It's 2003. The ‘For Sale' sign hangs over the public sector and the UKplc is steering towards a financial crash. Our narrator, ‘Captain' Jack Pinkbeard, a small-town civil service misfit is drifting easily on the outskirts of retirement.
But his comfortable existence evaporates when he is forcibly privatised by Blair's government and transferred to the regimented multinational Tex4Tex. His new employer imposes corporate values alongside a devil take the hindmost attitude creating rivalry and division amongst workers.
Pinkbeard considers himself above the noise; a proud ‘blocker' suspicious of the private sector and refuses to adapt to company rules. As he passes on his rambling one-eyed commentary to the reader, he prides himself on standing alone against the multinational.
However, when he witnesses the damage inflicted on his powerless workmates, he sees that it is not enough to pass comment, he must intervene and help. This is high politics trips over low politics in a funny, angry tale of privatisation in a divided Britain.