Hoardings.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18675, 26 April 1926, Page 8

Hoardings.

In a lecture given last Thursday evening Mr Hurst Seager discussed the hpardings problem in a spirit which we should like to see more often expressed outside our columns. As readers of " The Press" know, we have for -some time past—it is quite two years—been steadily - asking the public and the local bodies to believe that hoardings are useless, nasty things, and ought to be abolished. We have'made many converts—including the Mayor, who has given our campaign the support of his voice and vote in the City Council —and the Progress "League has lately been stirred up to the point of deciding to write, to other unofficial public bodies about the defilement of rural scenery. It can hardly, be denied, indeed, that there is now a public feeling against rural and urban hoardings which was non-existent a couple of years ago, and this feeling would probably have been still stronger if the other newspapers had joined in the campaign. The lecturer pointed out, as we have done often enough, that the Corporation has extremely wide powers, and can practically control all poster advertising if it chooses to do so. But the City Counoil, just as it cannot go with clean hands to the Prime Minister to demand the abolition of the hoardings with which the Railway Department is decorating its properties, cannot very honestly condemn hoardings in the City, since it disfigures some of its own buildings. The outlook is not, however, so hopeless as the positive offence of the Railway Department and the negative sin of the City Council —its neglect to do its duty—might lead one to suppose, for at almost all its meetings the Counoil gives abundant signs that it does not feel happy over its dealings with the question. Sooner or later the Council will realise that it can escapo from its embarrassment in only one way: it must decide that all hoardings shall be abolished. The sweeping away of the "art bulletin boards" is much more urgently necessary than the improvement of those trade signs on business premises of which the lecturer complained, and it would of itself help towards that improvement. It will by no means suffice to "keep a watchful "eye on the curse of hoardings," as tho City Engineer recommends; what is needed is action which will give the public's eye relief from the unpleasant things.