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Despite the Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC), Mr. Jackson Gaius Obaseki’s promise that the fuel scarcity currently being experienced all over the country would abate by penultimate weekend, the contrary appeared to be the case as the expected 200,000 metric tonnes of premium motor spirit (petrol) has done little to mitigate the anguish of motorists and commuters.

FOR commuters and motorists alike, most of whom have almost forgotten the hassles associated with fuel scarcity, these past four weeks have indeed been trying. For just when Nigerians having enjoyed considerable stability in product supply in the past three and half years, were beginning to heave a sigh of relief that fuel scarcity and its attendant problems were now a thing of the past, long queues suddenly re-emerged at filling stations across the land. Often these fuel queues stretched for kilometres.

In Lagos, the latest fuel crisis as usual brought out the worst in motorists and filling stations attendants as most motorists in trying to procure fuel blocked the roads with their vehicles, thus resulting in traffic gridlocks while the attendants on their part, adopted several means of shortchanging customers. Street urchins also cashed in on the chaos at most filling stations to make brisk business.

At the Total Filling Station, Alakuko in Alagbado on Abeokuta Expressway, at the instance of the station’s management perhaps, pump attendants made brisk business. Motorcyclists were only allowed into the premises after paying a toll of N50 at the gate. This was aside the mandatory token of N50 to the attendant who sold the fuel. But as the motorcyclists (Okada riders) pointed out to the DAILY TIMES, “ it is better to part with this sum of money than to spend four to five hours at the station.

Motorists on their part, had to part with N200 and more to refuel their vehicles while noncompliant buyers were not obliged with fuel.

Moreover, a group of young men armed with jerry-cans of fuel were seen milling around the station, obviously looking for desperate motorists on the queue, who ended up parting with as much as N3000 for 25 litres. According to a motorist, Mr. Akinwale Gboyega, rather than stay endlessly on the queue and probably have his car dented in the process , he preferred to buy from the black market.

Strikingly, while many fuel stations lacked fuel for sale, hundreds of street urchins, otherwise known as ‘area boys’ were seen in different parts of the city peddling the scarce product though at exorbitant prices. For example, 50 litres of petrol which official price was N1300 was sold for N3500 while 25 litres, sold at N1,600 instead of N650.

As one of the ubiquitous fuel hawkers, Saheed, disclosed, their prohibitive price was determined by the extra charges collected by the fuel stations before it could be sold to them in jerry cans. For instance, the total cost of purchasing a 50-litre jerry can of petrol came to N2200, though the pump cost was N1600, thus, settling amounted to N800. Saying that they often operated from morning till late in the night, especially at filling stations with very long queues, Saheed said their customers were often affluent persons or those who were too busy to queue for fuel. He also claimed that some stations had adjusted their metres to reduce the quantity being sold to unsuspecting motorists.

But the area boys had the Police to worry about. Sometimes, the security men came round to seize their fuel while at other times, they (street urchins) bribed them to forestall seizure of their priced product, Saheed said.

Princess, a business woman, lamented that the current fuel crises was affecting her business hence she had to resort to the black market in order to be mobile. “ Last Monday, I was forced to buy 20 litres of petrol at the black market for N2000 due to the fact that I had an urgent supply to make to my client,” she said. When she spoke to the DAILY TIMES, she claimed to have been on the fuel queue at the station since 6.30 a.m., thereby, foregoing the day’s activities.

Expectedly, commuters are the ones who bore the brunt of the hassles being experienced by commercial bus drivers to procure premium spirit. A driver on the Iyana-Ipaja/Ikeja route, Babajide, bluntly stated that , “this is our time to make money; we queue for fuel for several hours, yet we have to pay the Police, the touts and also deliver to the owner of the bus. Commuters must face the reality.”

Similarly, a commercial bus driver, Mr. Oludare Adekunle, said he had been on the queue since the early hours of the day having exhausted the fuel he bought three days ago. If eventually, he got fuel, commuters would have to pay for the wasted time on the queue since he had to deliver a certain amount of money to his boss. It was such situation that made most commercial drivers to hike transportation fares, Adekunle explained.

