15 JUNE 1985, Page 19

' Traill blazing HATS off to the Lord Mayor, the

First Citizen and, next week, the City's host! Sir Alan Traill's predecessors could be for- given for believing that there is quite enough banqueting in the job, as it is. (Sir Bernard Waley-Cohen installed a weighing machine in the Mansion House: Sir Ken- neth Cork installed exercise machines.) Until now, the two great City dinners have been the Lord Mayor's Banquet — basical- ly a political occasion, and a platform for the Prime Minister — and the Bankers and Merchants Dinner, where the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England pay compliments to each other in public. Now Sir Alan has decided to give a City Banquet — for all the different groups of people who make the place tick. $o the ambulancemen will be there, as well as the merchant bankers. There will be guests from the London Symphony Orchestra (in residence in the Barbican), from the City lawyers, the City University, the commodity markets, the Church, the fire brigade, the Under- ground, the money market, the Baltic, the insurance (Sir Alan himself is a Lloyd's broker), and the man who cuts his hair. He has remembered the ratepayers, too --- represented, for this purpose, by the Save the Prosper Group, which has moved into a set of hanging gardens near Broad Street, Station and no doubt is rated accordingly. I hope that Sir Alan has set a precedent, but, as he is showing, there are better reasons for doing things in the City than having done them before.