Skinflint's City Diary

I HAVE been late discovering Ivor Catt's book The Cott Concept — the new industrial Darwinism which was published in April by Rupert Hart-Davis at £1.25.

It is an amusing book. Here are Six Rules for Keeping Your Job and Advancing Through the Ranks:

1 Inverse Firing Order — If you are manager, director or executive remember to sack your best subordinate rather than the worst man. It is all too easy for a cut-back or minor disagreement with your superiors to mean your neck if you have been careless enough to have a capable successor around.

2 The Incompletion Gambit — If you are allocated a task, it is vital to remember that the most secure project is the one that is unsuccessful, since it lasts longer. Devote a good portion of your time to laying a foundation for a followup scheme.

3 Be Secretive — Never discuss your worth in detail, spin a web of complexities with threads of ambiguities about your functions, You are less likely to be a victim when there are uncertainties about what you are doing. Reticence is often equated with depth and ability by top management, just as it is in politics and the academic world.

4 Lay-Off Fodder — Success is sometimes determined by your ability to follow up stupid arbitrary orders without question. Management may order a ten per cent staff reduction from time to time. Since top people rarely know what's going on, this method is supposed to keep people on their toes and clear the dead wood. Of course, it wrecks an efficient department, so Catt suggests the hiring of " lay-off fodder" to be kept in reserve for those times when pruning is ordered.

5 Be The "Good Guy" Scoundrel — Cultivate your superior but look for weeds in his past. In time you may get a confession of normal sources of scandal; sex or incompetence. Another alternative is to conduct discreet inquiries of your own. Once you've got this information let your superior know about the calumnies that are being whispered about him, and cement your security.

6 Be Grossly Optimistic about the Future — Carefully prepare detailed explanations for failure to meet projections. There are usually plenty around— the state of the economy, the budget, marketing decisions, and most important of all, the failure of key subordinates.

Ivor Catt has written a useful book with a serious purpose. He believes that if the axis of organisation is financial rather than human this leads to the destruction of the organisation in fact rather than form. When people are worried about being fired there is lack of invention and creativity. Catt says, "If one becomes convinced that business and industry is hollow you transport that feeling to society in general."

I like Concorde

When the king rides abroad the vil

lage curs all bark at his heels. (Goethe) For some reason a few journalists have make a dead set against the Concorde. Charles Foley, sentimentally backing all things American, writing in the Observer from Los Angeles, gloats about a " Wasp waisted US rival for Concorde," to be known for the moment as the Advanced Technology Transport, or ATT. Foley says the plane's designers believe it will cost less than half the price of Concorde and suffer from none of its drawbacks — from sonic boom to high fares and cramped space. Reading a little further, one finds that it will not suffer from sonic boom for the good reason it is strictly sub-sonic, flying little faster than present jets, but with the same huge passenger load as those unloved things — the Boeing 747 Jumbos.

Last week I travelled with Pan-American, a great airline with an enviable route structure, to Frankfurt, and in spite of the courtesy of their staff, I shall not easily be persuaded to travel in a Jumbo jet again. Apart from the hour's delay with a polyglot seething mass (which in London I normally like) embarking and loading up, there is a mile's walk through a loading spur to get on board.

Pan-Am, TWA, and other big US carriers, according to Foley and the Observer, are disenchanted with the Concorde, suggesting that they may well decide not to convert their options into orders. If Foley travels Pan-Am, he should ask for a book for the kiddies, which the stewardesses hand out free. It is the Concorde Sticker Fun Book which Foley — if he follows the directions — should "Push out, stick and colour." As Foley pushes out and glues pictures of Concorde emerge — flying in Pan-Am colours. Pan-Am know better than Foley what the passengers want even if they are only telling junior so far.

Monopoly reform

Given my repeatedly expressed concern about both unemployment and the fate of small businesses, I have naturally followed with great interest the evolution of events regarding the Conservative Party's bold plan to revise the Monopoly Commission's structure, and replace it by something along the lines of the American Small Businesses Board, retaining all the while the anti-monopolistic functions of the Commission as they exist. The unemployment problem enters into this because, as I said the other week, if every small business in the country took on an extra pair of hands, the unemployment problem itself would vanish. I am concerned with the survival of the small business because it so eloquently testifies to what I take to be the true capitalistic spirit of individual endeavour; and its continued existence defeats the hopes of the great combines, who intend to dominate the rest of us, economically as well as in other ways.

Juicy grants

My political friends now tell me that next year, is, for the government, to be the year of the goodies. And Mr Heath — so I am told — will be introducing legislation to foster small businesses at the expense of large. So far so good. But what, about the idea that the small business should qualify for some of those juicy grants that Mr Chataway is now dishing out?

Remember that the small businessman votes Tory: the large businessman is pcobably a socialist. Look at Frank Kearton of Courtauld's. Look, further at the experience of Willie Whitelaw when, in 1969, he came back from a tour of Northern industry to exclaim to his colleagues in Westminster that the barons of industry up there were all going to vote Wilson in 1970. The small, not the big, businessman is the friend of the Tories. And it is of little use that the Government passes another law, supposedly favouring small businesses, unless they put their money wthere their mouth is. What a slogan: 'Cash for the little man ' — I claim no copyright on it.