A commuter, who resided in Gowon Estate, Egbeda, a sprawling suburb on the outskirts of Lagos and worked in Victoria Island, lamented that ever since the resurgence of fuel queues, he now spent between N400 and N600 daily on transport. Previously, a bus ride from Egbeda o Obalende, CMS cost either N80 or N100, but given the current fuel crisis, commercial bus operators now charged between N150 and N200 depending on the crowd. Worse still, there was a Monday when commuters on that route had to cough out as much as N250 to Obalande.”

Parents also complained of having to spend more on their children’s transport fare to their various schools. One Mr. Omotunde, complained that, one of his children fell ill last week due to the long distance he trekked from Egbeda to Ikotun, where his school was located because he was unable to struggle with fellow commuters for the few available buses on the routes.

It does not appear that Nigerians are comfortable with the excuses being thrown up by the Federal Government and the relevant officials in the sector on the actual causes of the crises. As Mr. Ojo asserted, this was what he considered the most frustrating aspect of the crisis. “How can one suffer for what he did not know and for how long, he cannot say,” he asked. Initially, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Jerry Gana, had linked the current crises to detractors who wanted to sink the ship of the state.

However, after several weeks of speculation on the causes of the shortage, President Olusegun Obasanjo in far away Damaturu, Yobe State, traced the crisis to the war between America and Iraq, which made oil prices go up. He also said that the strike of oil workers in Venezuela contributed to the increase in the price on the international market. The Presidentc further stated that they thought the problem had been resolved, apparently in reference to the temporary abatement of the scarcity.

Investigations by the DAILY TIMES revealed that the officials of the petroleum ministry did not react promptly to the dynamics of international oil price. The surge in oil prices last month brought the price to an all time peak of about $40 per barrel. This increase sparked off a disagreement between the major marketers and the NNPC. International media reports indicate that oil prices are usually agreed upon two months ahead of its supply. For instance, in anticipation of a surge in oil prices in the event of war, Saudi Arabia the largest oil producer said it had secured 14 extra tankers to ship an additional 29.9 million barrels to the US, which was expected to be delivered in May. During the last OPEC meeting, it also said it was pumping more oil to meet the world’s demand, by 1.5 million barrels per day. The same cushioning was also made by the International Energy Agency ( IEA). These explained why oil prices slumped to as low as 31.16 dollars per barrel according to its Director, Claude Mandel.

Reacting to this development, the President of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Mr. John Odeyemi, asked the government to increase the price of fuel. As he argued, given that most of the fuel used in the country was imported, then , the difference in local pump price and the cost of importation constituted a huge deficit on the government. As such, it had become imperative to adjust the price.

Arguing that a lasting solution to this problem can be engineered by the relevant authorities ,Odeyemi canvassed for more commitment in the repair of the refineries to check the perennial crisis associated with price increase, while suggesting that the time had come for the government to enter into a barter arrangement with oil firms in Nigeria. Such arrangement will see these functions as a liaison with their relevant branches overseas that could receive and refine fuel for the country at a lower price and shipped in on a special import duty basis.

“The Federal Government can ask Agip, Mobil or others to take oil abroad to refine and bring it back under a special arrangement,” he argued.

But such responsibility may not be convenient to the government considering the impasse that had dogged the current fuel crises. For instance, while the major marketers are insisting that only a hike in the price to N37 would determine their future participation in importing refined products, NNPC, the organisation in charge of importing the fuel into the country, has maintained it would not succumb to any price increase.

<a href=news.moneycentral.msn.com>Reuter March 25, 2003 00:11:00 AM ET

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices ticked higher on Tuesday, bouncing from last week's four-month lows with traders focused on resistance to U.S. invasion forces in Iraq and tribal violence in Nigeria which has cut its crude output by 40 percent.

U.S. light crude was up 34 cents to $29.00 a barrel at 11:50 p.m. EST Monday, extending Monday's $1.75 jump. London's Brent crude had climbed 31 cents to $26.40 a barrel.

U.S. and British forces faced tough resistance from Iraqi fighters as they opened an assault on Republican Guards defending approaches to Baghdad in a campaign aimed to oust President Saddam Hussein.

Oil fell almost 30 percent last week as traders factored in a short war with little damage to Iraq's oil industry, which pumped 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) before the U.S.-led assault.

