CITY AND SUBURBAN
Never put off to tomorrow what you can leave until the day after
CHRISTOPHLR FILDES
It was, so I have always understood, the Mayor of Blackburn who, on taking office, pledged himself to lean neither to partiality on the one hand nor to impartiality on the other. Some of this even-handed approach has rubbed off on the Prime Minister. I noticed it when he was standing for his party's leadership against a candidate who said that he would never suffer Britain to join in a single European currency. The Government's position was more balanced. It included elements of waiting and seeing and hoping that the whole thing would go away, but stopped short of any commit- ment to go in or stay out. Just at that moment he enjoyed a bit of luck. The offi- cial start-line for the single currency was put back two years, to 1999, well into the lifetime of the next Parliament. This was no more than an admission of the obvious, and Theo Waigel, Germany's finance minister, then capped it by saying that Italy could not possibly make the new deadline. Publicly mortified, the Italians privately find this a convenient argument for putting off the deadline. It could easily drift out to 2002 election year again . . . 'On that timetable,' so I was saying here in June, 'he could afford to sty now that we would not join a single currency within the lifetime of the next Parliament.' Now that penny can be heard dropping. In sentiments worthy of Blackburn Town Hall, the Prime Minister has pledged himself to look at the issue realistically with a clear and open mind. If his luck holds, he can keep his mind open until it is somebody else's turn. His nice new friend Jacques Chirac has been saying that the single currency will help France to reduce unemployment and maintain its social cohesion. We can all see how well this is working already.
A ghost writes
NICK LEESON is off to Singapore to com- plete the research on his book, Changi Cui- sine: a hundred healthy ways to serve fish- heads and rice. I shall not rush to read it, even though Edward Whitley will be writ- ing it. Ed's cavalier style will be hard to adapt to Nick's estuarial English. The book I want to read will be Peter Baring's, and will be called: How we let this little berk bring the house down. It will explain how a risk-averse bank backed a man called Heath, who introduced it to new and thrilling business in the Far East and made it a whole lot of money. The bankers thgn sacked him and tried to run this business themselves, in the mistaken belief that (as they told the Bank of England) it was easy. Pleasantly surprising results, so Peter Bar- ing called them, and pleasantly surprising bonuses all round, including a million for the chairman. Not a squeak from the own- ers, whose shares had no votes. Not a squeak from the Bank. Squeaks of warning from the markets, but the Barings thought they knew better. If I can reach suitable terms with Mr Baring I might write his book myself.
Wren's eye view
FROM THE chimney-top of Bankside Power Station you can see St Paul's. This will be an added attraction when the chim- ney is turned into an observation tower, thanks to the £50 million of millenary fund- ing that is to transform Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's handsome brick powerhouse into the Tate Gallery's presence on the south bank. I hope that some of the money will buy back for Bankside the greatest town- scape of them all — the view across the river that Wren saw from his site office on Cardi- nal's Wharf. This, as I found the other day, now commands a view of the office building occupied by the Swiss Bank Corporation, with bits of St Paul's peeping over the top. No other building in London, not even the Department of the Environment's own, could so much improve its environment by falling down. A cheque from the Millennium Commission could give it the push it needs.
Come and get it
PRIVATISATION is Britain's export to the world, renewing, as it should, the spirit of ownership and enterprise, and a fine example reaches me from Russia. Under the old dispensation Comrade Oblomov (as I shall call him) was in charge of a secret plant, hidden in the Siberian wastes, which made aviation fuel. Come the counter-revo- lution, and Mr Oblomov applied to Moscow for new orders. He was told that, so far as Moscow was concerned, his plant did not exist. It had been too secret to appear on the books, except, presumably, on the books of secret agencies which had effectively been privatised themselves. Well, then, he asked, if this plant did not exist, would anybody miss it? He was told not. He then rang round the big interna- tional oil companies and asked them for the best bid for supplies of high-grade fuel, loco Siberia, terms: come and get it. One of them came and got it, and the proceeds have made him a dollar billionaire. Those managers who, blinking in the limelight, now say they will give it all to charity have missed their chance with the National Grid.
Reliable source
NOBODY BUYS gold for the pleasure of seeing his name in the papers. Guy Field, the great bullion dealer of his day, would always end his guidance with: 'And if you quote me I'll kill you.' Now that he has died, I can salute his memory in print. He did much to make his necessarily secretive market understood — all markets, from time to time to time, need that, and his would be seen to lead the world if it could nerve itself to publish figures. Moving from Samuel Montagu to J.P.Morgan, he saved his colleagues there from exile. The Morgan bank, overflowing its City offices, was being offered the usual blandishments to move into Docklands. Guy put his foot down: 'London Docks? Den of thieves. Always has been. Move my gold down there? Certainly not.'
Watersplash
I SEE that Brussels has voted even more money for the weekend yachtsmen's highway — the new fast road across British North Wales, bringing Cheshire closer to the moor- ings of Cardigan Bay. It has qualified for funding as the Ireland-UK-Benelux road link. All roads lead to Brussels. Eurocrats should note that this one has a watersplash west of Holyhead — another tunnel needed? Or they could turn left at Bangor and go boating.
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