Skinflint's City Diary
A most extraordinary current investment has come my way in the following manner. Gazing vacantly around the various advertisements in the large lift in Goodge Street tube station, while waiting for the thing to take me up, I spotted a small rectangular framed poster. The legend, printed on the lower half, read to the effect "Invest in Levis". Above and on the left was a photograph of a brand new — navy blue in colour — pair of what we used to call jeans, marked with a price of £5something or other. On the right was a faded and battered and patched pair of same, with the price £9.50.
I puzzled over this cryptic poster on my stroll around Gower Street, where I found our beautiful editorial assistant, her lower parts fetchingly adorned in pale blue denim, and I told her of the poster. She explained to me that, some time ago, young people in America became desirous of wearing discarded cowboy Levis, the dirtier, the more stinking of horseflesh, the better. The supply being limited in relation to demand various acute commercial interests began buying up used jeans from rag-and-bone men and re-selling at inflated prices. Even this proving inefficient as a means of supply, the youngsters themselves have begun artificially to age new garments: acid, I was told, many washings and other devices are employed. Levis thus treated are worth practically twice as much as a new pair. I solemnly swear that all this is true.
Small busmess
Casting around as they are in understandable difficulties for new policies, the Tories — or at least some of them — are, I see, returning to a subject which has, on and off, preoccupied some members of the party for years — the protection and encouragement of small businesses. I wrote — I think back in 1971 — of draft legislation which had been prepared during the life of the last Wilson government, but which was, alas, never introduced by Mr Heath. The matter has again become one of urgency since Mr Benn's announcement of his extraordinary new policies for state control of British business. True, the Secretary of State insists that he wants to sink his teeth only into the big fellows, indeed that he believes free enterprise should run rampant in the small business world; but that view is unlikely to be long sustained and, in any event, the financial atmosphere which the Chancellor of the Exchequer seems determined to create will be extremely hostile to the small businessman.
Anyway David Mitchell, the bright young Tory member for Basingstoke, acolyte of Sir Keith Joseph, and chairman of the backbench small businesses committee, has resolved, with a group of sturdy allies, to move amendments to the Finance Bill designed to prevent the proposed increases in corporation tax being levied on small firms, and to do such other useful things as increase the tax allowances for luncheon vouchers. More power to Mr Mitchell's elbow, though it will be more encouraging still if the Tories could begin to propound long-range and long-term plans for the encouragement of small business.
Engine oil
I hope the Director-General of Fair Trading will shortly turn a beady eye on the activities of firms making and marketing engine-oil additives, as recently revealed in the admirable BBC radio consumer programme, Checkpoint. These firms persuade unsuspecting motorists to put their additives in along with a standard engine oil on the argument that expense is thus reduced and the life of the engine prolonged. More: they frequently have arrangements with garages whereby the additive is included in the process of a service without the owner requesting it or even being informed that this is to be done.
Fewer packages
It looks as if really big losses this year may force a number of tour companies out of business. The situation appears to be that increasing numbers of Britons were unwilling to go abroad on holidays because the floating pound frequently made necessary a surcharge in addition to their agreed fee with an agency, and fuel surcharges had the same effect. The companies were therefore forced to give up the surcharges and offer tours at a guaranteed price. This, however, may bankrupt many of them: the market for tours remains a stubborn 30 per cent below what it was last year and the increased costs they suffer may mean the driving out of business of a number of package-tour operators. Being a nice chap I have no desire to see anybody's company go to the wall, but I cannot help thinking that it would be a very good idea indeed if tourism were greatly reduced, both in this country and abroad. The mushrooming of the companies in the last few years, catering for vastly increased numbers of people determined to spend their holidays overseas, has meant the steady mass invasion of every quiet beauty spot on the continent by hordes of destructive trippers. Whatever broadening of the mind — and I doubt, in the conditions of a modern package tour, if there is very much — is produced by travel it is not worth the price paid in destruction. Let us return to the days when the traveller was an individual, pottering along his self-chosen route, and having his own adventures, enjoying his own discoveries.
Discomfited experts
There can be few people who would not confess to taking a certain wicked pleasure in the discomfiture of `experts' and, having no pecuniary interest in the matter myself, I could scarcely restrain a chuckle of satisfaction when the so-called `super-horse' Apalachee was beaten into third place in the Two Thousand Guineas on Saturday. It was interesting that the only newspaper that expected the French horse, Nonoalco, to win was the Financial Times, which I had not
hitherto noticed City friends taking seriously as a source ot racing tips. All the others got it wrong.
If I was uncharitably amused by these errant prognostications, I did feel some sorrow for the newly enterprising Tote. They had chosen Saturday's Newmarket, meeting for a 'special promotion PR operation, and had a posse of pretty, smartly turned-out girls (10 silk toppers, riding jackets and dashing red-plaid skirts) walking about the Members' Enclosure to advertise the advantages of betting with the `machine'. As it miserably happened for them, the bookmakers' odds were better on five winners out of seven (even a 20-1 chance paid only 15-1 on the Tote), although the `line' is that statistically the Tote does better most of the time.
TV football
Nothing could exceed in stupidity — financial as well as sporting — the behaviour of both sides in the dispute between the English League's first division clubs and BBC and IBA on the matter ot televising league matches next season. It looks as if the British sporting viewer will be denied both BBC's Match of the Day and ITV's various Sunday afternoon football shows, all because of ,a petty million pounds or so. It la rumoured that the television people reckon they can upstage the Football Association, the Football League and the clubs by showing foreign football in the place of the staple league diet: but I doubt if that will be a real pull for the viewers. I doubt, additionally, if incidentally, that very many people in England (as opposed to Scotland) will watch the marathon World Cup coverage on both our channels, since Sir Alf s boys did not make it to the finals. The commercial diet of the British viewer of soccer on television is the First Division of the Football League, and nothing else can replace it. The telly boys had better just pay up and smile. What's a million or so, after all, to watch decent sport on television, when you consider the amount the Beeb paid for that absurd and boring Tom Jones spectacular with the beauty queen who thought George Best stole something or other of hers?
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