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The Department of Trade and Industry has revoked export licences for
military goods to Liberia, following the UN Security Council’s Resolution
788, which places an embargo on all deliveries of weapons and military equipment
to the West African trouble spot.

Naturally, Britain’s arms trade with Liberia will continue unchanged,
and in a year or so, when someone finds out, there will be a spate of statements
from ministers saying things like: ‘Are you sure those were guns? I was
told they were water pistols’ and ‘Liberia? Oh dear me, I thought they were
talking about Libya’ and ‘Nobody told me anything.’

* * *

Baroness Denton, the British government’s small firms minister, recently
spoke at a Confederation of British Industry conference. In words that Norman
Lamont might take to heart, she noted that in the recession ‘late payment
of bills is killing off sound and viable small firms’.

She offered advice. ‘Ring up daily when the monies are overdue. Ring
the chairman – even at home – and go and collect it. It’s your money. Ask
for it!’ she thundered.

But how many people have the home numbers of company chairmen – especially
those that run companies which are slow at paying bills – in their address
books? Most of them are ex-directory.

Feedback decided to ask the Baroness for her thoughts on making chairmen’s
phone numbers more available. So we tried to get hold of her phone number,
using the kind of information technology which the DTI advocates British
businesses should use. Phone Disc is a CD-ROM which British Telecom rents
out for a cool £2200 a year. It stores all listed phone numbers in
Britain.

Unfortunately Phone Disc showed no Baroness Denton. Nor did it show
the number of Norman Lamont, 11 Downing Street.

* * *

What does the word ‘Zeneca’ mean to you? Is it a camera, a washing machine,
perhaps a new board game? No, it’s the astonishingly naff new name for
ICI Bioscience, the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology arm of ICI created
earlier this year when the company decided to split its operations in half.
ICI spent a princely ‘five-figure sum’ dreaming up the word Zeneca.

According to David Barnes, who will take over as chief executive when
Zeneca adopts its new name on 1 January next year, the title is derived
from the word ‘zenith’, and is meant to reflect its status as a leading
bioscience company. ‘The capital Z is derived from the ancient notational
device employed by alchemists which means ‘to solve’,’ continues the company
blurb.

One thing’s for sure. Whatever Zeneca’s position in global economics,
it will certainly be listed near the end of any telephone directory –
a bad omen, as any cab firm owner will tell you.

* * *

Next time you visit a museum, watch out for a shifty-looking person
who keeps following you around with a pen and a notebook. He or she is likely
to be a member of the museum’s staff who is preparing a paper for next year’s
conference at the Science Museum on ‘visitor studies’, to be held in September.

Yes, that’s right. While you are studying the exhibits at the museum,
the museum could also be studying you, in order to improve its ‘evaluation
methods’ and work out ‘what the future holds’ for museum visitors.

Feedback wonders if the outcome of all this will be the addition of
new ‘visitor galleries’ to our museums, with stuffed visitors behind glass
who do typical visitor things like eating ice creams or asking where the
toilet is when you press a button.

* * *

What’s this? A press release from the Water Companies Association about
the recent ruling from the European Court of Justice that Britain had breached
the European Commission law on levels of nitrates in tap water? What did
it say? ‘Sorry,’ perhaps?

Not a bit of it. We learn that the ruling ‘which finds the British government
failed to correctly transpose the EC directive into UK law has no bearing
on drinking water quality in this country’.

Well, that’s all right, then.

* * *

A subtle subliminal message lies at the heart of the widely distributed
Foreign Office pamphlet Britain in Europe, which is designed to convince
a doubting nation of the advantages of the Maastricht treaty.

The second page has a satellite picture of Europe, coloured to show
the autumnal temperature across the continent. Most of Europe is a merry
mix of hues, with snow over the Alps and heat on the plains of Spain. Britain,
however, stands out as being uniformly blue, dull and chilly.

Is the Foreign Office trying to insinuate that Britain could get left
out in the cold if it rejects the Maastricht treaty? Heaven forfend, said
a Foreign Office spokesman. ‘There was no particular reason for the choice.’

* * *

The bubble has burst for the Japanese balloon industry. The trouble
started with the publication of an environmental guidebook, 50 Simple Things
You Can Do To Save The Earth. The book warned that sea animals may choke
to death on collapsed balloons floating in the water. Turtles, for example,
are liable to mistake them for edible jellyfish.

As a result, balloon sales in Japan have dropped by 30 per cent since
September 1990. Schools stopped using them, companies stopped ordering them
for their office parties. Tokyo Disneyland, which used to get through 200
000 balloons a year, cancelled all attractions involving balloons.

But help is at hand. A Tokyo firm, Castle, has developed an environmentally
friendly balloon that dissolves in water. ‘No business can survive without
considering what adverse effects a product will have on the environment.
The balloon industry is no exception,’ says the president of Castle, Yasuhiro
Osone.

Feedback applauds this philosophy, but hopes the new balloons will not
sell at an inflated price.