SKINFLINT'S CITY DIARY
Good simple-minded people of the left, like Tony Miles, new editor of the Daily Mirror, and Paul Foot of Private Eye, are boiling mad, so 1 am told, with the government de- cision to sell or float off profitable peripheral activities of the Government to private interests.
Let me be an alienist to these ingenuous people of the left. If commercial disciplines were applied the Government would be found to own very little since against every asset the Government owns should be set, as it were, the debenture of fixed interest government stock which is costing 9 per cent or so to renew on maturity and certainly more than these activities currently earn. The target of the Government is, of course, to sell off assets to achieve economies. First, to re- duce the national debt by a small part by exchanging an asset for debt and to reduce the money supply and consequently control inflation. Second, to promote 'efficiency by acknowledging the truth that a state-run body may never achieve the labour-inten- siveness, or ratio of profit to capital em- ployed, of a private company. The sale of government-sector assets is not the dispersal of the nation's assets to the friends of the Conservative party nor just a worthy capital transaction but a step towards managing the economy more efficiently on an annual basis.
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