Skinflint's City Diary
I often have a lot of fun with illiteracy in advertisements. The latest gem to come my way is an ad for a drink called Bierritz. It says that the drink is "deceptively strong." What that means, of course, is that the drink appears to be strong and is in fact weak. What they presumably meant was that it was "deceptively weak," but really strong. I just don't know how those ad boys make their money. A couple of months ago 1 tried a Bierritz in a Mayfair Pub. It is either beer trying to be orange squash or orange squash trying to be beer; but whatever it tries to do it fails. It is not even a brew fit for birds.
Maxwell's moment
I have much the same sympathy for Robert Maxwell in his attempt to get back on the Pergamon board as 1 had for Tiny Rowland in his attempt to stay at the Lonrho helm. It seems that the whole 38 per cent Leasco holding in Pergamon will be thrown against him, in addition to most of the 15 to 18 per cent of institutional shares. This probably means he will not make it. ' Now the essence of Pergamon's original success was its production of learned journals which nobody else would handle, and which made an enormous contribution to scholarship all around the world at at any rate to scholarly libraries. When Maxwell first ran into trouble the scholars he had published stood by him, as did many of his academic editors. Many of these are now likely to leave Pergamon if Maxwell himself is forced to go — and he says he will abandon the company if not re-elected to the board. This means that Maxwell would not be able to start afresh with the substantive loyalty of a large part of the talent on which the company depends. Was there ever, since Sir Basil Smallpeice and the "straight eight," a similar case of businessmen cutting off their company's nose to spite its face?
And can the institutions really support Leasco, still motivated, it seems, by an unreasonable dislike of Maxwell?
The answer is, as always, that the institutions can, and will, do as their faceless, nameless, stateless and careless fancy-panted bosses think (?) best.
Feather-bedding
I was fascinated by the Prime Minister's savage attack on British business last week. The trouble with Mr Heath on these occasions is that, like Stanley Baldwin, he hits the nail on the head, but it never goes in very far. This is not only because the wood is very dense.
The best way to ensure efficient management is to encourage profit, and let those who cannot make profits go to the wall. That, crude and brutal and true to itself,
• was the Tory philosophy in opposition (and especially at Selsdon Park Hotel); Many businessmen, accustomed to being molly-coddled by governments over the years, feared this philosophy's implementation; and many left-wing
Tories chortled happily over the prospect of a Tory government being rougher in its demands on business than Labour then was.
All that is_gone. By greater efficiency Mr Heath appears to mean more computerisation and less competition. It is a sad pass to which he has come. With the greatest business-feather-bedding operation in history under way, his petulant and useless criticisms and demands are surely being made far too late in the day.
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