To England with Love and Exasperation

...I could only stare in consternation and wonder whether I had contracted a rare literary ailment...

...It makes little sense to blame the antibusiness policies of Labor governments for this...

...I feel for England the mixture of affection and exasperation we all reserve for the people and places we have known for a long time...

...Cab fares, just increased by a third, are barely below New York rates...

...Whole books have professed to explain Britain's apparent preference for general incompetence...

...Why has British management, in the 19th century the envy of its rivals, turned into a collection of tame tigers...

...Its guest suite is heated, if that is the word I grope for, by a nonfunctioning minute radiator that represents the Platonic ideal of central heating, and a minute one-bar electric fire that emits about as much warmth as a cigarette lighter...

...Each month Britain's balance-of-payments deficit sets a new record...

...In Magdalen College, there was excellent wine from the college's own cellars at dinner...

...English education for the gifted is first-class...

...True, I enthusiastically gobbled Scotch salmon (beats Nova Scotia every time), Dover sole, a good bottle of Moselle, and a large cognac...

...As for the Englishman who is employed, he is bound to be considerably better off in real terms than he was a year ago...

...In 1975, per capita earnings are far below those of Sweden and West Germany, substantially inferior to those of France and Holland, and not very much better than those of Italy, England's rival for the title, Sick Man of Europe...

...Arabs who can afford private rooms also seem to prefer to come for medical repairs to the London clinic, where, frequently, Jewish physicians attend them...

...One of these days someone will provide a convincing historical interpretation of the contrast between the businesslike unionism of the AFL-CIO and the bash-the-bosses-whoever-is-hurt preferences of many British unionists...

...Why should the man in the street take seriously the warnings of his betters, particularly when the rich and powerful live as luxuriously as ever...

...In world markets, British exporters are handicapped by high costs, indifferent product reliability, and erratic delivery dates, all consequences of poor management-the second reason for British decline...

...All the same, one can eat better only a bit more expensively in Lutece or Le Cote Basque across the ocean in Fun City...

...The economists I encountered had practically given up...

...One impressionable colleague was startled awake by the same butler in full regalia bringing him his early morning tea...

...By 1980, if the North Sea oil fulfills its promise (in some quarters there are serious doubts about its quantity and cost), Britain will be a net energy exporter...

...It was not so meant...

...Two days later, preparing to leave for Ditchley Park outside of Oxford to attend the conference that was the pretext for my English visit, I told the porter I planned to return in three days...

...Store clerks take forever to calculate a total for four items...

...Making change is nearly as painful as a session in the dentist's chair...

...It takes a good deal more than bloody-minded unions, however, to explain British inefficiency...

...Shortly after World War II, England enjoyed Western Europe's highest standard of living...

...Meals for the assembled economists, politicians and businessmen included the service of a genuine butler who dispensed excellent claret and port...

...The more militant unions heed the cautionary warnings neither of the politicians nor of their own elected officials...

...On the shop floors, it is the shop stewards who set the pace...

...Having uttered these home truths about a country and city I deeply enjoy, I cannot conclude without noting that despite a rash of Arab and IRA atrocities and some disquieting signs of a rising level of indigenous urban violence, England remains the land of gentle manners and considerate behavior...

...After self-indulgence, remorse...

...At my conference, called to explore the problems of voluntary leisure and enforced leisure (the gentlest euphemism for getting fired I have encountered), two dozen Americans, Canadians and Englishmen politely exhibited the conventional lack of agreement in beautifully panelled drawing rooms beneath the gaze of the personages in family portraits...

...If I were compelled to cite the single most important explanation of Britain's economic problems, I should focus upon the third, the failures of educational policy and the persistence of elite training...

...The young gentlemen and considerably fewer young ladies who enter Oxford and Cambridge colleges have already enjoyed more than their share of high-quality teaching in the small classes of the public and grammar schools that continue to secure the lion's share of places in the best universities for their old boys and girls...

...In the United States the large corporations usually call the tune for both labor and Congress...

...The outcome of the forthcoming referendum on the Common Market remains uncertain, but if Britain retains its membership, its Common Market partners will, albeit reluctantly, offer help, much as West Germany last year bailed out Italy...

...After wine, flatulence...

...Hordes of shoppers are as likely to trample the unwary underfoot in Selfridge's as in Macy's...

...Even a couple of centuries later, too large a portion of the country's wealth is committed to enterprises where earlier natural advantages have long since vanished, like shipbuilding, textiles, shoes, and metallurgy...

...English beer is undeniably flat and warm, but the English pub is a civilized institution unmatched in the remainder of this wicked world...

...Should Britain withdraw from Europe, the United States is likely to become her receiver in bankruptcy...

...On the strength of my letter from the United States (answered, incidentally, several weeks late), the club had reserved a room for me...

...THE LAND OF PARADOX To England with Love and Exasperation BY ROBERT LEKACHMAN The first thing an American returning to England after an interval of two and a half years is likely to notice is the prices: They are dreadful...

...After pleasure, pain...

...He proceeded to write my name, admittedly one of Ellis Island's odder translations from the Yiddish, into a dog-eared exercise book, informed me that the key to my room was mislaid, and, at least, directed me to its approximate location...

...Moreover, in addition to weekly benefits, a sacked worker receives a lump sum payment based upon seniority and rate of pay that can amount to several thousand pounds...

...I take as representative the following: In London I stayed in the Oxford and Cambridge Club, a cheap and convenient place to light...

...With the inevitable honorable exceptions, far too many English executives lack the thrust, drive, enjoyment of risk and growth, and-yes-sheer avarice which have made American managements the simultaneous hope and terror of the competition...