Traders were also relieved that crude supplies from other Gulf producers flowed unhampered by hostilities. The Gulf region pumps about 40 percent of global exports.

But confidence in a quick war waned after the weekend as U.S. and British forces suffered their heaviest casualties so far.

``The market is responding to difficulties in the Iraq campaign. It had priced in the perfect war and had gone so far as building in a victory discount, which is now being eroded,'' Sydney-based oil analyst Simon Games-Thomas said.

NIGERIA STIRS VENEZUELA MEMORIES

A series of bloody clashes in Nigeria forced the closure of about 800,000 bpd of the 2.2 million bpd produced by Western oil firms in Africa's biggest producer.

Ethnic groups in the oil-rich Niger Delta are battling for a greater share of the country's oil wealth.

Nigeria is one of the top six oil exporters to the United States, where fuel supplies have been running at 27-year lows partly due to a Venezuelan general strike, all but cutting off oil exports from the South American country.

Nigeria sent more than 560,000 bpd to U.S. shores last year.

Venezuela, the world's fifth biggest crude exporter before the strike began in early December, supplied about 13 percent of U.S. oil imports. Venezuela's output has been slowly increasing since early February.

The Nigerian outage provided the oil market with an uncomfortable reminder of the Venezuelan strike, David Thurtell, commodities strategist at Commonwealth Bank in Sydney, said.

``Nigeria is pretty volatile at the best of times, but people probably said the same about Venezuela four months ago. If Nigeria is down to one million bpd for a month, supplies will tighten up again,'' Thurtell said.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries could make up any shortfall in supply from Nigeria, OPEC's fifth largest producer, cartel president, Abdullah al-Attiyah, said on Monday.

The group has also pledged to make up for the disruption to Iraqi exports.

But OPEC officials have said there is no shortage of oil in world markets so there is no need to increase output. Oil demand usually drops in the second quarter of the year when northern hemisphere winter demand recedes.

<a href=www.upi.com>The Bear's Lair By Martin Hutchinson UPI Business and Economics Editor From the Business & Economics Desk Published 3/24/2003 6:05 PM

WASHINGTON, March 24 (UPI) -- Once Saddam Hussein is defeated, the U.S.-led coalition that has defeated him will have its most difficult economic decision: what to do with Iraq's oil revenues, to ensure that they benefit the Iraqi people as a whole, rather than simply fueling a destructive and greedy government machine.

It's a difficult problem. Of all large-scale revenue sources, oil has proved itself the most destructive to the quality of local governments and the welfare of local peoples.

Examples abound. Venezuela, in spite of being a democracy and relatively well-off, has been appallingly run since the 1950s, completely failing to develop a viable non-oil economy. Mexico, one of the world's wealthier countries in 1945, declined into an orgy of corruption owing to its oil wealth, with the worst corruption coming during the 1970-82 period, when oil was at its most valuable. Indonesia, while a dictatorship, was a beacon of Asian success until President Suharto's last years, but has descended into a mire of corruption since the middle 1990s. Since Suharto's departure in 1998, none of his three democratically elected successors has shown any ability to make the Indonesian economy work.

And then there's Nigeria.

There aren't a lot of favorable counter-examples. Tiny countries like Kuwait, Dubai and Qatar do OK, proving that if you have ENOUGH oil wealth -- say $100,000 per annum per head of population -- you can manage to avoid dissipating it. Even Saudi Arabia, the world's oil-wealthiest country, saw its per capita gross domestic product decline from $25,000 to $7,000 from 1980 to 2000, proving that in spite of the Suharto example, autocracy is no cure for oil-financed corruption. Britain, Norway and Russia have shown that oil wealth in modest quantities can be a boom, but all three countries had strong non-oil economies before the oil wealth appeared (in the case of Britain and Norway) or a huge non-oil sector that co-existed alongside it (Russia).

It is pretty clear therefore that simply removing Saddam and installing a democratic government will not ensure good government in Iraq. Since the country has the world's second-largest oil reserves and only a weak non-oil economy, there is no chance that it will follow the path of Britain, Norway and Russia, and every likelihood that even a democratic Iraq will become a second Venezuela or Nigeria, failing to enrich its people and squandering the money in worthless government projects and unbounded corruption. And, of course there remains the possibility that such an Iraq will continue at some level to sponsor terrorist activity.

