Skinflint's City Diary
I am, if not exactly a connoisseur, then an avid watcher of TV ads. I often wonder why they do it. The other night, for example, I was watching a lavish Bovis ad about a new site the company was developing in Leeds, "Come to sunny Leeds," they said, in the same tone that the holiday brochures invite you to the Canaries or Marjorca. I was considering how many industrialists they thought might be watching or, if watching, might respond to a TV ad when — again like the holiday companies — a telephone number was flashed on the screen, and I was invited to call it, NOW. On impulse I did so, and found that it was the answering service (Bovis) of London Weekend Television. A fairly sexy voice invited me to leave my name, address and telephone number. P.S. A slightly different number came on for a later ad, inviting me to call in the interests of rrr. Is this part of the Watergate caper?
Old echoes
I was fair startled to hear the Prime Minister the other night saying that, after all, he hoped it would be possible eventually to abolish the whole statutory prices and incomes system he has been striving so manfully to set up, and return to free collective bargaining. The only condition, of course, was that the Trade Unions would behave sensibly. The most startling thing was the echo of those age-old opposition speeches: the Prime Minister observed, as though it was something every stupid child understood, that every government knew that a statutory and compulsory policy could not work. He had been forced to adopt one only because he had no alternative but to make it work. Now, that does seem a little contradictory, and it is therefore no wonder that nobody in business is willing to undertake large investment programmes?
Genetic shocks
I am amazed at the pretty casual way the most important decisions are taken. The Government's decision to make contraceptives available on the National Health Service as from next April is a case in point, The State is tampering with profoundly important issues here. Is it really in the national interest to shell out sheaths and dish out the Pill to all and sundry, on request?
I have no objection to contraception, nor to individual parents planning how many children they Should have. But when the State intervenes then we must object.
One certain effect must be to reduce the birth-rate. This will mean that the average age of the community, other things being equal, Will increase.
A very probable effect is that it will be middle class people who take most advantage of. the scheme, and the feckless layabouts who will carry on as before. In this event, we can expect middle class births to form a decreasing proportion of all births. Also, since presumably convinced Roman Catholics will continue not to practice contraception, their proportion in relation to the rest of the country will increase. The Government's activity may well have the cumulative effect of reducing the quality of the genetic stock; and even if it doesn't, it will almost certainly change that stock from what it would otherwise have been — for it is extremely unlikely that putting contraception on the NHS will have no effect whatever.
It baffles me what the Tories think they are doing. I reckon the most probable effect of Sir Keith Joseph's latest decision will be that fewer and fewer • children will be born little conservatives, and more and more will be of Irish or other immigrant extraction.
Docile flock
There may be better news soon for that docile flock, the shareholders of London and United Investments. Their biggest shareholders, Richard King and Colin Forsythe, collected big holdings by selling themselves their private loss-making management company of the Pan-Australian Group. They are reported, by various City sources, to be trying to sell the Pan-Australian Group. So far, worst luck, no buyers have appeared ready to give the sort of price London and United paid last year.
Amateur Pro's
In a speech made on Wednesday to the Foreign Press Association Mr Michael Clapham, president of the CBI, sugested that British workers were lazy enough to make the inhabitants of this country "the peasants of Europe" within the next decade or so. No one need take Mr Clapham's speech too seriously. It is probably a ploy prefatory to conversations with ministers about prices policy. None the less, he deserves a serious reply in respect of one part of his argument. He said that Britain's economic prospects were feeble because productivity was low, and that productivity was low because investment was low. Quite true. But investment is low because British money is chasing itself to get to the continent, in pursuit of that policy of joining the EEC of which the CBI has been an ardent advocate. It is time the likes of Mr Clapham woke up and did some hard thinking about this country's economic future; I suggest, as a beginning, getting out of a businessman's public relations outfit and doing some business.
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