Oil leak

SINCE Sir Malcolm Rifkind joined the board of Ramco Energy on August 1, #100m has gone missing. The company's market value has dropped from #340m to #240m.

Why? When I put this tough question to Aberdeen's oil baron Steve Remp, he answered: ''He has only just left the room, otherwise you could have asked him yourself.''

Sounds very suspicious. Now I know what oilmen mean when they talk about ''political risk''.

No road sense

THE Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting - or as we know it in Edinburgh CHOGM (Cars Halt On Glasgow Motor-way) - means park 'n' ride is here at last.

''We are trying to encourage people to come into the city by public transport,'' a council spokeswoman told me. But hang on, isn't that the council's policy the rest of the time too?

''Yes.'' So why don't you normally signpost car parks like this?

''The trouble is there has to be public transport available to do it.'' So there will be extra buses laid on during the CHOGM?

''There will be one service from Ingliston. In other areas there will be extra capacity on the buses.''

You mean extra buses? ''No. Extra capacity on existing buses.''

Eh?

Meanwhile, the British Road Federation is as noisy as ever. Its latest ''Road Fact 97'' brochure, sponsored by Shell Bitumen, demonstrates that all you need is more roads.

On the back it claims to ''support increased investment in public transport,'' but strangely its entire battery of statistical ''facts'' is on private transport.

Where can you consult this objective source of wisdom? Among the community information brochures in the public libraries of that great pro-road city, Edinburgh! A council spokesman said gamely: ''Generally speaking public libraries have a responsibility to avoid bias.''

Dotty ...

MORE on Internet names. The Seychelles has got it. So has Guam. But Scotland hasn't. What is it? It's our own ''domain'' name.

Instead of the tiresome ''co.uk.'' our businesses should be listed as ''co.sco.'' (or similar), according to Mike McCormack, editor of Monitor IT magazine.

He argues that only a domain name, allied to a coherent system for organising content on the world-wide web - which is coming from the US as the Net becomes accessible via your television and a few remote buttons - will make the Internet business- friendly.

''Trying to find anything on the Internet is like pissing in the ocean,'' he says. ''If you call up Scotland you get golf courses, a history of Presbyterian reform and backpacking in Oban. What you need is pointers to a central Scottish site where you can find everybody else.

''At the moment there are 400 Scottish home pages to pick from.''

For a start, the Scottish parliament could get Scotland on to the UN's List 3166, which would allow us to have a letter code - like Pittcairn.

At a loss!

THE Stock Exchange's new trading system starts on Monday.

For those of you who wonder why, I quote from ''The idiot's guide to order-driven trading'' in last weekend's Daily Telegraph: ''Under the old system, market-makers hold stock in their own accounts, hoping to sell shares for less than the price they paid.''

No surprise they have gone out of business.

Going private

COMMUNITY business is going private - and it's working. Edinburgh suddenly has convenience stores in two of its most shop-less housing schemes, Niddrie and West Granton, owned by community trusts but leased to an entrepreneur. Graeme Rankin, from Glasgow, was a general manager with Tesco but left after seven years. Ironically, when Rankin responded to a job advert in The Herald from Community Enterprise Lothian, he arrived in Niddrie to take over a shop which had been run by a committee.

Anne-Marie McGeoch who runs CEL, Scotland's last surviving autonomous agency of its kind, says: ''We had to reassess our objectives. What people want out of their community shop is service, jobs, and an income for the local community.''

''Profit margins improved immediately. We think we have got a good model here.''

Rankin employs 20 people and says he wants customers, not quick returns. ''We take smaller margins, I am very much into giving the customer good value, and we are trying to get them more involved in fresh foods.''

Local people raised #260,000 to build the shop and post office at West Granton, and John Moorhouse, director of Scottish Business in the Community, who helped launch it the other day says: ''What's missing in so many communities is good shops. But now a community trust has realised where its expertise and skills lie; it doesn't lie in running a shop.

''Retail is a highly skilled business, and it doesn't work if it isn't your own money.''

A charity business in Coatbridge, meanwhile, has created 50 jobs since January. They are in Scotland's first sales and distribution office for General Welfare of the Blind, and managing director Morag Fraser says expansion could double over the next year.

The operation sells cleaning products manufactured by blind people in three factories in England. It holds an open day on Friday at Kennedy House, Gartsherrie Road at 2pm.

Flannel

FORTH Ports yesterday presented to Donald Dewar its 15-point plan to attract the Scottish parliament to its own backyard.

It is focusing on 15 words, listed in random order, displayed next to an artist's impression of the leafy boulevards of Leith-sur-mer. The subliminal page reads: ''optimistic modern millennium efficient image civic regeneration quality waterfront enlightened practical urban places environment world-class''.

Is this avant-garde PR, or has someone thankfully fired the copywriters and just printed the briefing note by mistake?

Either way, it could start a welcome trend in annual reports. The average chairman's statement could be happily crunched into one sentence: ''value shareholders focus growing optimistic flannel focus core ongoing restructure focus padding strategy.''

Balancing act

GERARD O'Brien, Scottish Enterprise's mercurial public voice, away for a fortnight, was keen to clarify his whereabouts.

''A week in Brighton, then a week in Blackpool. A foot in both camps.''

O'Brien, the former Conservative PR who weeks before the election made a surprise attack on the then Government, explained: ''It is a very hard job here. There are so many forces at work, you have the Scottish Office, you have Ministers, and the Scottish Office doesn't like you talking to Ministers.

''At times you have to appraise Ministers of something which they would rather you didn't, so I do.'' A risky path? ''You will all come to my funeral and say 'foolish but brave'.''