So what are the alternatives? Until last Monday, under the 1995 "oil-for-food" program, Iraq's oil revenues were handled by the United Nations. This rendered a large portion of the Iraqi population -- some 14 million out of the country's population of 24 million -- dependent on handouts from the U.N.'s relief administrators. As the citizens of the Berkshire village of Speenhamland found out in 1795, a pure handout program of this kind, in a society that has a high poverty level and considerable social dislocation, simply creates dependence and reduces economic activity. Naturally, the "oil for food" program has also done nothing for Iraq's agriculture. While possibly a necessary (if ineffectual) remedy at a time Iraq was subject to international sanctions, U.N. administration of Iraq's principal source of foreign exchange earnings is bound to cause huge political and economic trouble going forward.

Another possibility would be for the oil revenues to be administered by the World Bank or the IMF, which would use them to pursue a carefully thought out development strategy according to the governing policies of the international institution concerned. This has two problems. First, it would be perceived in Iraq as an exercise in U.S. imperialism, since the World Bank and IMF are perceived in the Third World, rightly or wrongly, as instruments of U.S. policy. Second, it would provide no tangible benefits for the Iraqi population themselves (other than by U.N.-type handouts, which have the problems outlined above) but would simply provide a huge "gravy train" for the international institutions and their associated consultants, by which the money will be wasted on ineffectual projects, while the true needs of the population go unmet.

If you think I'm exaggerating, consider Bosnia, a relatively prosperous country with a good education system before 1991, into which tens of billions of dollars of international aid have been poured, without any sign of having created a viable economy. The reason for this is quite simple: The international aid agencies, bound by their own agendas, paid little attention to the needs of the Bosnians themselves. In every other country that broke away from the former Yugoslavia, one of the first orders of business was to provide a mechanism to restore to the populace their foreign currency savings, which had been expropriated by the Yugoslav National Bank in 1991, and used to fund the Serbian war machine. Once this had been done, new business formation and the restoration of a functioning economy were once again possible, since these savings were of course the main source of small business financing. In Bosnia, the problem was ignored by the aid agencies, and by the government they controlled, and the small business sector is consequently notably absent from the current Bosnian economic scene.

The central problem in all the above schemes for spending Iraq's oil revenues is that they depend on a central Marxist fallacy: that the oil under a country, and the oil production issuing from the country, are rightfully the property of that country's government.

This is equivalent to nationalizing the U.S. semiconductor industry, on the grounds that the U.S. government had provided for the education of William Shockley and his successors who invested in the various devices involved. The principle makes no sense economically; still more does it make no sense morally.

In economic reality, there are two groups of people who have a right to the revenues from Iraq's oil industry: the oil companies that developed it, and the owners of the land under which the oil was discovered. In the event that private property rights were undeveloped in the region when the oil was found, the latter ownership devolves, not on the Iraqi government, but on the Iraqi people themselves.

The majority of Iraq's oilfields were developed by the Iraq Petroleum Corp., a consortium founded in 1925, and owned by British Petroleum (23.75 percent) Shell (23.75 percent) Compagnie Francaise des Petroles (23.75 percent) ExxonMobil (23.7 percent, between the two constituent companies) and the late Nubar Gulbenkian, the famous "Mr. Five Percent" wheeler dealer, owner of that percentage of the company. IPC was partially expropriated in 1964 and fully nationalized in 1972, the latter by a government of which Saddam was already the guiding figure.

There would thus seem no reason to recognize the expropriation, and every reason to return the operation of the oilfields to the British, Anglo-Dutch, French, U.S. and Portuguese (the Gulbenkian Foundation, domiciled in Lisbon) entities whose rights were so brutally overruled by Saddam's thugs. The Iraq National Oil Company, a corrupt tool of the Saddam regime, can legitimately be cut out of the business.

It is also however clear, through examination of current operating agreements in the oil industry, that the great majority of the oil revenues, perhaps 75 percent to 80 percent, should accrue to the landholders, in this case (subject to any well-founded title claims by individuals on particular oil fields) to the Iraqi people as a whole -- NOT to the government. By ensuring that oil revenues accrue to individual Iraqis, not to their government, the coalition can provide the Iraqi people with a huge tangible benefit from the invasion, and spread the money widely enough so that any funding for terrorism or a military machine is insignificant.

