LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXIV, Issue 14081, 10 June 1946, Page 2

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

CHAMBER OF RATIONS AND RATIOS Sir, —The comprehensive efforts of the local Chamber of Commerce to spread a little light and sweetness in the name of t.he entire district should not be permitted to pass unnoticed. As a working carpenter whoso legal butter ration is noveladequate for daily lunches I particularly am intrigued with Mr Barnard’s recent pronouncement that we all would welcome a further ration cut, amplified by Mr Christian’s declaration that we had too much and were ‘wasting it anyhow. As one working man to another I would welcome from these prominent leaders of thought the secret of their apparent better success in this direction. Also might I invite their attention to my previously-published challenge for some unequivocal official assurance that any food saved does reach Great Britain and through precisely what channels? Can either tell, us that it is untrue that food may reach Great Britain only with the consent of the food dictatorship in Washington? Equally interesting is the gay abandon with which the chamber seems to have should'ered the job of wiping out the local Harbour Board, and their “impression that the district would be glad to see the management of the harbour taken over by the Borough Council.” One notes, too, their conviction that this would also be pleasing to the government. What makes them think so, and why should anyone want to please a government, anyway? To me figures, particularly those of such neat arrangement, hold always a fatal fascination. Thus the mass of statistics so carefully selected from near and far to confirm the Chamber’s unerring instinct about the secret life of the Harbour Board, and the urgency of liquidating it, were irresistahle. I loved t.heir ratios —they’re always so conclusive. Nobody can argue with a ratio, and especially a well-behaved ratio sponsored by an accountant who has “specialised in local body work,” as the chamber so naively under states it.

I personally was not impressed, however, with the team work of the ratios. For example w.h'at has a Hospital Board ratio to do with a Harbour BoardI—or 1 —or is it suggested that the medical fraternity be called upon to cover the waterfront, with perhaps the retiring matron installed as harbour master? Nor do the ratios of overseas shipping ports appear to offer much guidance as a comparison with' a purely coastal port. Yet, curiously, all the Chamber’s figures relate to such, with the exception of Oamaru, whose ratio happens to be practically identical with that of Tauranga.

This unhpppy coincidence seems to me ■ either completely to refute the Chamber’s entire case, or else the Chamber is neglecting one of its multifarious duties in. not arranging for the Borough Council or its specialised accountant ’ also to take over Oamaru Harbour. Mr Christian’s assurance that “no animosity weighed in the slightest" is surely redundant —the utter impartiality with which he, as chairman, excluded from discussion of fhe report the Harbour Boa ( rd secretary, who, on previous occasions had disclosed a marked talent for presenting the board’s side of the case, seems adequate evidence ithat the Chamber pursued its task in a propei' spirit of Christian fortitude. Finally one must he grateful to this special report from the busy Chamber for providing a fitting denouement with the announcement that this whole business, of liquidating Ihe Harbour Board began “through a complaint from a tenant regarding rent.” There seems to be here an idea which should prove highly infectious among all local tenantry.—l am, etc., FRANK N. ROBSON.