Skinflint's City Diary
The fringe banks are still in trouble, though it is being concealed from the public and depositors by the intercession of the joint stock banks who are hopefully attempting to recycle funds whilst waiting for the smaller banks to recover the money they lent to themselves for too long. In spite of the bitter lesson that should have been learned by both depositors and these doubtful institutions built on sand there are advertisements still appearing in the press with such statements as 'Total assets exceed £75 million'. Obviously a claim like this is utterly meaningless. It takes no account of liabilities or the net asset or net cash position. It is intended to gull the trusting. If you still bank away from the big five you need your wits about you whilst the regulations remain so lax.
You know who
A friend of mine nipped out to his local off-licence the other night to get some tonic water. They told him they didn't have any, for the simple reason that there was a shortage of glass, a shortage of bottles and a shortage of — no, actually, I don't think there was a shortage of the stuff itself. Anyway, he then went into the local pub, where he got his tonic, but there he was charged a deposit of 2p on each bottle. Naturally, therefore, instead of throwing the things out, he later returned them to the pub and reclaimed his cash. Now, there's a moral here: it is almost coincidental with the introduction of no deposit no return bottles that we have seen a dearth of bottles. Obviously the crisis can be resolved if we go back to
deposit bottles, on beer and spirits, as well as on soft drinks.
Uri Geller
The Daily Mirror paid a large fee some four or five weeks ago in order to carry out some thought reading acts on the transatlantic telephone between their Mirror Building journalists and the big phoney Uri Geller. The tests flopped but the failure was not reported in the paper. It seems that Uri's manager insisted that if the tests didn't work it meant the 'vibes' were wrong and no more. Nevertheless the Daily Mirror in their tireless pursuit of the truth had agreed with Uri's manager that in the event of failure they would not give the test the exposure in print that it richly deserved.
Oil tax
The Canadian decision to raise the country's oil export tax, though it has 'evoked howls of rage from American politicians — one actually describing it as downright "un-American" — must cause the rest of us a deal of gratification. The Americans have been markedly smug about their, if not invulnerability then less vulnerability, to the wicked Arabs than the rest of us, and now they have been hoist with their own petard. The Canadian decision is, of course, perfectly sensible, and of a piece with the assertion of Canadian sovereignty over the North-West Passage, which the United States was trying to snatch away. It may, though, cause a good deal of re-appraisal of USCanadian relations: how many now would boast complacently of their mutual frontier being the longest undefended border in the world?
,The„
pecta..-Lor February 9, 1974 On the same subject of oil and energy, I see that Italy is the latest of the EEC countries to make her approach to the Arabs on her own behalf and on nobody else's. The creaking structure of the EEC maY well be about to topple, whatever the bleatings of its fanatical supporters such as wrote to us last week to protest against The Spectator's continued stand for British rights and sovereignty. I read, in this period of crisis for the Community, that the Commission were thinking recently of resigning en bloc. It would have added greatly to the comedy of life and politics if they had; but, being the usual kind of dull, pension-hunting bureaucrat, I suppose none of them had the guts.
Buy British
I am very pleased to see that members of the House 'of Commons Select Committee are to recommend the Government not to purchase an American nuclear reactor, nasty, dirty, dangerous, unprofitable things that they are. It doesn't, of course, mean that spineless governments of what' ever party will put the muscle behind a British reactor programme that is needed. Britis.11 nuclear output has made, and will on likely projections continue to make, a singularly small contribution to the country's energy needs. But that is not because the scientists do not have the know-hoW, or because the reactors are not themselves up to doing the job' The single, simple fact is that, again and again, British Governments have refused to back Bo' tish. Without a word from Lord Rothschild, the British nuclear programme has been, even under. the Heath government, starved 01', funds, d poor alwminorasead state o
d t
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