SKINFLINT'S CITY DIARY
Orme Developments' offer for sale, by Sandelson and Co., the stockbrokers, on Tuesday, November 16, of 2,125,000 ordinary 20p shares at 70p per share should be stagged. The oackground is that the promoters, thirty-six-year-old Peter Whitfield and thirty-five-year-old Robert Tanner, previously started Clubman's Club built on the interesting legal trick of allowing members, mainly salesmen, into most of the less important night clubs in London and the provinces on a single membership card. Payment was by means of a banker's standing order resulting in high renewals due to natural inertia. Clubman's was built by acquisition following the placing of some of the Promoters' shares at a low price with institutions. Whitfield and Tanner admit to using the money received from the institutions to bid up the group's share Price so making subsequent acquisitions cheaper.
Later they were successful in selling their group to Mecca in exchange for Shares and becoming Mecca directors, though they did not have the ascendency in the Mecca boardroom they expected. They decided, as they were entitled to under childishly lax London stock exchange practice, to sell their shares and depart. Grubby hands in the press and elsewhere were held aloft in horror and Poor Whitfield and Tanner were castigated by some of the very people for whom they had made most money.
The Daily Express says that their advice IS to leave Orme Developments well alone -they say there are easier and more restful ways of making money. My advice Is to borrow what you can and stag this issue. The company is run by a bold pair Who won't hesititate to loose personal Money if they have to in order to bid up the shares for subsequent acquisitions. They are stuck in for three years with 1.272,00 shares each but they'll be getting out a lot of your cash now which will be Useful for market operations. Good luck to the keen young bucks — they are just What the present day anything goes stock exchange needs — to make it come to its senses.
Petworth conception
house I stay in some miles from Petworth House has one claim to ,reeognition. The late ' Methuselah ' Wyndham, Lord Egremont's father, is believed to have been conceived there — though when he was asked by his son whether this was SO, he said: "My boy, it is no business of Yours where I was conceived."
Happily the union resulted, at one remove, in the arrival of the John Wyndham who became personal secretary to Harold Macmillan and, in the way things were in the 'sixties, eventually, Lord Egremont. In his maiden speech in the Upper Chamber in 1964, referring to the decision by a Minister of Fuel and Power to go ahead with the huge pylons which form part of the Central Electricity Board's power line from Dungeness to Cornwall, he said: "If the Electricity Board's officer comes to see me I shall throw him down the stairs."
Lord Egremont is funny and accepts as a matter of form gales of laughter when he opens his mouth, though for once he wasn't trying to be funny. The pylons were to be about the height of Nelson's Column — that is twice the normal — and would have completely destroyed the charm of the Petworth countryside.
Lord Egremont modestly claims on television that he is down to his last five million. He is busy selling cottages as well as carriages and other relics, though Petworth itself is now in the dead, safe, hands of the National Trust. He has a public ennui about the even worse fate in store for Petworth House — the by-pass that is planned to pass in front of the western elevation cutting across Capability Brown's landscape. Lord Egremont has been in a road accident recently. When he recovers he must throw his weight into this local battle — which he is otherwise in danger of losing by default. There are many of those in the Ministry of Environment and the West Sussex County Council who are determined to ' encourage attractions like Peter Scott's new money-spinning waterfowl reserve at Arundel and other tourist baits requiring better roads " . . . raddling the fairest face of Britain within sixty miles of London," in the words Lord Egremont used about pylons when he maidened in the House of Lords.
Hazells abortion
Mr Francis Pym, the Government Chief Whip, has good reason to look forward to promotion after his zealous exertions jollying all but thirty-nine Conservatives into the Government lobby on the Common Market issue. Wherever he is sent it should not be to the Department of the Environment now that the Bedfordshire County Council Planning Committee have refused him permission to demolish Hazells Hall, Sandy, which has been his family seat for 200 years.
Frances Pym is a collateral, not a direct, descendant of that friend of Hampden and Holies, the great anti-monarchist, John Pym. It is in character that someone striving so hard for British entry into the Common Market should have so little nostalgic feeling.
Motoring training
Military cars with learner driver plates are sail common wherever the army conducts recruit training. Military or even civilian instructors in military vehicles must surely be more expensive even than the British School of Motoring and similar organisations. Recruits could be directed at the army's expense, after signing on and before joining the colours, to attend local motoring schools. Mind you, two teenage sons of a friend, discussing passing driving tests, were vehemently agreed that BSM was not the best bet locally. No doubt there are also those who attend driving schools in order to learn how to drive — I am sure that BSM are very good for such purposes. '
Express emasculation
Now that Sir Max Aitken has solemnised, with relief, in the Daily Express the supreme virtue of blind obedience by announcing that his papers are giving up their opposition to this country's entry into the European Economic Community, the Spectator is the last paper of the right that does not, I am glad to see, propose that it should become a servile agent of those who believe that all questions have been answered, all decisions made, all eventualities foreseen. The paper is not ready to see us crawl on our bellies and deny our intelligence nor is it willing to abdicate interest in the direction of our lives being moved to Brussels.
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