The requirement therefore is for a fund that holds the money, and that contains individual accounts in the name of the Iraqi people, who derive benefit from their holdings and have at least some degree of control over the way the money is invested. Fortunately, there is an excellent model for such an entity: Singapore's Central Provident Fund, with currently 2.9 million members and assets of $45 billion.

The CPF was set up initially in 1955, but its growth dates from 1968, when by a provision of Singapore law a percentage of every employee's salary (currently 20 percent paid by the employee plus 16 percent paid by the employer) up to SGD 6,000 ($3,000) per month is paid into the fund, to accrue in solid investments and pay for the employee's future retirement, health and later housing (by means of home mortgage withdrawal) needs. The fund's investments are managed by trustees, who provide "a fair market return at minimal risk" which is linked to bank deposit rates. However, fund members may also choose their own investment vehicles from an approved list for their accrued fund balances.

Iraq's short-term potential oil production is around 2.5 million barrels per day, with the possibility of an increase to 3.5 billion barrels per day within 3-5 years from investment in new fields. At an oil price of $25 per barrel, with 80 percent of oil revenues devoted to the fund, an Iraqi CPF would have initial revenues of $18.25 billion per annum, or $760.42 for every Iraqi man, woman and child. In addition, going forward, a portion of employed Iraqi's earnings, maybe 10 percent, could be added to his account in the fund.

Over a period of years, as the fund's revenues and assets grew, this should prove sufficient to provide the Iraqi people with basic retirement, health and unemployment benefit needs, as well as educational services for Iraq's children. It would best be managed by the staff of Singapore's CPF, who have 35 years experience in running this type of scheme, and are as far as humanly possible incorruptible (Singapore ranked fifth-lowest in the world, after three Scandinavian countries and New Zealand, in Transparency International's most recent annual corruption rankings.)

By instituting an Iraqi CPF, with individual accounts, funded by the oil revenues, and managed by staff of the Singapore CPF, the coalition would over a 2-3 year period allow the Iraqi people to develop an asset over which they had (if they wished) individual investment control, which would fund their basic social program needs. The new Iraqi government, in turn, would have to depend on non-oil sources, such as sales and income taxes on the Iraqi people for its revenues. It would thus be relatively impoverished, but would also have no need to provide basic social security, health or education services for its people. With at most 10 percent of Iraq's GDP under its control, it would be unable to afford expensive military adventures, would have very limited control over the Iraqi economy, and relatively few and minor avenues for serious corruption.

An Iraqi people who had their basic social security, health and education needs taken care of by a Central Provident Fund managed by incorruptible and capable Singaporeans, and whose government was modest and not very corrupt, would be the happiest polity in the unhappy Middle East. That, at least, is something worth fighting for.

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(The Bear's Lair is a weekly column that is intended to appear each Monday, an appropriately gloomy day of the week. Its rationale is that, in the long '90s boom, the proportion of "sell" recommendations put out by Wall Street houses declined from 9 percent of all research reports to 1 percent and has only modestly rebounded since. Accordingly, investors have an excess of positive information and very little negative information. The column thus takes the ursine view of life and the market, in the hope that it may be usefully different from what investors see elsewhere.)

Times Analysis March 25, 2003 Business Editor's Commentary by Patience Wheatcroft

IIRRATIONAL exuberance rarely comes in quite so pronounced form as it did last week. Even allowing for the extraordinary enthusiasm for worthless internet stocks that led Alan Greenspan to resort to the phrase, the seven consecutive days of rises that the stock market experienced had not been seen in 40 years.

And they were completely irrational. Celebrating the start of war with a flurry of investment in the equity market might have obeyed the historical precedent but it lacked logic. It might have been a bet on a positive outcome to a short, sharp war but that was to ignore the underlying problems that beset so many companies and those investors who have traditionally put their money into equities — the pension funds.

The oil market is just as crazy as shares and could become even more dangerous. It is tempting to believe that price movements are being driven by genuine changes in demand and supply, or potential disruption to supply. Such factors might help to explain the 50 per cent rise in prices between November and early March, as users stocked up for war and Venezuela’s two million barrels per day were stopped by strikes. They might even explain yesterday’s $1.5 per barrel surge. The war suddenly looked longer and, for seemingly unrelated reasons, 800,000 barrels are being lost from Nigeria, a key source of oil for America.

