22 FEBRUARY 1986, Page 23

Oil slick

OIL prices and oil contracts collapse, sterl- ing totters, draft Budgets are torn up, Opec glares at its British non-member . . . I asked a banker who specialises in these things: Do we, in fact, have a policy for oil? 'Oh, yes,' he told me, 'Peter Walker has two. The first is to pump as much out of the North Sea as ever we possibly can. The second is to go round the country tell- ing us all not to use it.'