SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

J. W. M. THOMPSON

Relics of the Department of Economic Affairs in its heyday continue to turn up, like letters from the dead delivered after a melan- choly delay. I've just received one of these, a pretty specimen called Household Ex- penditure on Difierent Days of the Week. It has impressed me deeply as being very nearly an exercise in pure bureaucracy, or the ac- cumulation of statistics for their own poetic or formal qualities.

The information was collected from 5,000 households, of which 3,274 'cooperated fully in the survey'. Magnanimously ignoring the 1,726 who were so deficient in social con- science as to opt out of the exercise, the report explains that the cooperative householders kept a 'diary record-book' with full details of all their spending. This was classified under such headings as 'bread and cereals', 'potatoes and vegetables (including pickles and chutney)', and 'meals out (including fish and chips and sandwiches)'. The results, spread over many columns of figures and with a proud litde explanatory note here and there, make, as might well be expected, enthralling reading for all lovers of the statistic as an art form.

'Sundays', it is revealed, 'accounted for only 5 per cent of total weekly expenditure but the proportion was much higher for cer- tain items such as alcoholic drink (16 per cent) and tobacco (10 per cent) where sales are not greatly restricted by the closing of shops' My italics—justified, I feel, in homage to the moment when this remarkable explanation slowly took shape in some unsung statistician's mind. However, the expenditure on drink and tobacco 'is known to be an under-estimate of average national consumption.' Does this come about, I wonder, through the deceitful ways of boozers and tobacco addict? Did respondent householders sneak a sur- reptitious pint or two without entering it in the little book? Or are those households will- ing to 'cooperate' in such things less likely than most to squander money on con- viviality? We are not told.

Unfair to Monday

The key passage, unquestionably, is the bold assertion that 'Fridays and Saturdays were the peak shopping days for most of the main categories of goods and services'. After such an insight, bathos is clearly a danger. But one shouldn't underestimate the discovery that 'among the other weekdays, Thursdays attracted most expenditure with 14 per cent and Mondays least with 10 per cent.'

The tables also show that, within this grand design, certain piquant variations occur. Ex- penditure on drink is greater on Monday than on Tuesday or Wednesday (although of course less than at the bibulous weekend). Running costs of motor vehicles are steady on Monday and Tuesday, dip slightly on Wednesday, then rise again to the Saturday peak. Monday's 'hotel and holiday expenses' are mysteriously double those on Tuesday and treble those on Wednesday. What can it all mean?

This remarkable document may well lead to a protest movement on behalf of the underprivileged days of the week (these are egalitarian times, after all); or even to a Prices and Spending Policy to reform the

scandalously erratic way in which households go about their shopping. But whatever happens, the DEA has bequeathed to us a memorable essay in statistics for art's sake.

Scholar-squire

To speak of anyone as 'the last of his kind' is always risky, for some better-informed person usually points out where other ex- amples of a disappearing type may be found. All the same it is tempting to use the phrase of R. W. Ketton-Cremer. who has just died. He was a striking anachronism in present-day England. He was a squire and landowner in the traditional pattern, an old-fashioned country gentleman living in a beautiful Norfolk house which had been linked with his ancestors for several centuries; and he was also a scholar of repute and a profes- sional writer with a solid body of work to his name.

As one of his readers. I have had particu- lar pleasure fro ,i his two eighteenth century biographies, of Horace Walpole and his friend the poet Gray. Walpole. who left so brilliant and voluminous a chronicle of his own times to posterity, would be a challenge to any biographer. Ketton-Cremer's work strikes the ordinary reader as flawless his- torical reconstruction, and it was warmly applauded by his fellow scholars. And while the author was producing excellent books, the squire was managing his estate, following country sports, and performing the tradi- tional and multifarious public services in the county which led to his becoming High Sheriff.

If Ketton-Cremer was not the last such scholarly squire, then certainly he was almost the last and there are hardly likely to be any more in the future. Norfolk. of course, was the right county to find him in. A hint of the eighteenth century still clings to its re- moter countryside. as it clung to Ketton- Cremer himself.

'This Was Your Life'

So far, none of the people who wish to bring back hanging has suggested that we should do the thing thoroughly and carry out future executions in public. I wonder why not? Since their whole argument rests on the deterrent value of the rope, nothing that might add to its power to deter ought to be overlooked; and I dare say public hangings would be more off-putting to potential murderers than those conducted in polite privacy.

The matter seems to call, indeed, for the full benefits of modern communications, so as to gain the maximum audience and thus deter the largest possible number of murderers. The up-to-date way of staging a public execution would be to show the whole process on television (in colour, of course). I think a hanging might well rank as roughly equivalent to a party political broadcast in TV status and would therefore be a com- pulsory item on all channels. Afterwards it would no doubt be discussed by the usual panel of experts (on Line-Up—where else?) People really mustn't be squeamish about these things. And after all. televis;on isn't ex- actly unaccustomed to showing scenes of violence.