SKINFLINT'S CITY DIARY Patronage secretary

There is a class of highly cultivated men of business who after a few years are able to leave business and begin to follow ambitions, which to Bagehot meant public service.

The Appointments Secretary at the Treasury has a list of names and comes back, so it seems, again and again to Peter Parker, Sir Charles Hardie and the like. Everywhere there is greed for pride so may I suggest a few dollar-a-year men who wouldn't insist on the salaries demanded by Lords Melchett and Hall, Mark Bonham Carter and others who thankfully sacrifice themselves for state salaries—often higher than they would command. in industry. These men do not need the promise of the titles or medals mentioned in the 'Spectator's' Notebook last week. Pride is the only currency needed to buy souls, though those to whom it is given will not admit to its worth. What about some of these names for state jobs?—

Boys for the jobs

Leonard Wolfson. Sir Isaac might surely spare him for a year or so to put some state corporation right. Don't tell me he wouldn't do as good a job as Lord Robens or feel as deeply as Mark Bonham Carter. He is head and shoulders above either of them, or Lord Melchett, in judgment and ability as time will show whether or not he is allowed to make a contribution in the public sector.

William de Vigier of Acrow. There's not a state job, except possibly in the utilities, he couldn't take over satisfactorily.

Joe Bamford of J. C. Bamford. He built up from scratch one of the most successful private engineering companies in the country making his famous excavators. He's a dynamo of energy, tough, imaginative and clear-thinking.

Jim Slater of Slater Walker. I can't help feeling that the 'maestro' has been given a cupboard under the stairs at No. 10 Down- ing Street and is already helping to run the country as the Prime Minister's personal 'guru'. If anyone can handle a committee or board better or has greater clarity of objective, let's hear who he is. Years ago a friend who asked Jim Slater whether he thought of entering elective politics got the reply, 'I've looked into that situation and there's nothing in it'.

Selim Zilka of Mothercare. His ex-wife is now Mrs Harold Lever. He's built up his chain of baby shops which must have a notional value of £20 million from small beginnings and he's still only forty. Respected by all who meet him, clear and intelligent but I suppose too 'foreign' for some who worry about these things but not

John Clark of Plessey. He's the senior half of the partnership with his brother running the Plessey electronics group. He is the more popular of the two but I fear he may be kept busy with his company which is likely, if I'm not mistaken, to be running into harder times.

Nigel Vinson. You may not have heard of him. He runs a company called Plastic Coatings Ltd. in Guildford and looks like the young Bertrand Russell. He'll be around for a long time yet and I wouldn't be sur- prised if he enters elective politics sooner or later, but he'll do a useful job anywhere, I expect, if asked.

Joe Hyman, ex-Viyella. I know he has already been considered and dismissed from thought which is a shame since he has plenty of money, wants a job and in spite of criticism has made a success of everything he has tackled. He is the sort of man who should be judged by results.

This, dear Sir, is an honest list. My sole purpose in writing this is that some good men be not overlooked. 'I should not speak so boldly if it was my due to be believed.'

Suez Canal

If you care for conspiracy theories and are thinking of Middle East investment you may be interested in some ideas put forward by an old acquaintance who was once con- nected with the Suez Canal Company. When Nasser nationalised the Canal in 1956 the poor old roast beef and ingenuous reaction of the Eden administration was to attempt to protect a part-British asset and to keep open an international waterway to the East and an oil route to the Gulf.

Secretly, according to this old Suez Canal hand, the United States through the CIA and the State Department had a very different objective which was in fact no less than the permanent closure of the Canal to the Russian Mediterranean fleet (then being built) and to supplies from the Eastern bloc. by the shortest sea route to Vietnam. The United States found ready but unholy allies amongst the well-intentioned Observer readers and most of the rest of us.

If this interpretation is accepted it may be presumed that however motivated to peace the post-Nasser Egyptian government may be. the Canal will continue to be closed by the exacerbation of the military situation in the Middle East by the United States through the agency of Israel. Not until the Vietnam war is over and the Far East no longer a threat is the Canal likely to be used again and then its significance will be of minor consequence through the construction of giant tankers and the evolvement of different markets for Middle East oil.

Until 1 heard this, there always seemed a defective quality in the argument for selling arms to the loathsome regime in Pretoria and Cape Town. The plight of the coloured popu- lation is that they cannot first be human beings, though when every trace of discri- mination is wiped out they will still be in the throes of a soul-wrenching crisis.

Howard Hughes

I like the story about Howard Hughes, the millionaire recluse, whose original fortune was based on the Hughes drill-bit for oil-well drilling: 'Hughes Tool is no monopoly—any-

one can dig a well without us—if they use

a pick and shovel.'