CITY AND SUBURBAN
Dry on the label but sweet in the bottle this must be Château Clarke 1996
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
The British are supposed to like their budgets as they like their white burgundies: thy on the label but sweet in the bottle. I am sure that Kenneth Clarke, as he pre- pares to bustle forward with his wine list, will be eager to oblige. The label must con- vey a certain crisp acidity to reassure the markets, very much on the qui vive just now for signs of indulgence, and must also accommodate a kind of fiscal wine-snob- bery: le gout anglais, in fact. All the same, in an election year there needs to be a linger- ing aftertaste of honey. This Chancellor believes (or says he does) that the election can be won, and if it is, that the economy will win it. My mind goes back to an earlier Chancellor whom I found nine years ago in his constituency, halfway through a general election campaign, conducting what he called a stationary walkabout. This was Nigel Lawson. To his mind, that year's elec- tion was already won, and would be seen to have been won on the economy. Why, then, I asked him, had he just introduced a boring budget with just a smidgen of a tax cut in it? As Chancellor he was, after all, never dull except on purpose, but his pur- pose then, or so I gathered, was to exude responsibility and prudent management. The time for tax reform — the least diffi- cult time, as he said — was after an elec- tion. So it all proved. He, though, had given himself one crucial advantage over Mr Clarke. He had managed to balance his budget.
Knight's move
ONE way to cheer up the electors would be to arrange for millions of them to receive well-timed cheques. For that the Chancel- lor can thank those building societies, led by the Halifax, which are planning on turn- ing themselves into banks, and need to show their members that there is some- thing (like money) in it for them. He may not thank his economic secretary, Angela Knight, the Treasury's head girl. Mrs Knight has bought the traditional building societies' line that they are shy, furry, lov- able creatures in need of protection. She promised them their own Act of Parlia- ment, but it got left out of the Queen's Speech and time is running short for it. So she tried the idea of a non-controversial bill, in support of this good cause, which could be nodded through the house. Easier said than drafted. The version on offer infuriates the would-be banks. If it goes through, they say, they will have to scrap their plans and start afresh. So no timely cheques. Ministers would do better to say that the societies will have to survive on their competitive merits. Just being mutual is not enough. If it were, we should all be buying fishcakes from that lovable mutual Co-op and not from that horrid capitalist Marks & Spencer.
The Palace changes guard
WHEN Charles Anson left the City for the Palace, I told him here that I would not have his new job as press secretary for all the tea in the State Drawing Room. He would find that he had swapped the banking press for the bonking press. Neither of us could know how true that was going to be, but his unfussed style saw him through. Now he is on his way to Grand Met, the food and drinks group, where life should be calmer. Grand Met can be sure, though, that if its Smirnoff bottles start going pop or Haagen- Dazs ice-cream proves to be anaphrodisiac, Charles will be there to calm everyone down and explain that such things must be seen in the long perspective of history.
Dons out, all out
WAFIC Said and I have had second thoughts about our business school. We are relocating it to Bletchley. In this way we shall have no further trouble with finding a suitable site — Oxford was always going to be difficult — and shall be equally well placed to keep an eye on Cambridge. I was suggesting last week that our school should make a case study of Oxford's business methods: employing vast amounts of capi- tal, constantly asking for more, but making full use of what it has for less than half the year. Cambridge takes this further still. Cambridge has a 23-week year, and pres- sures from its student customers to add another week to it have been seen off by an alliance of bursars, eager to turn their col- leges over to conferences, and tutors, anx- ious to preserve their long vacations. Some of them are finding the strain all too much for them. On Tuesday their union called them out on strike. Our case study might even support them. We could recommend Oxford and Cambridge to think their strategies through, go for a zero-week year, abandon the uneconomic activity of teach- ing, redeploy their surplus capital — in port, for instance — and apply to be funded as part of the national heritage. I am not sure that our business school would fit into this ideally self-serving arrangement, but indeed that is what the dons keep telling Mr Said and me.
Social service
THIS week's business idea: a firm of corpo- rate social responsibility consultants — no less — write in to offer their services. These include social auditing, the creation of a socially responsible culture and its internal- isation, identifying new issues and recom- mending solutions, and other fee-earning activities. Just what a board needs nowa- days to keep the non-execs busy and happy. The mailing shot is signed by the firm's principal consultant, whose name, as it hap- pens, I recognise. In his previous incarna- tion he was a public relations man on the City circuit, whose best-known client was Lonrho. His relaunch is a sign of our corpo- rate times.
Place of honour
THE Hyde Park had a special place among Forte's grand hotels — revaluing its wine cellar helped to justify a Forte profit fore- cast — but now that Granada is breaking the collection up, it is the first to go. I hope that its new owners, the Mandarin Oriental group, will find a way to honour one of the Hyde Park's most stalwart customers, Eve- lyn Waugh. This was where he stayed, reporting on the audibility of farts through bedroom doors, and where he ordered din- ner for 18 on the occasion of his daughter's coming-out, specifying: 'Non-vintage cham- pagne for everybody except me.'
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