28 MARCH 1998, Page 20

No job for Jonathan

SCARLET faces at the General Electric Company, where Jonathan Aitken's new job has lasted a fortnight. To nobody's surprise but GEC's, he received an approach from Felt Collars and discovered that the two were incompatible. It is not the kind of mis- take that Lord Weinstock would have made in his long reign, but perhaps his ennobled successor, George Simpson, is more at home in the nut and bolt belt around Birmingham than in the Ritz Hotel, Paris. He seems to have relied on his marketing director, Sir Geoffrey Pattie, who, like Mr Aitken, was a Conservative MP until the last election. I am sure it was all kindly meant.