NOTES AND COMMENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 219, 28 June 1938, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

SOBERING BRITISH BUDGET. Since the Budget statement the House of Commons as a whole has been in a chastened frame of mind, notes the Parliamentary correspondent of the ‘Spectator.” For two or three years a great many members have seemed to regard almost light-heartedly the steadily mounting figures of expenditure. Since astronomical sums had to be raised anyhow, it seemed hypercritical to cavil at a few millions here and there. Now they are forced to contemplate a not-far-distant time when increasing demands from the defence services will probably coincide with declining trade and a consequently diminishing yield from taxation. The effect has been salutary. In the Budget debate several speakers competed in hoisting the tattered banner of retrenchment. One member expressed the hope, though without much confidence, that the House would once again become the taxpayer’s watchdog, and another pointed out that Britain was faced with the prospect of budgets permanently in the neighbourhood of a thousand millions. FRENCH NEW DEAL SEQUEL. Nobody in Paris has been made very happy by the new devaluation of the franc—the third in less than two years —except the lucky owners of the four milliard francs which flowed back to Paris on the day of the new devaluation was announced, and of the GO or 70 milliards which are still abroad, writes the Paris correspondent of the “Sunday Times.” A nice little profit! They may have bought their pounds at 75 francs, and are selling them now at 170. No investment in France could have yielded so fat a dividend; small wonder that Frenchmen with a little'money (or a lot of money) should have sent it to London rather than build houses or : invest it in new factories and be bothered with strikes and other unpleasantness. But it is hard lines on the retired official living on a meagre pension, or on the widow whose interest coupon buys fewer and fewer kilos of bread and on all those people whose wages, for one reason or another, do not catch up with the increasing cost of living. The little man, with no pound notes hidden under his mattress, and the peasant, with his woollen stocking full of Government bonds, feel that it is all very unfair. In fact, the chief beneficiary of the Front Pomilaire, as somebody cynically but not untruthfully remarked, has bom the speculator.