SKINFLINT'S CITY DIARY

The more I see of Mr Heath and his Government the more I like what they are Up to — the EEC legislation excepted of course. On December 12, 1970, I suggested in this column that a tote monopoly was necessary if British blood stock and racing are to survive against the Americans and French.

The news over the weekend of the Government's Bill to allow the tote to open High street branches was the more acceptable once the Times and Daily Telegraph had met the news with notable lack of relish. The National Tote will, I forecast, succeed. It should not find difficulty in buying the £10 million worth of centralised computer equipment that it needs. Within a few years it will be providing help for breeding, as well as for racing Which has been suffering from falling gates, increased expenses and poor prize money. The indications are that the tote thrives on low stake betting from the mass of small investors, which should alleviate the social and moral consequences of offcourse credit betting, as well as curbing the strength of privately owned betting shops and reducing corruption. The Byzantine thinking behind the Bill must be to relax the grip that a few large publiclyowned companies have on High Street betting shops and to obtain what years ago should have been a state monopoly without the necessity of paying compensation based on present exorbitant profits.

My advice is to lose no time in getting out of the shares of any company reliant on this source of income alone — they are in for a pasting if they have not diversified away from gambling. If history has anything to say it is that the social consequences of a period of relaxation are followed by a general call for inhibiting legislation.

Ian Gilmour

Ian Gilmour, Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence (Procurement), is another whom I hope some constituency is prevailed on to adopt now that he is to lose Norfolk Central through redistribution. Tucked away in the news last week was his announcement of more than £50 million classed as defence expenditure but plainly a laudable effort to reduce unemployment and to activate industry. A good man, whom we in business can't afford to let go just yet.

Graduate self help

Since graduate unemployment is unlikely to be reduced by producing fewer graduates 1 propose to suggest an idea or two to give one or two of them gainful occupations.

There is an opening for a publishing house devoting itself to making successful businessmen 'experts,' instant pundits and literate folk at less cost to themselves than a minor advertising campaign. Let us suppose the prospect is the owner of an executive employment bureau. He wallows in fat fees, occupies expensive offices and invests a certain amount by sending letters to companies he thinks need staff. At the same time he advertises in the Sunday papers and weeklies under his company's name for the positions he is then trying to fill on behalf of his clients. He is looked on as a parasite by the companies who employ him and as a deplorable fact of life by those trying to find work. If however this upper class employment agent had a thick expensive book to his, credit with a resounding title like The Management Society or Advanced Employment' Graphics he would at a stroke be recognised as an authority and have at his disposal a valuable loss-leader in the form of a book.

It shouldn't be difficult for a young outof-work graduate to mug up enough material from American books on the subject to produce the synopsis of a book which such a man would pay well to claim as his own. There are, surely, many other business areas in which a top man would pay well to achieve technical and literary recognition and to promote his firm.

David Hicks on Decorating and David Ogilvy's Confessions of an Advertising Man were not ghosted, presumably, but they are notable for having done more for the business run by their authors than for their publishers.

Next week I shall mention an area of public relations connected with politics which might well be exploited.

Sir Half ord Reddish

Sir Halford Reddish, the chartered accountant and until recently head of The Rugby Portland Cement Co. Ltd, deserves everyone's gratitude — particularly the old — for handing £5 million to the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers.

Sir Halford, a strident man of the right, is unlikely to read these lines as he cancelled his Spectator subscription, not for the first time, in a fiery letter a few weeks ago following something in The Spectator neither he (nor I) liked. If he sees this I hope he will forgive me for suggesting that this extraordinarily generous act of charity might have been directed away from health or conventional education now that the state takes responsibility and instead to some institution which by its nature cannot be helped through the public purse — The Institute of Economic Affairs, Aims for Industry, or even the Conservative party would help to perpetuate the free, selfreliant economy Sir Halford so rightly reveres and from which the fortune he now hands on came.

A Falstaffian man who, I hope, will be around for a long time.

Juliette's Weekly Frolic

I am more than a little proud to be approaching my fifty-second Saturday with 154p still to go, considering it no mean achievement to have taken a whole year to lose the Skinflint hundred. The latter, who once so gladly indulged my pleasures, has made abundantly clear his unwillingness to risk either cash or reputation on a second entanglement — so, jilted by one tight-fisted keeper, I am now at liberty to take advantage of the syndicate set up by Mr Davenport in our Letters' columns some weeks ago. Mr Gammon and Captain Threadneedle were quick to support this worthy scheme but a fourth guarantor eluded me until yesterday when I learnt, by chance, that a gentleman of reputation and means — who shall for the present remain nameless — was good for the last CM With four such worthy protectors there is little danger of my former benefactor counter-claiming on any future winnings, but he still, of course, has a valid interest in the placing of my last few pence. I support the Queen Mum's dashing Black Magic in Ascot's Black and White Gold Cup. However for a decent return on my slender stakes he should be doubled-up with Don Dieu's easy Wolverhampton conqueror, True Luck, in the Whisky Hurdle, Assets 150p outlay win double on Black Magic, True Luck.