Seven Stories

1) A council estate is right next door to a luxury block of flats in central London. Stories of tensions (rubbish, parking, noisy youngsters, rude parents, people on benefits) which, as in “Straw Dogs”, push a engineer, a Labour voter with progressive views, who has an Italian wife, to vote Leave. Without his wife’s knowledge and unexpectedly to himself too.

2) The miracles of the lack of identity documents in the UK: an entire village in Romania is treated by the NHS thanks to a relative who emigrated to the UK. As he is a resident and integrated in the system, he requests and is offered surgery for relatively minor procedures (cataract, hip replacement) but then one of his mates from the village comes to England and goes in his place. Nobody checks identities any way. The scam does not last however, too many operations officially on the same person. Arrest follows, a happy ending ensues.

3) The British welfare system is not what is used to be. A single mother from Bradford emigrates to Berlin to live (comfortably) with the money provided by the German social services. But the father of the child, who is not named on the birth certificate, has a nasty surprise: the German taxman chases him to pay for the alimonies!

4) A dystopian story in a post Brexit future: politicians organise attacks against Chinese banks and companies that are dominating the United Kingdom with their investments. Even a nuclear accident in the Bradwell plant built by CGN (China General Nuclear) occurs.

5) Financial managers of a London bank transfer illegal funds to traffickers of Russian weapons, intermediaries of guerillas in the Congo and miners of cobalt and coltan. It ends in a murder. A return to the unscrupulous finance practices of the City of London, when will operate outside of the European regulations.

6) A story of a Europe that closes its frontiers: a refugee camp on the border between Italy and Austria. Two British, a UN inspector and a children’s entertainer, discover a terrible secret. But they can’t tell anyone.

7) John Onorato, respectable owner of several restaurants in London, receives a letter from the Home Office warning: “Be ready to be deported”. An administrative error, he is later informed. But he is so fearful for his future, he becomes suspicious and angry, until he ends up being deported for real.