The Penal Pound

By LESLIE ADRIAN

I HAVE heard a well- substantiated rumour that the BBC is trying to persuade the Post- master-General to drop the anomalous £1 tax on car radios. Unfor- tunately for the possi- bility, this extra licence

• now pulls in a revenue of half a million pounds. Ten years ago 172,657 car radios were licensed in Britain. Last year the figure had risen to 526,549.

The official definition of a car radio liable to the penal pound, above and beyond the all- embracing £4 for television and as many other sets as your house will hold and your pocket can stand, is a wireless receiver that draws its power from the car battery. If, therefore, the installa-f tion in your car can be powered from self- contained batteries, you avoid the penalty, no matter that you display a fishing-rod aerial as high as the new GPO tower and have a built-in loudspeaker that could wake the dead.

The ownership of car radios is a function of the ownership of cars, and with ten million motorists on the roads a 5 per cent ownership of radios is modest enough. Most of them come with the car, especially the larger models, and the car buyer has little or no choice of make. The Plessey Company, not known to the public as manufacturers of 'entertainment' radios, have for years supplied two of the largest motor manufacturers with a standard model.

This explains the apparently sinister fact (which a reader asked me to investigate) that car dealers generally seem to be tied to one or two brands of car radio. In fact, as main dealers for a motor manufacturer or agents for two or three companies, they naturally carry replace- ment sets of the type usually installed at the factory. Not being radio dealers, they are reluc- tant to carry a large range of makes that may not be asked for more than once in a blue moon. The larger garages handle most models now, especially since the number of makes has diminished.

A versatile set that can be bought at a number of garages is the Motorola Playmate (164 gns.). It can be used either in the car or as a portable. Installation costs 28s. 6d. (for the aerial) and, if suppressor condensers are needed, another 13s. This is a great deal cheaper than the general run of car sets, which are about 25 gns. and even as much as 35 gns. to 37 gns., but if you run it off the car battery, remember the penal pound. There are one or two other makes that are de- signed to use either power source, like the Philips 390T (£25 4s.), but their only advantage is versatility, as the licence is still, as the bureaucrats say, payable.

Many people are finding that the solution is to buy a transistor radio and use it in the car. Some makes even have an aerial socket which can be connected to the car aerial. Screening by the metal body of the car does not seem to affect performance; ignition interference is small; and the directional properties of the built-in horizontal aerial do not give undue fading. One way of avoiding fade as the car changes direc- tion is to prop or wedge the set in a vertical position (or put it in your pocket vertically). One of the advantages of a credit account with a store that sells these miniature radios is that you can take one or two out on test in your car. In this way I tested out the Ferguson (11 gns.), which has padded leather-cloth to cushion it against rough usage, and found it compared well with a built-in car radio with external aerial. If you have already bought a plastic-bodied set, watch that it does not receive a sharp knock or get dropped using it in the car. The cases are apt to crack. Better still, buy a leather or chamois case for it, if you can.

The only criticism I have of these pocket radios is the use their owners make of them (and they are terrible reproducers of music be- cause of the 1-inch to 14-inch loudspeakers). If there are to be changes in wireless licensing, I suggest that all portables used in public places pay an extra tax. That should make some of them surrender in the streets and on the beaches.

Some months ago I stuck my neck out and suggested that, if you were thinking of buying a washing machine, you should wait a while and watch the prices come down. I was proved right, I'm glad to say, and there is another round of price reductions in the offing now. Up to now the battle has been in the twin-tub range. If you want a single-tub (more expensive) machine, again I suggest you give the market a little time to settle before you decide to buy.

The other day the Hoover Keymatic was re- duced from 115 gns. to 105 gns. The reason given was an increased demand at home and abroad and increased efficiency and productivity in manufacture Another reason for this 'reduc- tion and others is that Imperial Domestic Appliances have introduced a fully automatic Italian machine (Zanussi), using direct sales methods, at the rather lower price of 79 gns. Morphy-Richards have reduced their machine from 99 gns. to 79 gns. and English Electric's Liberator is down to 92 gns. Other firms are likely to follow suit and Rolls Razor, the pioneers of direct sales in this field, have plans for a fully automatic machine, but have not so far said what price it will be. My bet is that it will be close to if not lower than the lowest now on the market.

The Licensing Act of 1961, which abolished restricted hours for 'off licence' sales of alcoholic drinks, made it possible for wine buying to become part of the routine shopping, so that the housewife, no longer baffled by the mystery of licensing hours, can pop a bottle of Nuits St. Georges into her basket along with the kippers. So runs the theory, as expounded by Mr. E. J. C. Jeffery, of Harvey's, in a talk to the recent Supermarket Conference. Mr. Jeffery foresees the day when supermarkets will have licences, and the wines and spirits will appear on the display racks along with the Pan books and the pan-cleaners, and be impulse- bought according to the beauty of the label and the assonance of the brand name. He even descanted on the likelihood of fashion trends in drinking being influenced by bottle shapes and fetching recipes.

To some extent this takes the excitement out of winemanship, because the bottlers will, by cunning blending, have been able to build into low-priced wines all the sought-after attributes. Well, that day is not yet here, and it is still possible to hunt up some lesser-known wines in the cheaper ranges that have individuality.

An interesting though improbable theory to pursue among the winebins is that hot-weather

winebibbing may be satisfied by wines from ho countries, where the inhabitants should know what's what. There seems to be some truth in

this. Greece, for example, sends us dry Sarno (8s. 9s. a bottle), a most pleasant hot-weathe wine, and ice-cold Retsina, with its 'divine tur pentine' tang, is worth a ,try (Dominic list on at 9s. 9d.). If it is well chilled, the resin flavou is somewhat subdued.

Eastern Europe, with its continental summers produces some appropriately light wines, filo Balatoni Riesling from Hungary (about 10s.) and the now well-known Yugoslav Rieslings like Lutomer and Friedauer, which cost as little as 8s. a bottle. Russia's contribution to this exotic collection is Tsinandali, a dry white wine from Georgia, again about 8s. All these are white wines (except Retsina which comes in both colours), light in character and low in alcohol, an advantage should the ambient temperature ever reach the eighties.

Naturally, Southern Italy, Spain and Portugal have a wealth of such wines, many of them only to be sought out and drunk on the spot One unusual Spanish white, Cepa de Oro, from near San Sebastian, is available at 9s. now, and from Portugal there is the white Vila Real, de- scribed by Wine Mine as 'drier than Proust,' and a mere 7s. a bottle.