List out of order
EXPORTING is something we are good at — more than a third of our total output of goods and services is sold abroad — but you would not think so from the Queen's Awards for Export. This week's list gives the all too familiar impression of a country that lives by selling hand-knitted toffee to gullible foreigners. Crumpets are on it, and ships' reproduction chandlery, and the rights to Noddy and the Famous Five, and, I am pleased to say, Scotch. As usual, our most successful export industry, now good for a net £22.7 billion, barely gets a look-in. The City's only winners are Schroders, the bankers, and Comey & Barrow, the wine merchants — doubtless in honour of their new champagne bar in faraway St Martin's Lane. Douglas Hurd is now chairman of British Invisibles, the nearest thing the City has to an export board. I wish he would apply his clout and tact to putting these royal awards into order.
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