U.K. tea-cup storm

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33933, 28 August 1975, Page 14

U.K. tea-cup storm

LONDON. August 27. A 25-year-old New Zealander is at the centre of the House of Commons ‘storm in a tea-cup" row. Mark Wilde, formerly of Karori. Wellington, woke up this morning to find himself front page news, in the British press for having sold 5NZ24.000 worth of German-made crockery to the House of Commons restaurant — in the face of a Government “Buy British" campaign. “It’s not rv biggest sale in money terms," the voting salesman se.id. "But it's certainty the most prestigous.” “I can t reallv understand all the fuss. I didn’t have to do very much selling —

the product is so good it ’ sells itself," he said. News of the sale, following appeals bv the Secretary of Trade and Industry (Mr Peter Shore) for people to buy British! goods and help the country’s economic situation, has caused e.n outcry. British crockery makers have protested, and four Members of Parliament from Staffordshire, heart of. the British pottery industry, have described the sale as “disgraceful." Mr Wilde, contracts manager for the British sales office of the German Rosenthal company, said that he made the sale by merely telephoning the House of Commons, getI ting the name of the, i catering manager, and! •I then writing to him. I

“There was no high pressure selling," the young New Zealander said. “It’s good stuff and they obviously liked it.” Mr Wilde arrived in England three years ago after a chequered early career in New Zealand during which he began, but did not finish an accountancy degree at Victoria University, worked as a tree-pruner for the Auckland City Council’s parks department and was a “dogs body” in a carpet company sales office. "I’m not planning to go back to New Zealand at the moment,” he said today, “I like it here, and would like to live in Europe for I a while.”