Skinflint's City Diary

The price of Haslemere Estates, the property group run by Fred Cleary, has fallen back from its 60p run-up last week and is now back down to 264p. The Sunday Times Business News speculated that Bovis was thinking about a bid. The Daily Telegraph suggested the bidder might be the St Martin's Property group. Both, I fear, are wide of the mark. The shares should be left to insiders — I hear a whisper that there is going to be a reverse bid by the private Compass Securities company (42 per cent owned by exHaslemere property man Geoffrey James, backed by Dawnay Day).

Tips involving reverse bids should as a rule not be followed. An agreement as to relative values has to be reached by the principals, and market jinks usually result in the price of the publicly quoted shares being back in line with these values when the deal is eventually announced.

Keep off — even if you think Haslemere are still too high, and even if you feel that there is a chance of a short sell. Such deals are easily postponed to let the market cool.

Taste of VAT

London's taxi drivers gave me my first taste, directly, of VAT. 1 found I had to pay an extra 3p on each fare — and I made at least five trips by taxi last Monday. My first instinct was that the taxi driver was swindling me, so I under-tipped him. On • my second trip I noticed a sign saying (without reference to VAT) that there was a surcharge of 3p on every hiring. I tipped my normal 10p, but grudgingly. On my third trip I chatted with the taxi driver, who was very bitter about everything: "I only get /p out of every 3p and the guv'nor gets two and a half. And my bloody tips are way down. It's just like we said it would be."

I do not suppose VAT will prove itself to be quite the swindle that decimalisation was; but it will run it close. It occurs to me that VAT would have been far more difficult, and possibly far more unpopular, if we had not been thoroughly confused and brainwashed by decimal money first. If this is so, and I think it is, then this is yet another example of how we are continually defeated by the conspirators of Whitehall.

Minding business

Declares Lord Seebohm of Barclays Bank, "There is a growing, but in my view still inadequate, public discussion of the degree of social responsibility which should properly be accepted by industry and the City."

Social responsibility is the concern of politicians. City chaps, and industrialists, should mind their own businesses. Profits are, or should be, the contribution that bankers and entrepreneurs make to society at large. When it is welfare we want, we will do best to secure it for ourselves, or get it from the state. We do not expect to be looked after by Lord Seebohm or Jim Slater, who has expressed his " horror " at the working conditions of Africans in a company in which he has an interest. If he is really " horrified " at what is going on in South Africa, he should either go out and have a look and do something about it, or cease to make profits from his business interests there.

If people like Slater and Seebohm withdrew their capital from South Africa so as to save themselves from the painful business of making profits out of other men's labour, they may sleep better of nights. But the African workers, flung out of jobs, will not thank them.

Sugar-disease

My note about the iniquitous decision of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to exclude chocolates, sweets and like rubbishy confections from the impost of VAT, thereby contributing towards the decay of our children's teeth and imposing further burdens upon the National Health Service, has drawn a congratulatory note from Surgeon Captain T. L. Cleave, MRCP, RN. He confirms my fears about the enormous damage done by the consumption of refined carbohydrates.

He most kindly sent me a handsomely inscribed copy of his book (written with Dr G. D. Campbell, MD, FRCP, and assisted by Mr N. S. Painter, MS, FRCS) called Diabetes, Coronary Thrombosis and the Saccharine Disease. Dr Cleave is the former director of medical research at the RN Medical School, Alverstoke, Dr Campbell has been physician to the Diabetic Clinic of the King Edward VIII Hospital, Durban, Natal and Mr Painter Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons.

Surgeon Captain Cleave and his associates believe that not only diabetes and coronary thrombosis but also peptic ulcer are caused by the consumption of refined carbohydrates, in particular sugar. Their thesis is that all these conditions are symptoms of a single disease, which they call the "saccharine disease," meaning, the sugar-related disease. I'm no medical expert, although something of a hypochondriac; but I like the sound of the theory of the saccharine disease, or their alternative name, the "Refined-Carbohydrate Disease," RCD for short.

At the very least, I think Chancellor Barber should put VAT on refined sugar and refined sugar products. What he should really do is to tax these things as he taxes cigarettes and alcohol, and every packet of chocolate should carry a Government Health Warning. No one at all would suffer (except the enormously rich sugar and chocolate families), the Exchequer would find itself with lots of extra cash, and everyone would be much healthier.

Why do not reforms like this occur? I do not know.

Perhaps reforms along these lines will take place. Tony Barber is easily the most enterprising Chancellor we've had for years.