When a crazed bankrupt makes hostages of the CEO and Board of Directors of a failed bank, he wants more than compensation, he wants humiliation! and all shown on a national TV broadcast.

SYNOPSIS:

This story is about a victim of the 2008 / 9 British Banking Crises. It is about Tom Langley who has a family and young kids. He blames a huge bank and in particular its incompetent board of directors for making him, as he calls it, unnecessarily bankrupt. The story describes his downfall from being a successful businessman to his losing his factory, home, everything and his signing on the unemployment register for state benefits and later his revenge.

Tom is a part time Captain in the Territorial Army. He steals a machine gun and goes to the Bank’s Headquarters in Edinburgh, Scotland and breaks into the hospitality suite where the departing board of directors are holding their leaving party. They have been forced to take early retirement by the British Treasury, who has bailed out the failed bank with billions.

Tom makes the Board of Directors his hostages. He invites a BBC TV News team to come up and do a live broadcast while he interrogates his bank prisoners revealing his grievances. The Board are locked inside the room on the top floor. A police armed squad arrive, but Tom manages to negotiate with them by phone, warning them, that if he is not allowed to broadcast, he will shoot his hostages. The police give in and allow the BBC team to go up. The broadcast goes out on prime time news channels and is seen all over the Britain and the world.

During the broadcast Tom manages to force the CEO, Chairman and Board of Directors into making promises that they will honour the loan they promised him before the banking crises happened, and they will pay him compensation for losing his business. Tom wins a moral victory and in the final humiliation forces the CEO and Chairman into writing a promissory note that they will pay back to the bank, two thirds of the huge severance bonuses and pensions they will receive after being forced to resign. Tom describes it as bonuses for failure.

In a final dramatic twist the armed police squad find out he has been using blank bullets all along, and capture Tom. He has perpetrated a great hoax and has won a moral victory against the bank, which endears him to the millions watching him on TV. When he leaves the building handcuffed to a police officer, he is surrounded by a huge mass of people and demonstrators who have come to support him. Tom punches his fisted right arm into the air and the crowd go mad shouting his name. The police have to form a cordon round him to keep back the huge crowd who surge round the police car stopping it from moving. The camera goes wide developing into an aerial shot as we see the mass of people impeding the police car. End of picture.