Tremors at the Treasury
I AM NOT surprised that the Treasury is falling down. As Sir Terence Burns, its Per- manent Secretary, says, it has taken a bash- ing. Besides, it hates to spend money on anything, itself included. Its waiting-room is adorned with a tourists' map of London dating from the 1940s and a map of the Underground railway as it then used to be. Now its labyrinthine corridors are crum- bling, and the morale inside them has seen better days. The Treasury's people are, many of them, worried about their careers and their jobs. This week they are menaced with a fundamental review of their opera- tions, to be carried out by Sir Colin South- gate, who adds mortal insult to prospective injury by being a director of the Bank of England. The Bank is suffering a reorganisa- tion of its own, and senior people are being pushed out, but at the hands of the Deputy Governor, Rupert Pennant-Rea, who at least stops short of being a Treasury man.
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