Take sides against the Walrus, and the Carpenter will eat
you
Business is business. When that loftiest of viceroys, Curzon, first came into Parlia- ment, a clutch of directorships followed him. He picked up an insurance company (Clerical Medical) and the builders of the Bakerloo Line, and Hadfields, the Sheffield steel-founders. He then — so I learn from David Gilmour's new biography approached his old school chum Brodrick, Under-Secretary at the War Office, recom- mending Hadfields' armour-piercing shells. Though Curzon bombarded him with let- ters, Brodrick's department preferred to use suppliers of its own, at Woolwich Arse- nal. Changing tack, Curzon tried again, urging Brodrick to support the private sec- tor and threatening redundancies at Had- fields. Eat your heart out, Ian Greer. The hazards of partisanship were less evident in Curzon's day. MPs, and journalists too, are most tempted to be partisan when a first- class row is going on. Each side plays to win by currying favour and leaking information — which can be the same thing. Each is happy to explain how badly the other has behaved and is behaving. The temptation is to believe that because his opponent wears a black hat, your helpful informant wears a white hat. His letter suggests that Tim Smith made that mistake, and so did Alice with the Walrus and the Carpenter. Feeling sorry for the oysters, she preferred the Walrus, who at least wept for them. He was only pretending, she was told — behind his handkerchief he was able to eat more. She then switched to the Carpenter, only to be told that he ate as many as he could. I once likened the two of them to Tiny Rowland and Mohamed Fayed. An acquaintance of mine was invited to stay at the Ritz Hotel, Pans, later favoured by Neil Hamilton. On his bed my informant was shaken to find doubtless left there by some careless cham- bermaid — a fat brown envelope.
What am I offered?
THE PRIME Minister's response is a clas- sic of tactics: he has set up an anti-corrup- tion committee. Headed (naturally) by a judge, and drawing its members (just so) from all parties, it will have (but you guessed it) wide scope. The model can be found in Hong Kong, which has its own Independent Commission Against Corrup- tion, with a purifying effect that we can assess for ourselves. My friend Nicholas Sibley wants to put it up for auction. Mr Major should take his advice. If he priva- tised his new committee, he could use the proceeds to cut taxes, and arrest the highest bidder.
Technical knockout
THE LEARNED judges, headed by Lord Woolf, who wonder why court cases last so long and cost so much should take a look at R. v. Aquilino and Walker. This one occu- pied Southwark Crown Court for more than two months, featured 80 prosecution witnesses and kept the jury out for a week. It ended when George Walker was acquit- ted on six charges of theft, false accounting and conspiracy, all related to the events of seven years ago. Another charge was with- drawn on the judge's instructions. How George Staple, the decent City lawyer who runs the Serious Fraud Office, must regret ever leaving Coward Chance. I remind him of my acronymic word of advice to him: KISS — Keep It Simple, Staple. Britain, unlike Italy, is a net contributor to Euro-budgets, and can now expect to see its contribution doubled, you might have thought Mr Clarke would be pleased. Carry on, Giulio, he would say — the longer you block this budget, the more you help me with mine — block it till the cows come home. Instead he struck a deal which left £550 million inside the cows and authorised them to eat more from now on. The cost of all this will be concealed in his tax-raising Budget next month. He should have stuck to Dorneywood.
Viva Scarpia
I KNOW a City regulator with her own interpretation of Puccini's Tosca. It is, she says, a drama of the regulatory life, and the tragic hero is Scarpia, the chief of police. After Tosca knifes him, it tails off into the all-too-familiar problems of discipline and compensation. These are now being played out at Wagnerian length by the Securities and Investments Board. It has set out to rewrite millions of deals which took people out of their employers' pension schemes and bought them personal pensions. The biggest losers (like my reader on his £18-a- month pension from Beecham) were stuck in the schemes, but no one has offered to compensate them. Tosca may have had something.
Wellcome's foundation
BY WAY of a change from Curzon, I am enjoying Robert Rhodes James's life of Henry Wellcome, the philanthropic phar- macist — his Foundation is our richest charitable trust. This was the boy from the American backwoods who wrote home to his Mom: 'I am enjoying myself first rate although have considerable to do I enjoy it, I like business, it drives dull care away, I want something to do that there is life about.' He found that in London, went on to give us the word 'tabloid' (for his pills) and married the daughter of Doctor Barnardo, before losing her to Somerset Maugham, of all unlikely competitors. Wellcome got his break when he devised and proposed a new kind of sup- pository. His career goes to show that, con- trary to my belief, you can succeed in busi- ness if you start at the bottom and work your way up.
The Prince's lamp
Sir: I am sure I cannot be alone amongst your readers in finding the tone of the arti- cles by Charles Moore and Simon Jenkins (Another voice and Centre point, 22 Octo- ber) about the Prince of Wales highly offen- sive. An old-fashined monarchist, I am aston- ished that men of some journalistic reputa- tion should loose such a flurry of intemper- ate prejudice on the basis of one extract (obviously bitty) from a full-length biography in a Sunday newspaper. Reading the advance coverage, I think the world has gone mad.
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