If that were the test, however, it would be hard to explain why oil prices crashed to a four-month low in the first few days of conflict, even if Venezuelan output is gradually coming back into play.

In reality, oil prices, like share prices, are being driven by follow-the-trend speculators and “directional” hedge funds, who are eclipsing the power of Opec as they have that of regular institutional investors. Once a trend has run its course, as the oil price falls and share price rises clearly had by the weekend, traders are looking for an excuse to turn round and head the other way.

Random huge swings in oil prices are not just hopelessly damaging to producers. They can switch growth in the world economy off or on. Given that those oil producers that can produce have little spare capacity left, it would not be amazing to see traders attempt another uptrend in the price.

Over time, however, trend-following in the oil market is something of a zero-sum game. Even if prices were driven only by “real” trades, the market would be cyclical. On the stock market, such trend following can bring a change in investment behaviiour, as it has in recent years in Japan. For decades, we have expected share prices to follow a long-term upward movement, in line with output and profits, even if they occasionally move too fast and too far and have painful corrections. If the directional speculators remain in charge, however, as they have in Tokyo, share prices start to be essentially cyclical. If that happens, even the most most sober long-term pension funds begin to think in terms of getting in and out of shares, as many traded in and out of bonds during the decades of inflation.

That is the opposite of what British businesses need if they are to stand a chance of improving their competitiveness and thus generating better long-term returns for investors. As the CBI highlighted yesterday, with next month’s Budget in mind, British companies are failing to invest in machinery and equipment. The level of investment fell by 12.7 per cent over the past two years, the greatest decline of any of the G7 countries. The CBI wants more tax credits for research and development to help to stimulate an improvement. Even more important though would be incentives to encourage investors in companies to take a long-term approach.

Serious money for serious results

LAST Friday Simon Group announced that Michael Davies “has decided to retire”. A sensible decision, one might have thought, given the company’s miserable performance in recent years and the admission that, after 13 months of trying to find a buyer, it had been forced to abandon hopes of negotiating a deal.

But far from apologising to shareholders and bowing out, Davies is negotiating a payoff. Even as the shares sank to a 30-year low, he was of the view that his one-year contract entitled him to compensation. Some might feel that he had already done rather nicely for a non-executive chairman of a shrinking company. Last year he collected £113,000 but the year before his take had been swollen by a bonus of £193,000, the fifth and final instalment in an unusual bonus scheme negotiated back in 1994, when Simon had been in financial difficulties.

Timothy Chadwick, the new chairman, acknowledged the fact that Davies had seen the port operator through that tricky period. However, he added that: “I am confident that with a new team and sharper focus, we are well placed to grow shareholder value.” That implies there might of late have been a lack of focus under Mr Davies, who is approaching 70. He had certainly found time to sit on plenty of other boards. He was until recently chairman of National Express and Corporate Services Group and a non-executive director of British Airways. He remains chairman of National Express.

Shareholders might resent having to continue paying him a salary in his retirement.

But presumably Davies takes the view that there is no harm in asking for more, since boards generally pay up without protest. At the housebuilder Persimmon, the chief executive John White reckoned that he should not give up his two-year roller for nothing, so he is being compensated to the tune of £1.2 million. Other directors who still enjoy the benefit of contracts longer than the one year which corporate governance best practice decrees appropriate will no doubt support White’s case. Granada directors were compensated when their contracts were reduced from three years to two but, rather than send investors another bill, the chairman Charles Allen has held on to his two-year roller, despite protests from investors.

Unless investors press their case more vigorously, they will continue to find that they are overridden. The message that they need to instil into boardrooms is that they are happy to see executives remunerated handsomely for good results. But rewards need to relate to what shareholders experience.

An example of cluttered thinking

A NEW survey concludes that office staff spend almost three hours a day unproductively. From this information, the survey was able to conclude that wasted time in the office was costing employers more than £150 billion a year.

The organisation responsible for providing this information is learndirect, a purveyor of online education in need of a lesson in the use of capital letters.

