Lord Mandelson, the UK’s business minister, has come up with a single scheme that will save four of the suffering elements of the British economy – banks, the Post Office, Woolies’ stores and the motor industry.
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Old Woolworths stores are now to be refurbished as drive-through Post Offices to revive use of the national asset. And the Post Offices are to have cash dispensers on behalf of Lloyds TSB, which the British government now controls. Lloyds has been told to lend much more money to kick-start the economy and the scheme is the first of a series of new initiatives dubbed ‘Mandy’s marvels’.
Under the Drive Through Post Office scheme, businessmen will be able to order loans by phone from a menu and then turn up and drive-though.
But the real beauty of the scheme is that people who normally visit Lloyds bank or the Post Office on foot or by public transport, will now be forced to buy a car. Access to the Woolies loan point will be barred to all but motorists.
Not just any motorists either, but motorists who qualify by having the right sort of car. The carmakers most under pressure, according to car trade price guides, have been makers of big SUVs and flashy, low-riding sports cars.
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By GlobalDataAccess to the loan dispensers will be through narrow tunnels that prevent the opening of car doors; all transactions will be through the windows. The cash dispensers will be at two levels only – very low and very high. Drivers of normal cars that are standard ride height and which still sell plentifully because they are sober and economic, will not be able to reach the ‘Pennies from Woolies’ dispensers as the brand new Drive Through Post Offices are expected to become known.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown is firmly behind the scheme believing that making use of unwanted cars in unwanted buildings could be just the spark that the economy needs, while both his bank and his Post Office will flourish if loans and postage stamps cannot be acquired elsewhere.
Today, April 1, the scheme will be launched by delegates leaving the G20 economic summit being hosted by Gordon Brown in London. Barack Obama and other world leaders are to drive through the Westminster Woolies in a fleet of Range Rovers and convertible DB9s resprayed in Post Office red and equipped with damp sponges so that world leaders can buy stamps for the post cards they send to their mums from summits.
[Editor’s note – from today’s Daily Mail: Why are the Obamas staying at Woolies? For reasons of security, leaders will stay at their national embassies. So the First Couple will be at Winfield House, a 1930s mansion in Regent’s Park. It was built by Barbara Hutton, whose grandfather Franklin Winfield Woolworth founded the store (which ironically closed down because of the recession) that bore his name.]
