CITY AND SUBURBAN
The taxman is neutral, so Sharon and Darren get down to a spot of research
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
The scene is the stockroom of the Cen- tre for Policy Studies. Sharon and Darren have lingered after work, and now she wants to know whether if she does as he suggests, he will still love her in the morn- ing. 'That's not the question,' snaps Darren. 'The whole point is that we have the strongest incentive. Don't you read the papers? It says so in our new pamphlet look, there's a pile of them, just under your ... "Give over. What's it say?' It says the whole structure of taxes and benefits has shifted away from marriage towards the alternatives. They've dropped the old allowances. It says the taxman's neutral can't tell the difference between parenting and golf."Well, I can,' says Sharon, `so what's it got to do with him?' Because we work here, silly. That makes us rational, see? Capable of economic choice. Mark you, in a more perfect market ... "If you ask me, Darr, which I don't hear you doing, the reason why they cut back on those allowances is they had to pay for all those benefits, and the reason why those benefits cost so much more is they spread them about like confetti. You can get one for a bad back, like this — ouch, you're hurting me. And if the taxman's neuter, that's what I always thought, and so he should be."Oh, be like that, Shar, but what did you tell your Mum?' Told her I was staying late in the office,' says Sharon smugly. 'Research.'
Peace at a price
AT EUROTUNNEL, Sir Alastair Morton has named his successor. All that the banks now need do for a quiet life is to come to terms with their old adversary and take shares (but not too many shares) instead of debt. They can just about remember the quiet life they used to have before Sir Alas- tair arrived. The chairman in those days was a boardroom veteran who had made the grade, or most, in Imperial Chemical Industries. He was respected and liked but was not a driving force. Left to him and his bucket and spade, the tunnel would not have got beyond low-water mark on Dover beach. So he moved out and Sir Alastair moved in. His successor-designate is anoth- er boardroom veteran who made the grade, or most of it, in ICI. They have their uses but it is just as well that in between them there came someone who could get the hole dug.
How to lose a fortune
IT WAS a call from Barings that first set Bill Clarke on the trail of the gold of the Romanoffs. Sir Edward Reid, the chairman and King Edward WI's godson, was upset by rumours that the gold was lodged in his vaults and was keeping his bank going. No such luck, one way and another. The Lost Fortune of the Tsars is Mr Clarke's financial detective story, and a new paperback edi- tion turns up new clues. The Empress's jew- els are sighted in another London merchant bank, Samuel Montagu, the bullion special- ists. Gold bars with Tsarist markings reach the Vatican by way of Germany and France — the Bolsheviks had used them to pay Lenin's railway fare on the sealed train that brought him across Germany to Russia. Gold, as de Gaulle said, has no nationality. The Nazis knew that when, as we now learn, they parked their looted gold in Switzer- land. The Bolsheviks and their successors found it out the hard way. Ten years ago the Soviet Union had gold reserves worth $15 billion. All that gold has gone and some $4 billion worth has gone walkies. It seems to have slipped out of the country and the offi- cials who were supposed to be watching over it slipped out of windows. For his next trick, Mr Clarke should try tracing the gold of the Bolsheviks. Then he should look for the lost fortune of the Barings.
Paying Peter
SIR PETER Green was a genial chairman of Lloyd's, even if his legacies include its show-off building and its misguided Act of Parliament. Now that he has died, he is unhappily remembered as the chairman who was later censured for discreditable conduct. As an underwriter, acting on his names' behalf, he had developed a conflict of interest and omitted to protect them from it. He might have pleaded that they had behn warned. Applicants to join Lloyd's are put through interviews and must satisfy the chairman that they know what they are doing. He had his own tech- nique for this: 'Well, Mr Urn, you under- stand that you'll be liable down to your last penny, for risks you've never heard of, something your underwriter's let you in for?"0h, yes, Sir Peter."Good, well, have you got a cheque-book with you?"Er, yes, Sir Peter ... "Then just sign a few blanks for me and pass it over — I'll keep it in my desk."But, Sir Peter ... "But you realise, don't you, that this is what Lloyd's is about?' That was telling them.
A rail buff writes
I HAVE been prompted to pioneer a new route into the City: from Kensington Olympia on the old West London Railway, via Clapham Junction, Waterloo and Lon- don Bridge to Cannon Street. The staff are helpful and the views are striking, when on the Underground it is the other way about. Strange, though, that my train should run through disused stations in what are now the haunts of City types: Brampton, Chelsea & Fulham (by the football ground) and Bat- tersea. If it then turned left instead of right at Latchmere Junction it could run straight on to Waterloo. It passes P & O's inaccessi- ble development at Chelsea Harbour and runs beneath Earl's Court, which is also P & O's, as is Olympia. That company is under pressure these days and in need of fresh ideas, so I am happy to suggest to Lord Sterling, at its helm, that he should take his local railway over. It has untapped markets on its doorstep or its footplate, and for a free pass, in the traditional form of a gold medallion, I should be prepared to join his railway's board.
Going critical
BRITISH (nuclear, actually, but we don't like to say so) Energy went down in the mar- ket like a leaky reactor, so now Privatisa- tions Anonymous is trying again. Next month we shall be offered shares in AEA Technology, described as the state-owned engineering science and service business, based at Harwell, Oxfordshire. Harwell, now, what happens there? Could those ini- tials stand for the Atomic Energy Authority? Message from the vendors: don't tell Sid.
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