Helping the trade war

Press, 15 May 1987, Page 16

Helping the trade war

-By

OLIVER PRITCHETT,

One bas to do one’s bit. I myself have been modestly attempting to give a lead by spending the last three days — and 17 sheets of foolscap paper —- trying to work out the square root of 1139 using old-fashioned half-remembered arithmetic. I have been doing this in the presence of my Casio pocket calculator. Not only that, but I have left the calculator switched on, so that the green digits on the little screen are beginning to blink nervously. Call me a frightful old jingoist if you will, but I just feel it is time to stand up and be counted in the trade war with Japan. If you are the sort of person who went through the Cod War eating scampi in the basket you will understand the feeling. ■ This current business with Japan: has go to be conducted with stealth. Too much sabrerattling early on caused millions of pounds to be wiped off share

prices and caused a few City investors to retire alone to a quiet room with only a computer print-out and a pocket calculator. So what can the man in the street do to contribute to the trade war effort? Already there have been reports of isolated acts of resistance by drivers of Cortinas who have sneaked in and stolen the parking spaces which Datsuns were about to occupy. The hazards of imposing sanctions on Japanese banks operating in London have already been made clear, but there is still a useful role to be played by people in the City. When a dozen or so Japanese tourists outside St Paul’s approach you ah so politely and ask you to take a group photograph of them for the folks back in Hokkaido you may perhaps decide to take the Nikon study it for a moment, shake your head sorrowfully and refuse with a low bow.

, in the ‘Daily Telegraph’

Where I live, a group of us patriots has got together and vowed to turn down the colourcontrol knobs on our Sanyo TV sets. We patrol the streets and if, through a window, we see a TV set shining too brightly we bang on the door and shout “Don’t you know there’s a trade war on?“ The only time sets are turned up to full colour and full volume is when Clive James appears on television yet again to mock those weird Japanese TV game shows.

Latest intelligence suggests that what the Japanese really like about Britain is our golf courses. They have taken over one at Liphook, in Hampshire. People should be warned about acts of reckless bravado. Anybody foolist enough to go to Liphook and slyly side-kick the Mazda executive’s ball into the rough will find that he sends jitters all the way to Wall Street.