Disaster at the Treasury's water-hole the elephants have taken over
A„ too late in the day, Gordon Brown is preparing to cull a few elephants. Humanely, of course. Some will be retrained or resettled, further away from his water-hole. Others will make their own way, in their own time, to the elephants' graveyard. Only an unlucky few will need to be knocked on the head. Oh, yes? All that this cull could achieve would be to make room for more elephants. I warned him of these dangers four years ago, when he gave us the first of his new model spending reviews, (This week's was the third.) Dealing with the spending departments, I told him, had been likened by a Treasury veteran to keeping elephants out of a water-hole: 'You drive them off, and drive them off. said Sir Leo Pliatzky, 'and in the evening, back they come.' This Chancellor, though, had developed a novel approach. His message was that the elephants were welcome — provided, of course, that they behaved themselves and did as he told them. Fat chance, I thought. They had long memories, they knew their way around and, hard as it had been to drive them away, driving them out would be harder still. They would take the waterhole over and bring on an ecological disaster. So they have. To slake their thirst now requires another £100 billion a year, and in three years' time, on the Chancellor's own projections, they will need a further £100 billion to keep going — even if his new cull comes up to his expectations. I am not convinced that its chance is any fatter.
Saying to spend
Snake-oil merchants sell these schemes to Chancellors. Kenneth Clarke came up with spending to save — hiring enforcers to bring in the revenue. No more was heard of this. Gordon Brown's version is saving to spend. Cutting the cost of administration, he says, will release £21 billion a year for frontline services, and raise another £30 billion from selling land and offices. If only life were so easy. What will be the costs of redundancy and reorganisation? Will the Department for International Development be more efficient when its back office is in East Kilbride? Will services have to be outsourced — no doubt to the same people wearing different hats? Is this government good at setting up computer systems? How long do new systems take to pay off? If he
plans a gross reduction (careful wording) of 84,150 Civil Service posts, what will be the net figure, and will the new jobs be any more productive than the old ones? What price snake-oil? At the end of all this, the Chancellor will be financing more jobs and, of course, spending more on them.
More buys less
The disaster at the water-hole is now unfolding before us. As the elephants rush in, other forms of life will get trampled or crowded out. It is, as I said it would be, a step away from the biodiversity on which growth and evolution depend. No previous Chancellor has spent so much of our money, believing that he can find better uses for it than we can, and the signs are that he is spending more and more to less and less effect. The official figures imply that the public sector has been becoming less productive since the turn of the century — in other words, since the elephants were welcomed in. Other life-forms have to adjust to this as best they can, but they will not find that easy as the elephants' thirst continues to increase. Unfortunately, he has come to imagine that he is controlling them. They humour him in this, but the truth is quite plainly the other way round. How furiously they will trumpet when the Treasury returns to its repetitive task of driving them away.
Moving target
I begin to wonder whether Philip Green is shooting at the wrong horse. He has opened fire on Marks & Spencer, but Stuart Rose is now in the saddle and is firing briskly back, We have learned, in passing, that Mr Green's previous target was none other than J. Sainsbury. Now there's a thought, for the saddle has slipped. Last
week saw the chairman, Sir Peter Davis, unseated. This week Sainsbury's shareholders were asked to approve a remuneration report which featured his £2,400,000 bonus, but were told that the board did not really mean it and did not intend to pay it. My learned friends are now at work on both sides. I can only guess how all this goes down with the Sainsbury family, who own more than a third of the shares, have seen the price fall to its lowest levels since the 1980s, and may now (as I was saying last week) face a cut in the dividend. They might be open to offers — or they might be tempted to borrow the money and offer to buy their business back. If Mr Green can borrow billions, they can.
Bargains at the Bank
My bid has already gone in, but I expect hot competition next week, when Christie's sells the Bank of England's furniture. Some of the furniture, anyway. Now that the Bank no longer prints its own banknotes, or manages the National Debt, or supervises banks, its staff numbers have halved. It has withdrawn from its City outposts to consolidate behind its windowless walls, and no longer needs so many desks and chairs and hatstands. As you would expect, they date back over two centuries, have been cared for in the Bank's own workshops, and are no trendier than the Bank itself. There may be some unusual bargains, for at the last such City auction, when Hambros moved offices, one of their bright sparks turned up and bought his boss's desk. It paid for itself: in the second drawer was the salary list.
See you in court
Juries, so barristers tell me, develop an empathy for their fellow creatures in the dock. After all, everybody else in court has chosen to be there, and is free to come and go, and is paid, often handsomely. Jurors and prisoners have no such choice. They are cooped up in court and, as a long-drawn-out case grinds on, they come to feel that they are in it together. This theory is said to explain the results of some notable fraud trials. I shall now put it to the test, for I have been called for jury service. Any of my readers who has the misfortune to come up for trial next week and notices me in the jury box is welcome to object or, of course, to take a chance with my theory. See you in court.
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