CITY AND SUBURBAN
Cowboy hats, welly-boots — the landed interest's party lands itself in the manure
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
For the shattered British industry on parade at the Royal Show this week, a voice from the Cheshire pasturelands spoke with authority: 'There's nobody in this govern- ment who knows anything about cows.' Flow the party of the landed interest has changed. Its ministers of agriculture may dress up in welly-boots or cowboy hats, but the act does not convince, for nowadays theirs is a townsmen's party, and their task is to cultivate the broad corridors of Brus- sels — hoping to reap a crop of grants and subsidies and set-asides and, as far as possi- ble, to stay out of the manure. Dropped in it up to his neck, Douglas Hogg now has the leisure to wonder whether this remit is sen- sible, and whether farming might do better without the state, and the super-state in Brussels, second-guessing it at every turn. He might consult the Kentish farmer who, a few years ago, opened the Royal Show by saying that in fanning, as in any other busi- ness, prices and production should reflect market forces and market needs. The sys- tem of quotas and subsidies brought costs and inefficiencies, lay heavy on the taxpayer and made him pay too much for food. As for the Common Agricultural Policy, he said: There can hardly be any other system which so comprehensively undermines the European Community's credentials as an open and free market.' This farmer, as you may recall, was called Leigh-Pemberton and had a day job governing the Bank of Eng- land. Now he would make a splendid minis- ter of agriculture. He knows about cows.
Mr Nought Per Cent
IT MUST be a disappointment to Mr Five Per Cent, wherever he may be, to know that he did not even break the world record for rogue trading. This swashbuckling copper trader was found out as the price of copper buckled when it should have swashed, leav- ing Sumitomo, his employers, with a bill that could stretch to $4 billion. That would be a lot of money for the most roguish of traders to lose, even with some help from an international cartel which hoped to rig the market. Not a record, though. That is held by Mr Nought Per Cent, who lost £4 billion on a single day. His whereabouts are now uncertain (some say he has been seen in Harrogate), but at the time he was based at 11 Downing Street. He had set out to rig the market in sterling. He was in collabora- tion with a number of European partners, and went on to blame them for letting him down. Later he claimed that the whole idea of a cartel to fix the pound's price had been a terrible mistake and that he had never liked it. He was acting under orders: the Nuremburg defence. Now some of the con- spirators want to try again, and are tempting his successor to join in. They have been observed laughing and lunching together in various well-fed cities, most recently in Flo- rence. They are thought to be planning a currency cartel that would stretch across Europe. Since currencies make up the world's biggest market, turning over $1 tril- lion a day, this attempt must be doomed to costly failure. How strange is this unwilling- ness to learn from experience, even when Sumitomo is standing by to pay for the lat- est lesson.
Eminent Victorians
BINGO LITTLE planned to restore his fortunes with a well-judged accumulator bet on half a dozen horses. Bertie Wooster listened admiringly: 'It sounded like some- thing out of Smiles's Self-Help.' Now we can judge for ourselves. The weighty Victorian bestseller, long out of print, now reissued by the Institute of Economic Affairs, stands for the On-Your-Bike school of social sci- ence and against the school that believes, whatever the trouble may be, that the gov- ernment ought to do something about it: It is every day becoming more clearly under- stood that the function of government is negative and restrictive rather than positive and active. Laws cannot make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.' As a moraliser, Smiles can grate — his preaching voice owes some- thing to his contemporary, the Reverend Obadiah Slope — but as a story-teller he is vivid, most of all when he conjures up the industrial revolutionaries: Wedgwood, Watt, Arkwright, George Stephenson and
even Jonas Hanway, who taught City men their habit of carrying umbrellas. Smiles was a railwayman himself, and I wish that the IEA would reprint his life of Stephen- son. It would serve to remind us who the truly eminent Victorians were, and that would be a moral worth drawing for today.
Flying buttress
THE TELEPHONE rings late at night. As usual, Michael Von Clemm is in another time zone. He has called to tell me that the hole in his head is mending well. This is good news of the great polymath, pillar of the international markets or perhaps their flying buttress, financial inspiration of the Roux brothers with their clusters of Miche- lin rosettes, and the next president of Tem- pleton College, Oxford, which likes to call itself the university's meeting point with the world of business. One message for that world: his surgeons tell him that his ailment is associated with frequent flyers and with users of cellular telephones. Come back by boat, Michael, and send postcards.
Scotch on the rocks
ROLL OVER, Barings. Wake up, War- burg's. Two monarchs of the glen lock horns, Highland Distilleries bids for Macallan- Glenlivet, each side hires itself a London merchant bank (one Dutch-owned, one Swiss-owned) and not one of these expen- sive advisers can spot the winning trick. Now is the moment for a bid expressed, not in money or shares, but in whisky. Highland might begin by offering a brace of Famous Grouse for every share in Macallan, which would then hit back with a special distribu- tion to its shareholdeis — a large Ten Year Old, topped up with a touch of spring water but no ice. This might require the original bid to be stiffened with a Highland Park. I can imagine the auction lasting for some time. Its currency would transform the dis- tillers' fortunes. Their stocks, from being a costly reserve, eating .money, earning noth- ing, would become a fighting asset, out there in the front line of battle. They might even get their offers underwritten by HM Cus- toms and Excise. I am prepared to advise either side, or indeed both sides. My advice is better than the merchant bankers' and I will take payment in kind.
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