SKINFLINT'S CITY DIARY
The King Edward VII Hospital for Officers in London have asked me to say that they are not connected with the King Edward VII Hospital at Midhurst who received the magnificent gift of £5 million from Sir Halford Reddish for a cardiac unit.
£1 million of Sir Halford's money is to build the new unit and £4 million has been set aside,to create a fund for its running.
Sir Max Rayne's charitable trust, it may be revealed, gave £800,000 for a new building to University College Hospital Medical School a few months ago. The gift was received with mild dismay as the school's state grants will have to be stretched to meet the running costs.
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television Limited have brought out their first results since Mr John Freeman took charge. The directors' salaries are £108,437 'against £109,182 in 1970, but this includes compensation for loss of office which will be a little lower this year. Far worse are staff salaries, tucked away deep in the accounts, which show that the company employed 1,071 collecting £2,702,495 — something over £2,523 each. Mr Freeman has inherited the burden of this over-large over-paid organisation created in the ebullient freespending days following the award of the licence. It is probably difficult for him to reduce his labour force without a strike threat, but I hope he remembers to rely on that familiar executive stand-by, 'was tage,' meaning not replacing those leaving.
A feature of the Companies Act of 1967 was a requirement that directors declare their shareholdings. Looking at London Weekend's accounts it is curious that neither Mr David Astor nor Lord Hartwell has declared an interest in shares though the Observer and the Daily Telegraph, private companies and their private property, have large shareholdings. Others like Mr Rupert Murdoch, Sir Geoffrey Kitchen and Mr David Montagu, of the News of the World, Pearl Insurance and Samuel Montagu respectively, have declared nil holdings, which is maybe understandable ,since they are publicly quoted, though it would be interesting to know of movements in their holdings.
Graduate unemployment
Although the ' unemployment ' count will not be taken until the new year, there are signs that around 10 per cent of this year's new university graduates will still be seeking satisfactory work at the end of December, according to the University Grants Committee.
There is work for a couple of the unemployed setting up a political public relations agency modelled on the firm of Whittaker and Baxter of San Francisco. Their unmistakable touch has been seen from minor campaigns like winning a referendum to support a bond issue to improve the port of San Francisco, to defeating a scheme by which old age pensions were to be paid from the proceeds of legalised gambling. " Keep the Crime Syndicates Out!" was the theme, though no one had suggested that crime syndicates should be 'let in. An interesting development is the production of 'instant politicians. Well-heeled men may go to them, for all services from the draft of an adoption speech to a Presidential Inaugural. The Whittaker and Baxter service does not seem to have emerged, so far, outside the state of California.
In this country, so I hear, there is a Member of Parliament who has hired a public relations firm to carry out an apparently dispassionate analysis of a proposed new town development. The story goes that at a certain moment it will dawn on the planning committee that the area of the proposed development should be moved a few miles. Needless to say, not far from where the Member of Parliament owns property.
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