Diary

Speculation in some British newspapers that Lord Owen is a Tory foreign secretary in waiting appears to have spread to France, where the above cartoon, which originally appeared in the Times, was reproduced in Le Figaro Magazine. The magazine has translated the English caption for its readers . . . with just one mistake.

(Graphic omitted)

Chairpersons with ethical posture

WITH Britain permanently in the grip of a major business scandal, be it Guinness, Blue Arrow or the activities of Asil Nadir, some standards of propriety, at least, are about to be restored. Nearly two years after Stanley Kalms, the chairman of Dixons, donated pounds 1m to the London Business School for a new Chair in business ethics and social responsibility, the Diary can reveal that after interviewing people around the world, the LBS has made its choices for the Chair and Deputy Chair.

Kalms told me yesterday that he has approved the names in principle, having seen their CVs, but will meet them 'to make sure the chemistry is right' before an announcement next week. I cannot name names (Kalms was wary about giving too much away, not because he isn't confident about the names, but because he didn't want to upset the LBS - 'I'm very nervous about academics, they have their ritual dances'), but I can reveal that neither was born in this country (Kalms will approve, being the son of a Polish-born businessman), and that the Chair will go to a man, and his deputy will be an American woman.

Kalms set up the Chair (as well as a readership in business ethics and strategic management at the University of North London, starting in September) after becoming disenchanted with the excesses of the Eighties. He was a beneficiary, of course, but he thinks too many people took advantage of the free-market economy 'without asking what it means in terms of behaviour'. By this he doesn't so much mean Saunders, Nadir et al, who took this to its extremes and who would not have benefited from a course in ethics anyway, but rather the ordinary men and women who forgot 'how to care for people and issues'.

To my discomfort, he told me that he included me in this (or my type, anyway, particularly if I was in the habit of using a telephoto lens). Like the telephoto lenses he sells in his shops? We parted, I'm glad to say, the best of friends.

WHILE Sir Ronald Millar, Baroness Thatcher's former speech- writer, points out in his book that nobody dared correct the former PM when she referred to 'Denis and I', a reader tells me that, likewise, nobody corrected John Major when he said the other day: 'There is no difference of opinion between the Chancellor and I' At least the Prime Minister will not commit this particular solecism when he addresses the Scottish Tories on Friday. His speech- writer? Sir Ronald Millar.

Regional differences

MORE inaccuracies, this time on British Rail. Nobody worries too much as long as the trains run on time, but BR is having to make adjustments to some carriages on the new Turbo trains between Paddington and Oxford. In captions beneath pictures painted on the end walls of each coach, BR has Keble College as Keeble, Magdalen College as Magdalene (its sister college in Cambridge) and Christ Church as Christchurch College. Mike Haigh, district manager responsible for the Cotswold Line, explained: 'My only excuse is that the trains were built in York, which is a long way from Oxford. We will be getting the inscriptions changed as soon as we can.'

NOBODY else is wishing him well at the moment, so let the Diary be upstanding and toast Norman Lamont, guest of honour at a party on Friday to celebrate his 21st year as MP for Kingston-upon-Thames.

A DAY LIKE THIS

13 May 1904 Rilke writes to Lou Andreas-Salome from Rome: 'It is a showman's spring that takes place here, not Spring. Of course the tourists love it and feel honoured like little princes for whose sake everything has been swept and garnished; for them Italy must always be a sort of monarchic journey with triumphal gateways, flowers and fireworks. And in a certain sense they are right: they come down, tired of winter, central-heating and darkness, and find sun and comfort ready prepared for them. They do not demand more. But once you have seen, as a native, the whole winter here (full of the dogged pertinacity of what cannot die), the miracle that then ought to appear fails to materialise. You know it isn't a spring at all, for you have seen no spring evolving; these blossoms have as little difficulty in coming to their appointed places as decorations have in being put up anywhere.'