CITY AND SUBURBAN
It's on the cards I shall trump Michael Howard with mugshots of John Stuart Mill
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Before Michael Howard tries to charge us £15 a time for his plastic cards with our mugshots on them, he should have a word with Robert Fleming. This enterprising merchant bank set out to offer personal accounts, and cards to go with them, Flem- ings' bankers were then told, as Mr Howard has been told, that cards illustrat- ed with their holders' portraits would be an invaluable precaution against fraud and theft. They tested this out. They issued some cards with matching pictures and oth- ers, to volunteers, with wild mismatches. Baldies were depicted as ladylike blondes, as babies and even as fox-terriers. The vol- unteers were told to flash their cards about, to use them to buy goods or back cheques or raise cash, and see what happened. Who would spot the difference and blow the whistle? Nobody did. Nobody looked. Flemings then dropped the idea of cards with mugshots on them. So I think that Mr Howard has misjudged the market for his identity cards, with or without little Euro- pean stars on them — if he and they are to be taken at their face value. I dare say that his advisers in the Home Office and the Police want these cards to become volun- tary in the army sense, which gives the verb to volunteer' a passive mood. I am of an age to remember the last time we were vol- unteered for them. Creatures of wartime uncertainties — 'George, just ask that chap in the spiked helmet to show his identity card' — they survived seven years into the Peace that followed. The police found that not being able to produce a card when challenged made a useful all-purpose hold- ing charge, or would at least serve as grounds for suspicion. Mr Howard should forget the whole illiberal idea, but if he will not, I warn him that I intend to undercut him. I shall be offering handsomely designed Free Country cards, with mugshots of John Stuart Mill.
Poll parrot
THE CHANCELLOR must still be pad- dling in Cardigan Bay, because when this week's poll put his party's handling of the economy ahead of Labour's, Mr Howard Was wheeled out to comment. The Tories, he said, were reaping the rewards of tough economic decisions — or, as the lordly Maurice Saatchi put it: `Yes it hurt. Yes it worked.' What, of course, hurt was the dis-
astrous policy that hitched the pound to Europe's exchange rate mechanism — at the very centre of our economic strategy, as the previous Chancellor chose to say. What turned the trick was the policy's collapse. I wish that ministers and their ennobled puff- mongers would not try to pretend that it happened on purpose. As for the poll, I should think it speaks for cash in people's pockets, rising house prices and the other ingredients of a pre-election boom which, like the election itself, may or may not end in tears.
Multier than thou
MY BAD Investment Guide is on amber alert. It may need a new category: multi- media groups. They have been to this bull market what mini-conglomerates were to the last one and leisure stocks were to the one before — the modish wrap-round for some mixed bags of goods. Dear old United Newspapers is now United News and Media, and Pearson has lost a fortune by tucking the Financial Times up in the same bed with a maker of electronic games in California. Mediawise, no group could be multier than Firecrest. As its most recent prospectus explained only four months ago, it is into advertising, free music, fulfilment, publishing, the Internet, loyalty, affinity and — guess what? — leisure. Why all these businesses should be worth more all together than they are separately the prospectus did not explain, beyond praising the group's flexibility. The issuing house that published it has now resigned, Firecrest's chief executive has been repri- manded by the Stock Exchange and its share price has turned turtle. My Guide's alert will go from amber to red at the first broker's circular to describe the multi- media sector as exploding. I still treasure a circular touting the shares of a builder's merchant which was said to be rapidly diversifying into the exploding leisure industry. This meant that it stocked tanks for tropical fish.
Relegation zone
STARS of the financial markets do not yet command the same transfer fees as foot- ballers, but they are doing their best to catch up. Talk of a £5 million package to lure a new striker to BZW Reunited has the fans on the City's terraces whistling. The directors of the big City clubs are whistling, too, but in another key. It is not that they object (in theory, anyhow) to pay- ing for results. What worries them is the balance of advantage. In what should now be a highly profitable business, the cream is going to the players, by way of salaries, bonuses, golden hellos and all the rest of it. The clubs are left with high fixed costs, and of course with the losses if it all goes wrong. They watched this happen to Barings, who in their black and gold strip were the City's answer to Accrington Stanley. The players went off with their bonuses and the providers of capital went down with the club. A more realistic structure would turn the City's players into partners, and invite them to hire what they need — the capital, the dealing rooms, the club's good name on commercial terms. Short of that, I can only suggest to the directors that if they cannot beat the game they should join in it. They should make a secondary market in the star players' contracts of employment. After all, the football clubs, at their modest level of financial sophistication, have been doing this for years. This may explain why football club shares, long regarded as their directors' executive toys, are now booming away in the markets,
Off track
I LIKE Railtrack's idea that a station ought to be a destination. How different from Mr Worthing, in The Importance of Being Earn- est, whose origin was a terminus. This con- cept works up to a point at Union Station, Washington, with its marble halls, its pleas- ant restaurants and its shop (with an echo- ing whistle) that sells model trains. The trouble was that the grand redesign forgot about the real trains. You can still find some in a distant basement, but this grand destination is not all that much of a station.
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