Thanks, Uncle Gordon, but no, thank you you're spending the wrong kind of money
ow sit down and write to Uncle Gordon and thank him nicely for your present. What do you mean, you don't like it? That's no way to talk. Your uncle's very busy, he's got £460 billion to spend, he can't please everybody. Some children would be jolly glad to get an aircraft carrier. Well, a kit, anyway. You'd rather have had a postal order? You could save it up, or spend it on something you wanted? Do you think your uncle's made of money? Whose money would you expect him to be made of. anyway? Ours? Yes, I suppose you're right. As this grumpy uncle stalks the land, running up debts that will be here when he's gone, generous only at our expense, it is high time to introduce him to a little bald gnome of an uncle whose present to us is a winning idea. This is Uncle Milton Friedman, the economist, and what he likes to tell us is that there are four kinds of money. The first is your own money, spent on yourself. Buying socks for yourself, you know what you want and how much it should cost. This is more efficient than the second kind: your own money, spent on other people. You buy socks for your nephew for Christmas, but he may not want them in his old school colours. Less efficient than this is the third kind: spending other people's money on yourself. In the boardroom, a whole apparatus of remuneration committees and consultants exists to facilitate this, and sometimes, as the chairman of Glaxo explained, they get carried away and pay out in tens of millions. Least efficient of all is other people's money spent on other people. Somehow it is never enough. Everyone's money is nobody's money. and this is Uncle Gordon's kind.
Learning from Zaire
In backward countries like Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko, the rulers cream off the national income and assure themselves of plenty in the midst of poverty. They spend other people's money on themselves. Advanced countries like ours prefer to spend it on other people, which makes us less efficient than Zaire was, and it shows. Every year the government has to spend more and more money — next year, an extra £33 billion or so — just to stay where it is. Uncle Milton tells us that public spending is like this. All of its apparent advantage of centralised information and purchasing power is outweighed by the care we take of our own money and our knowledge of our own needs and wants. Nothing will get this into Uncle Gordon's head, or persuade him that he might not know best, but we could always write to him and say so.
Lawyers' benefit
It is New Year's Eve in the Temple, and Niggler QC raises his glass to his junior. Grockle. He was raising it eight years ago (as I noted on Twelfth Night, 1996) but by now he can afford Château Lafite, because he was in on the ground floor of that ultimate in layers' benefits, Three Rivers Council's claim against the Bank of England for £600 million, with costs and fees to match. A decade in gestation, up to the House of Lords and back again already, the case returns to court next month for a full hearing and is booked to run all year. Behind the council are the liquidators of BCCI, otherwise known as the Bank of Cocaine and Colombia. They are alleging misfeasance in public office, which means having to show not just that BCCI's supervisors made mistakes, but that 21 of them knew what their duty was and deliberately failed to do it. There will be a march-past of the Bank of England's old guard. Grockle has only one worry: 'What happens if the money runs out?-We get paid first,' Niggler tells him. 'It's the rule laid down in Jamdyce v. Jarndyce.' Without prejudice (as they would say) I do not expect this lawsuit to benefit anyone else.
Fine tuning
Fining early for Christmas, the Financial Services Authority has socked a bank and three insurers for a nice round total of £5 million. What happens to the money? It goes into a pot, the FSA says, and reduces the fees paid by other banks and insurers. H'm. At the Health and Safety Executive, which does so much to make business more hazardous and more expensive, the fines go into a pot and help to pay expenses, such as salaries. No wonder its regulators are lobbying for power to levy fines as colossal as the FSA's are. Not only are they judges in their own cause, they could be said to stand to gain from the severity of its punishments. One day they will be challenged in court by a sufferer, who will ask for judicial review and claim that their procedures contravene the principles of natural justice. Niggler and Grockle will always be glad to advise.
Late reservation
It is hard to see 2004 as a great year for Saddam Hussein. He should have taken up my offer of a place at Dundictatin Park, my retirement home for dictators. Based in a tax haven with a robust attitude to extradition, offering golf, polo and shooting, though not at the staff, Dundictatin Park would have suited his style and, as I said at the time, could have saved him and everybody else a lot of trouble. He remains an embarrassment, and it may not be too late to book him in.
Shikamoo, Patrick
am sorry to see corporate correctness creeping into the boardroom of Daily Mail and General Trust. At the annual general meeting, Sir Patrick Sergeant, its senior director and the legendary impresario of its City pages, will not seek re-election. He will be 80 on St Patrick's Day, which means that he has outlasted all his contemporaries on the boards of companies in the FT-SE Index — the stock market's premier league — but DMGT has introduced an age limit. Codes nowadays wish this on companies. It is not that Sir Patrick is flagging. Thinly disguised, he appears in The Appalling Guests, Victoria Mather's latest book of social stereotypes, as the veteran tennis player: 'Underneath Patrick's benevolent exterior lurks a competitive demon.' In Tanzania, where they defer to seniority, I would greet him with `Shikamoo', which means 'I embrace your feet', and he would answer 'Marahaba': 'I appreciate your respect.' That the codesmiths have got this wrong and the Tanzanians know better becomes more apparent to me with every New Year that comes round.
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