7 NOVEMBER 1987, Page 39

Say thank you

A LESS pugnacious Chancellor would simply pocket the profits of the Issue Department and be grateful. It made £1,362,871,000 last year. (Bank notes are a wonderful business and an even better monopoly.) When it last bought BP shares, from Burmah Oil in the crash of 1974, it quintupled its money and sold them eight years later for a profit of £854 million. All this profit goes, by an Act of Parliament of 1844, directly to the Treasury.