CITY AND SUBURBAN
After Nolan, just take my advice, says Sir Oran it's all in the way of business
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Sir Oran Haut-Ton, MP, chief parlia- mentary adviser to the British Coughsweet Federation, is taking defeat philosophical- ly. 'Nolan?' he says. 'We could never win that vote. Usual bunch of malcontents and hair-shirts stacked against us. A bad day for the House.' And a bad day for Sir Oran's way of life? 'Off the record, old boy, not as bad as it looks. We can't be paid advocates now — those bloody fools, cash on the nail, a thousand a question, spoilt it for all of us — but of course I never was. I give parliamentary advice. Nothing in Nolan against that. Jolly useful the sweet-makers find it. We'll just rewrite the deal so that I give them general advice, too, and take a fee for that, which I needn't declare. They like me to get around — Samantha and I are just back from a confectionery confer- ence in Pago Pago, all expenses paid. You remember Samantha, my research assis- tant? What a help it is to have that £41,000 tax-free allowance for secretarial and research services. It doesn't have to pay for my office or phone calls or paper or stamps — these all come up with the rations, and of course I have another office at Gobstop- per House, and a secretary, too. Free trav- el, lodging allowances, London allowances — all-party committees on fact-finding mis- sions — some of the boys spent a month in Hollywood — it all mounts up, you know, and none of us voted against it. Oh, yes, we get salaries, too. Can we run to another bottle, since you're paying? Well, for the record, I'm sorry that the House chose to substitute its own judgment for the Prime Minister's. With the polls the way they are, I don't want to cut myself off from the chance of a peerage. Tax free attendance allowances come with it — did you know? Well, here's to purity in public life. Drink up, old boy.'
Out of Commission
I SUPPOSE that we still have a Monopo- lies and Mergers Commission? A real one, I mean? Not just an historical survival, like the Board of Trade? I don't seem to have heard from it lately. The electricity compa- nies are being carved up like turkeys — this week a Texan bidder has joined in. The Commission is there to assess mergers in the public interest, and with all these ten- figure cheques floating around and all these local monopolies coming under new ownership and management, it must have something to say — but nobody has asked it. North West Water is now taking over Norweb to form United Utilities, the biggest local monopoly (or bipoly) of all. This is sheer corporate megalomania, and coming from a water company is sheer cheek — after this summer, the water com- panies should be sent away to learn to man- age their own businesses. (Norweb's top manager is walking out with a seven-figure cheque.) The new Director-General of Fair Trading recommended that this merger should be sent to the Commission, and was promptly put in his box by Ian Lang, his new minister. The regulators were satisfied with the assurances they had received, said Mr Lang, and that was good enough for him. Some regulators are easily satisfied, and on all past form Professor Stephen Lit- tlechild, the electricity industry's regulator, is one of them, but the law lets Mr Lang make up the rules on mergers as he goes along. He can bypass or overrule the Com- mission just as the mood takes him. Per- haps he thinks that it needs competition.
Don't read all about us
I HAD been saving up to buy the Ritz myself, but I can see why a pair of mysteri- ous twins might want it. The hero of Arnold Bennett's The Grand Babylon Hotel buys what is obviously the Savoy by way of set- tling an argument with the head waiter. The Barclay brothers may well think that £75 million is a trifling sum to pay for the patron's table (number 8, by the window) in London's loveliest dining room. I just won- der why they want newspapers, too. Now is a good time for buying them. The Barclays own the European, which could be called a newspaper, and now they have gone on to buy The Scotsman, which is one. The Daily and Sunday Express are not the newspapers they were, but they too are for sale and a peerage has always gone with them. The Scotsman came in a package which is said to have cost £90 million, though no figure has been disclosed. The Barclays do not go in for financial disclosure. Conventionally described as reclusive, they now find them- selves in a business which depends on ask- ing awkward questions and publishing inconvenient truths. I shall be curious to see how far that principle is taken. The business of a grand hotel is different, depending as it does on silence and discretion.
Bad news, good news
THOSE OF us whose hopes are pinned on the franc faible — affordable drinking in France, and a wheel off the wagon of mone- tary union — are apt to be carried away by bad news. This week's bad news for the franc fort was that Alain Juppe's govern- ment had resigned. The good news was that he had been asked to form a new one, which could scarcely fail to be an improvement on the old. This one, we were told, would brace itself to tackle the government's deficit, leaving unemployment, poverty and home- lessness to wait their turn. France has never seemed to me a country where the horse- men of the Apocalypse would be content to wait in an orderly queue.
The expert persuaders
NEXT WEEK brings a chance to visit Poiana Brasov in Romania, where a British firm with the odd acronym of BTM has a conference on attracting foreign capital. Other conference promoters, BTM says, have not been much help to their hosts: `They may have introduced Western institu- tions with capital to invest, but they did not help to persuade them to part with their money. This conference is different.' How different is apparent from the choice of speakers. BTM's list of 'leading Western and Romanian experts' is headed by Ernest Saunders and Jim Slater. Certainly Mr Saunders when at Guinness and Mr Slater when at Slater Walker contrived, in their different ways, to persuade people to part with their money. I am sure that the Roma- nians can learn from these two experts. Brits planning to attend the conference are asked to part with £1,150 plus (I suppose) the price of an air ticket to scenic Poiana Brasov. I shall take a certain amount of persuasion.
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