the scrap metal can be sold and all the money pumped into health.
There would be no need for education as who needs to learn a specific nothing when your job changes every week? Besides with wars erased that means there is no need for history to be taught. Kids can be taught the things that matter in life, like how to look a removal firm up in the yellow pages or for the more ambitious, how to become a removal person.
Just lie back and imagine what the national lottery and the millennium wheel could do for you? Just imagine Dale every Saturday night so that at last there is something on TV that we all want to watch. But not everybody will be happy and I’m sure the hippies will make more demands, but you’ve got to have faith. Isn’t that what you put into God, well I’m telling you Dale is your messiah and if it makes you feel more comfortable I could get it into his contract that he has to grow a beard.
We could have a lottery for everything, the only limitation you have is what you can’t think of. A ‘football player lottery’ so that Man. United don’t keep winning the league. A ‘hobby lottery’ so stamp collectors can finally be understood. A differing hobby each week would add the complexity to personality that might just help us relate better to one another. Of course some just don’t want to understand and for them there is the ‘National Wife Lottery’ or ‘Husband Lottery’ so that you can have different types of the same argument each week. You could even replace your whole families to see if the blandness of aunties is universal or just in your home.
They won’t like it at first, but soon you can do this with your kids. Exchange a moody one for one that won’t shut up. By raising everybody’s children the world becomes your family and now other people don’t seem so bad after all. The way we’re heading there will be a Lottery every night and maybe at dinner time as well.
When people don’t know if they are coming or going when they have forgotten where they are going and where they came from. When they are constantly changing and interacting and no longer are able to cling to their familiarities then there will be peace. As the planets turn and the seasons change we all move as one.
Finally stripped of belief systems and free of the possessions that possess us, no longer reliant on sensory perception as the didactic means of mentally constructing our environment we evolve like the fundamental forces of nature, learning to emulate what we actually are - the interchanging atoms of matter rather than worrying about waist size or how much Christmas decorations we should put around the outside of the house…..
...Of course none of this would work out because once you are no longer constrained to the external environment and you have dismissed your concepts like time and space, a whole new conundrum will arise; such as quantum physics and infinity. Which means that if space is infinite and the external world is merely one part of many illusions it is thus possible that every single variable and situation is feasible, given such a formula. This inevitably means that in some universe or cosmos one individual keeps being drawn the same house, girlfriend, job, children and child every week. Add to this the fact that he can’t get rid of his Volvo no matter how many times he enters the lottery he is going to start to get a little pissed off. Is it fair that one person should suffer all sins so the rest of the universe can live in Peace?