...Nor is the behavior of the speculators and the shoppers quite as weird as it might at first appear...

...For most of the rest of the community it is terrible...

...The results of bad popular education clog the mechanics of daily business...

...One need not admire Gerald Ford's peculiar economic contraption to concede that, however ill-conceived, it is at least an effort to do something about energy, inflation and recession...

...For an American academic, the splendid anachronism of the lovingly-cherished pomp and circumstance amounts to a superior tourist attraction...

...Great Britain may be bankrupt, whatever the adjective means for an entire country, yet in the third week of January the Financial Times index of stock prices rose by more than 50 per cent...

...I dare say the like is possible in New York, though I somehow doubt it...

...At the other end of the eating scale, I can testify by experiment that $25 can vanish at lunch in one of the Wheeler fish restaurants...

...Oxford, Cambridge and such fashionable postwar rivals as Sussex and Essex still consume an inordinate slice of the modest resources available for higher education...

...Although unemployment is rising, it is only half the American rate...

...Thanks to an extraordinarily mild winter, cherry blossoms and daffodils flourish in St...

...Out from a cubicle behind the desk popped a choleric individual in a three-piece suit who glared at me and accusingly announced that for two days and nights I had been double-booked...

...Medical care is free, urban rents are frozen and essential foods are subsidized...

...Arriving late in the evening, I identified myself to the porter at the desk and watched him slowly gather in the fact of my existence...

...The stores are booming...

...Life in Oxford is equally dreamy...

...In the postwar era Conservatives have held office nearly two-thirds of the time...

...An unswank pub lunch featuring a pint of watery bitter (Watney's Best more's the pity), a roast beef sandwich consisting of perhaps a half ounce of gristly meat between two thin slices of denatured bread, and one of England's almost vegetarian sausages, costs nearly $2...

...After a bit of cross-talk, the facts emerged...

...The authors of such of these volumes as I have read seem to agree on three depressing influences...

...Your guess is as good as mine...

...our own mere 12 per cent), while wages and salaries soared over 28 per cent under the social contract-the informal and highly leaky agreement between the unions and the Wilson government designed to protect working-class living standards...

...afterward, in the senior common room, port, madeira and more claret circulated precisely three times under the direction of the presiding Senior Fellow...

...With a resigned spirit that is anything but reassuring, English practitioners of the dismal science are quietly waiting for mass unemployment, deep depression, and ultimate moderation of union wage demands to reduce British prices and restore British competitiveness in world markets...

...Britain will probably muddle through for the nth occasion, if only because the rest of the world cannot in its own interest really afford a financial collapse in a major commercial country...

...James Park, and a few of last season's roses grace the lovely green of this charming oasis...

...Oxford's Magdalen College, a 15th-century foundation, to this day instructs its privileged 300 undergraduates in individual tutorials...

...When I casually confided my great admiration for the tutorial technique and my wish that it could be transferred to some of the sketchily-prepared Open Admissions students I have encountered at the City University of New York, my comment was politely received as typical American humor...

...Double rooms in a superior hostelry like Brown's Hotel start at $55, and single rooms in the drafty storage bins for tourists in Blooms-bury run to $15-18 a night with shared bath...

...Theaters and restaurants are doing well...

...At 8 new pence, the Times of London costs just what the New York Times does, and the Economist, which every Friday predicts the imminent demise of the British economy, sells for over 80 American cents per prophecy...

...Indeed, much of England still reeks of privilege...

...The one concrete proposal so far published, an Income Gains Tax designed to diminish the rewards from inflationary wage and salary increases, has just been advanced by Barbara Wootton, a 78-year-old life peer who no longer thinks of herself as an economist...

...Magdalen is a fair example of the British talent at mingling luxury and extreme discomfort...

...There is another, more important support of the British economy: Last year's price inflation ran at a slightly more than 19 per cent pace (vs...

...It is no surprise that the general mood of economists and editorial writers is glum...

...What worries me is not the sort of thing that afflicts the Economist, it is a loss of confidence and inventiveness by a profession that once boasted a John Maynard Keynes...

...By comparison, New York's Daily News is a sophisticated sheet that can hold its own with the London Daily Telegraph, a favorite among businessmen who find the Times and the Guardian too severe for their taste...

...Britain's mass-circulation press-the Mirror, News of the World, the People-is written for the semi-literate, men and women who move their lips as they read...

...One is the accident of history that located the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in England...

...The unions in England have been strong enough to overthrow governments, as the miners' strike ousted Edward Heath's Conservatives last February, and win most of their battles with public and private employers...

...Snuff was offered, according to custom, by a medical fellow, on the premise that unlike alcohol, or tobacco in other guises, it is a dangerous drug...

...Coincident with the British yearning for a peaceful life has been the extraordinary reluctance to invest in new equipment and new factory facilities...

...The Arabs, meanwhile, continue to deposit vast quantities of petromoney in British banks...

...But England is still a land of paradox...

...Shivering under three blankets, regretting the quantity of wine I had ingested, and resolving henceforth total abstinence from grape and grain (a resolution firmly kept until late the following afternoon) I brooded upon Emerson's Law of Compensation...

...These are the inflationary symptoms of an economy in deep disarray...

...No one has plausibly argued that management blossomed and investment soared more under the benign indulgence of Winston Churchill, Lord Avon, Harold Macmillan, Lord Home, and Edward Heath, than under the austere direction of Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson...

...When I appeared in person, the slow-witted porter simply wrote my name down a second time, ignoring both his records and my claim that I had made a reservation...