Six weeks ago, this same organisation declared that 57 per cent of people had nightmares about work, a quarter of those bad dreams occurring on Sunday nights as the nation braced itself for Monday morning. This insight into an over-stressed workforce was the result of another survey. So was the information, published a couple of weeks later, that more than one in four members of the workploace rated their boss as either “incompetent”, “disinterested” or “a dictator”. Thanks to learndirect, we now know that 93 per cent of people rate “strong, inspirational leadership and professional encouragement” as the most important qualities in a boss.

Perhaps some of the time being spent so unproductively by office workers is being used to answer silly questions from learndirect. There is, after all, serious work to be done by this publicly funded body. It was set up under the auspices of the University for Industry, the vehicle through which the Government set out to encourage people to keep on learning throughout their lives.

A noble cause belittled by such nonsense as the patronising exhortation to celebrate the start of spring with a desk-detox. “A messy desk is very demotivating,” according to Helen Milner, learndirect’s director of operations. So her government-funded organisation enlisted the services of one Dawna Walters who, apparently, presents a BBC Two programme called Life Laundry to produce a guide to . . . tidying your desk.

Few would deny that there are inefficiencies in offices, although whether they cost £150 billion is debatable. There can be no doubt, however, that learndirect is wasting public money on silly stunts that will do nothing to improve literacy and numeracy levels in the country.

LAST night Michael Howard, Shadow Chancellor, dissected Gordon Brown’s attitude to reform of public services generally and the health service in particular. He concluded that the Chancellor’s conviction that there had to be a centralised state monopoly in healthcare meant the increased funds being pumped into the NHS would not produce commensurate improvements. What hope for consumer choice from a Chancellor who reached 6,086 words in a speech on the subject before saying: “Finally, choice . . .”?

<a href+http://www.forbes.com/business/newswire/2003/03/24/rtr916669.html>Reuters, 03.24.03, 4:41 PM ET By Richard Valdmanis SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - The United States' drive to increase its energy independence could backfire by hurting the U.S. economy and creating political instability in countries which depend on oil export revenues, a top Saudi Arabian oil official said Monday. "Such a direction is characterized by disengagement, risk of economic stagnation, accompanied by instability in parts of the world," said Sharaf Salamah, the president of Saudi Refining. The Bush administration has said it wants to increase domestic U.S. energy supplies to lessen its growing reliance on imports, which supply more than half of U.S. oil needs. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, was the biggest supplier of crude oil to the United States last year, sending more than 1.5 million barrels daily. "The U.S. is one of the most important economic markets for our exporters and, in fact, our producers are more dependent on export revenues than the United States is on what it imports," Salamah said at the annual National Petrochemical and Refiners Association meeting in San Antonio. Saudi Refining owns 50 percent of U.S. oil refining firm Motiva Enterprises LLC. U.S. crude oil prices rose to 12-year highs near $40 a barrel less than a month ago as a two-month oil strike in key South American supplier Venezuela and a cold northern winter strained supply. Dealers also feared war in Iraq could upset supplies from the Middle East which ships 40 percent of the world's oil exports. Oil prices have since fallen below $29 after Saudi Arabia raised production to make up for lost Venezuelan supply. The dramatic moves in oil prices have raised hackles in the world's largest energy consumer, where retail gasoline prices recently hit a record high at $1.72 a gallon, well before peak demand summer driving season. Saudi Arabia has assured oil markets that it could further increase its output if required to stabilize prices. "Saudi Arabian oil policy rests on two main pillars, to maintain market stability to support the world economy, and encourage equitable oil prices to support the Saudi economy, which the Saudi Arabian government is working hard to diversify," Salamah said. "We continue to monitor the situation and are fully prepared to take appropriate action as necessary. To fulfill the promise of supporting the market's stability, Saudi Arabia currently maintains over two million barrels per day of surplus production capacity," he said. Salamah, who was chosen to speak at the NPRA conference after Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi canceled his trip due to the onset of war, said that Saudi Arabia's commitment to ensuring a stable oil market eliminated the need for U.S. energy independence. "The concept of self-sufficiency has been discounted a long time ago as part of the move toward a global society... where each nation specializes in what it does best," Salamah said. "This is the recipe for economic optimization."