Not only Government departments but local bodies need curbing. The extravagance, at least the growing expenditure, of the latter is complained of all over the country. At Croydon the townspeople have organized a monster protest with many thousand signatures, telling the local Council to cut down or get out. Similar action is being taken in other centres, In my own district rates are three pence up this year for education though there is no evidence that e children need more teaching, than ey get.
The Borough Councils defence is that Parliament is to blame. Hampstead, for example, has had a report drawn up which shows that since the War 84 acts, chiefly dealing with social service, have been passed which compel the Councils to spend ever more and more. Bribery of the proletariat in fact. The defence is just. But it cannot be denied that large sums are unnecessarily squandered on sumptuous council offices schools and public baths, and especially on vast permanent staffs.
What is always a mystery to me is that life in London, into which pour supplies from all the world, with copious markets and transport for distribution, is so enormously dearer than in the provinces. To quote a personal experience: one of my daughters, and her husband, recently transferred to near Lincoln from Hendon where they were first stationed, find that living, costs only from a half to two-thirds what it did at Hendon. I have stayed at many hotels in the North and generally they cost about two-thirds of what similar or even inferior accommodation in London costs.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.