'AIL these storms were occasioned by the fact that the new Unemployment Assistance Board, having been at work only for a month, has not really got a grip of its duties (it) would be strange it it had) "and some cases of hardship have occur~ red, Particularly in South Wales, allowances have been cut down. On the other hand in Lancashire they have been put up, But one case reduction is more noticed than a thousand cases of increase. The attack is really unfair. "In some places where reductions have been enforced loca! authorities have been pointedly refusing to apply the Correct standard of relief; and the whole scale of allowances is more generous than that Introduced by the Socialists in 1990, and costs £2,000,- 090 a year more, Tt 1s not disputed that hardships have "occurred, and Mr. Oliver Stanley promised that they should be looked Into carefully. A young Minister, faced with appalling abuse, ho is generally allowed to have come out of the ordeal exceedingly 'As yet the Socialist majority which "rule the London County Council have not given any marked display of its ferocity at the rate-avers' expense, except for pulling down Waterloo' Bridge, in "which many people not Socialists "quite agree with them. Now, however, they have announced a large, three: year educational plan, which is 10 ive nearly 7,000 Sdditional scholar Suups from elementary to secondary schools.
The Children's Teeth The principle aimed at is that a child who has the brains to profit bby secondary education ought not to, Seed, forthe eating oom wing patents who can pay for it Teaching staffs are also to be enlarged and several elementary schools are to be rebuilt on more luxurious Unes. One part of the plan is that every child is to have its teeth. overhauled every year, The chile aren won't like that. But, even in these days, their wishes' are not always consulted.
The capital cost of the plan is estimated at £2,500,000. with the 'State grant thrown in, the addition to rates is expected to be not more than a penny-halfpenny. 'The point that appeals to the average citizen is, mot what he pays, but whether he—that' is, the" naiion—gets his money's worth. It is well-known that we spend for more in England on State education than any Con tinental country spends, but it is a very. doubtful question whether the results we get are even near those of the Continental schools.
This misgiving is not lessened by the news this week that in the latest examination for the upper Civil Service the elementary and secondary schools took 25 of the $1 vacancies, and the public schools only six. Just before Christmas. I Femember noticing that the results of the scholarship examinations at half-a-dozen Cambridge colleges had tone exactly the other way, the Public schoole beating the State Schools hollow.
Exceptional brain power knows nothing of rank or class, and indeed a splendid change which has provided q ladder for every boy, however poor, to reach the top. It fg the huge mass of average intelligence and what the State schools make of it, as tested by widespread experience' in' offices, which excites misgiving 23 to the efficacy of the whole system, cortonly In comparlson with Its enormous cost.
The Pursuit of Pleasure But to end on a lighter note, I cannot forbear from quoting from a solemn correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph," who wishes that "the younger people would forgo some their pleasures"—of which in cinemas, motor-ears, radio, sport, ete. the age is so prolifle—"and "turn their minds to the more serious side of ite Lis reasonable amount of the thine spent tu pursuit of pleasure been used gaining knowledge of the political and. economic "problems and their solution, he writes, we probably shoutd linet have to deplore the 2,000,000 Unemployed, 280.00 persons injured on ur reads Yearly, nor the spectre of rar sll uinbanished, to snare three! only of the meny problems awalting solution.
Your readers will remember the} excellent clergyman, during the war, who wished to take advantage of the popularity of "Tipperary" by rewriting the verses on suitably moral lines. He got as far as, Goodbye self, indulgence, farewell the soft armchair when Tommy Interrupted. "Have a banana " he said encouragingly.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.