CITY AND SUBURBAN
Europe is longing for a lead from Britain, says Sir Oran Haut-Ton, MP
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
My friend Sir Oran Haut-Ton, MP, expects the call from and to Europe. Now is the hour, he says. Our great leader's patient policy on monetary union — to hope that the whole thing will go away, or put itself off until after the general election, or get everybody else in as much of a tangle as we are — is starting to pay dividends. Even the French have begun to admit it. That gov- ernment there won't last much longer, would you think? Looks pretty shaky to me. Well, then, now's the time to be positive. Britain has to give the lead. I'm sure we used to have some gadget of our own, dreamed up by that bald-headed banker who used to be in Brussels — what was it called? The hard ecu? Oh, yes. No, of course, I don't know how it worked. Never got the chance, did it? Absolute non-starter. The point is, it was a British initiative. Showed we were thinking constructively about a common currency, not just sulking, or gloating. I suppose we could dust it off again, but have you got anything fresher up your sleeve? No, I know what you're going to say. You can't wait for the French wheel to come off the axle. Nice cheap francs, affordable weekends in Paris, monetary union develops a design fault and is taken off the road . . . Old boy, I dare say it's stiff with design faults, but a lot of people have a lot of capital invested in it, and if they can find a way of bodging it, or fudging the tests, then I dare say they will. Another bot- tle? Well, if it's your shout, why not?
Strasbourg geese
THE SECOND bottle refreshes Sir Oran. You see, he enquires, what my colleagues are up to? Campaigning to double our salaries? Damn fools. You and I know that an MP's salary is only pin-money. What counts is the the tax-free allowances. That, of course, and our nice little earners. Now I've got a far better idea. I'm lining up a seat in the European Parliament. No tire- some constituency business, for a start nobody knows who their MEP is. But the real point is that since that tiresome fellow Nolan put his oar in, earning an honest crust at Westminster has got a little harder. The MEPs don't have any of that bother. The salary is not much more than ours, but look at the allowances! £32,000 a year for office equipment and sundries; mileage allowance — well, kilometres, I suppose — and another £2,700 for travel, miscella- neous. No receipts, of course. Attendance allowances, non-attendance allowances, an allowance for restaurant bills, no matter who's paid them . . . The one I like is for a language tutor. She can come and see you in the privacy of your own home or your hotel room. Just think — French mistress, stern disciplinarian, and £190 a day for her, all paid by Europe. Besides that, there's some money for the Party, to keep Charlie Hambro happy, and £84,000 for someone on my staff, more or less tax free. Samantha spotted it. She says it was in the European Journal, whatever that is. You remember Samantha, my research assistant? Such a comfort to me. Mark you, when I do get to Strasbourg, or wherever this parliament may be, you can't expect me to get up and denounce it. That would spoil the game. No, I shall stand up for the great European institutions, including, of course, the latest and greatest of all — the single currency. Drink up, old boy.
A clean start
NEWS for the world's most hopeless debtors is that their bank manager is hang- ing up his solar topee and retiring early. Edward Jaycox — Kim to his 10,000 col- leagues in the World Bank in Washington — had looked after its African desk for a decade. His predecessors flooded Africa with loans. He had to cope with the conse- quences, when the projects failed or the rulers stole the money, leaving the debtors in the iron grip of compound interest. Now a troupe of old stagers featuring Kenneth Kaunda is urging the World Bank to for- give these debts and start again. That would be wonderful news for corrupt regimes all over Africa, with their money safely stowed away and a whole new pool of loans to plunder. Better news for poor Africans would be to make forgiveness conditional on honest and open government. That would be something new for the World Bank, but in Jim Wolfensohn it now has a president with a mandate for new thinking. A new bank manager for Africa looks to me like a good and clean start.
The gilt edge of courage
THIS MEMORIAL tells a sad tale of sacri- fice and unrequited service. It commemo- rates the Unknown Investor. Fifty years ago, as peace returned, he thought he could best serve his country by putting his fortune at its government's disposal. He invested in its stock, and refused to take a penny out of it, insisting that his dividends were reinvest- ed. Today, half a century later, he is 5 per cent worse off than he was when he started. Inflation has betrayed him. His story (to be read in the figures of the Equity-Gilt Study, Barclays de Zoete Wedd's classic annual) has a sting to it. The low point in his for- tunes was reached 15 years ago. The 1980s brought him governments which at last managed to kick the habit of borrowing. In the 1990s, they returned to it. In those few years they have contrived to raise the National Debt by more than half. Now they are trying to find foreign volunteers to share the burden. If they succeed, they will find themselves with more independent and intransigent investors than the cannon- fodder they are used to. Profligate com- manders will be faced with mass desertion or even with mutiny. That threat could be the Unknown Investor's best hope.
Paying for the port
I WONDER whether the fees for disman- tling Lord Hanson's empire will be more than the fees for putting it together. Already the City stands to collect the thick end of £250 million in payments of one kind and another, to allow Granada to buy Forte and dismantle that. I forecast a change in the dealmakers' jargon: synergy will now give way to dysergy. The City professionals must watch the business scene as the dons of Scone College (in Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall) watched the revels of the Bollinger Club. They look forward to the fees as the dons looked forward to the fines, expecting to be kept in vintage port: `It'll be more if they attack the chapel. Oh, please, God, make them attack the chapel.'
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