It's all a conspiracy against the public, and I name the guilty men
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Do as I say, not as I do. The government's White Paper on competition is a bad example in itself, for why should there only be one of it? 'People of the same trade,' as Adam Smith noted, 'seldom meet together, even for merriment, but the conversation ends with a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices' — so now we are promised a ferocious new regime, backed up by prison sentences, and capable of bypassing the courts and the established rules of evidence. It sounds unpleasantly like a nark's charter to me, and the state's own activities, as usual, are exempt. No one does more to stifle competition than an officious and official regulator. Laying down detailed rules and happy to swat those who break them, he encourages his charges to play things by the book — the same book, that is. Why be different, why innovate, why invest, why compete? Better still, why not take example from the public sector, where competition is supposed to be excluded? Somewhere in the National Health Service's million-plus employees there must be a nark who could indict its managers for denying choice to their customers. The new regime will penalise those who condone or encourage cartels, so that should get ministers, too. Put them inside or make them do as they say.
Barking trains
EDGWARE Road station, where I seem to be spending so much of my time, has a mordant line in announcements: 'The next train on Platform One will be a Barking train. WOOF. WOOF. It was not me that barked, it was my supervisor — he's in one of his funny moods.' 1 share his feelings. The chances are that this train will disappear into the black hole in the Aldgate area. The money that might have extricated it has disappeared into another black hole which, when the signals are working, represents the quickest way from Westminster to the Millennium Dome. Running far over time and over budget, the Jubilee Line Extension swallowed the investment that the remainder of the system needed, and in the end it proved beyond London Underground's capacity to manage. I can understand why the Treasury is reluctant to pour money into holes like these, preferring to go into partnership with private contractors, who can raise money on their own bal ance-sheets and use it to greater effect. A last flurry of litigation this week saw off the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, clearing the way for these partnerships to move in — and, of course, to be blamed by the Mayor for whatever may now go wrong. Plenty of holes ahead.
Civic railways
IT IS not too late for the Mayor and Lord Mayor to join forces to pull the Underground out of its hole. The Mayor is responsible for London's transport strategy, and the Lord Mayor knows that deteriorating public transport now heads the list of the City's competitive disadvantages. He should approach the Mayor and, on the Corporation of London's behalf, should renew its offer to take over the Waterloo and City Line. This simple but unreliable railway could be made a working model of enlightened civic ownership, and the City could afford it. Later on it might widen its interests, taking on the unloved Bank branch of the Northern Line. On the City's airport links (25 stops to Heathrow by Tube) some lateral thinking is needed. The new chairman of BAA, which owns London's airports. is Marcus Agius. merchant-bank chairman and Rothschild-inlaw. BAA is doubling its capacity at Stansted, and if Mr Agius can only cajole the businessmen's airlines to land there, he will find a fast train to whisk him to his City desk. Now that Liverpool has a John Lennon Airport, Stansted could be renamed after Nathan Meyer Rothschild, or Ken Livingstone.
Petering out
IT seems a long time since Peter Jay tunnelled out of the Treasury and surfaced in the City office of the Times. He was, as always, full of ideas, and was pleased that the paper, unlike his previous employer, could use them. Now he is tunnelling (or being tun
nelled) out of the BBC, which used his ideas erratically when it used them at all. He was once made to report the trade figures from the shop-floor of a teacup factory in Stokeon-Trent. Secure in its private income, the BBC was always apt to think of money as a vulgar subject, and its economics editor found that, as Walter Bagehot said of private bankers, his was a watchful but not a laborious occupation. He is right to remind us that money (and ideas about it) matters to all of us and not just to City traders in red braces.
Pull out the plum
THE cobbler's children go barefoot, and Pearson, which publishes the Financial Times, has lost £233 million in six months. The company prefers to state this as a profit of £5 million 'post internet enterprises', no doubt as a test for the FTs young reporters, who must plough on to page eight of the announcement to find the actual result. Their paper's advertising revenue has turned down and its costs are being cut, as they may be unlucky enough to find out. A month ago I was signalling the decline in Pearson's stock and fortunes: 'For the first time Pearson looks as if it might be vulnerable to a bid, with the FT as the plum attraction.' Or the bidder might pull out the plum and leave Pearson with its Penguin books, its plans for educating the Americans and, of course, its internet enterprises. Andrew Gowers, who by a stately process of succession steps up next month to be the FTs editor, may find that he is cursed to live in interesting times.
Sphericals
I WONDER what its new editor thinks of the FT's chronic unwillingness to look gift stories in the mouth. This was in evidence the other day, when out of the blue and on to the pink pages floated a story that the odd couple at 10 and 11 Downing Street were at one in their hopes and plans for the euro. They had drawn up a timetable for the referendum, with a preference for next autumn, and early in the new year would make up their minds. The Chancellor was in New York, promoting free trade across the Atlantic, but when the FTs story was relayed to him, it was denied roundly, not to say spherically. Indeed, the denial bore the stamp of his chief economic adviser, Ed Balls.
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