City and Suburban
Who's a fraud?
Here is how to silence a City luncheon room with one easily-dropped brick. When last, you ask, did anyone in or around this part of the world go down for seven years without the option? Your host will cough and talk about cricket, others will invoke traditional standards and self- regulation and the disciplines of the market. Someone may even tell you that his word is his bond, in which case you follow the proverbial advice and ask for his bond Instead. Yes, yes, you say (unless, that is, you particularly want to be asked again) but we can all of us think of many millions of pounds which have gone out for walks, their little hands clasped confidingly in those of their wicked uncles, never to return. Some of those uncles had nothing to do with the City, but got themselves up with City-sounding names and City-looking clothes. Others occupied debatable territory out on the fringes. Others, from outside, gulled or used City firms. One or two were City men proper, or improper. The sums which wandered off with them are big enough to make baser men puzzle why they ever laboured to learn how to clean out a safe deposit or rob a mail train. But then, the baser men have many years to do their puzzling in, and not much else to do with their time. Would they not welcome the chance to compare notes with the uncles at close quarters, the closer the better? Criminal charges for City offences are notoriously few, and follow far after the event — and, at that, their record of success is patchy at best.
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