IN THE PILLORY

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22419, 4 June 1938, Page 14

IN THE PILLORY

Writer’s Gramp Is Common At This Time

fßy COMMENTATOR! Coughs and colds and mild doses of influenza are not the only ailments the public suffers from in June. Another common complaint, especially in the early days of the month, is writer’s cramp. You get it from filling in the many forms required of the taxpayer in May. After some hours wrestling with the income tax return, the return of income other than salary and wages (with an addition to it this year), motor-car registration and third-party insurance papers and motor-car licence papers; the* average citizen can reflect at this time of the year on the amount of writing about himself he does for the State each year. It comes particularly hard on a journalist, who detests writing something he is not being paid for; but any suggestion that there should be a /taxpayers’ and general form-fillers’ union, members of which should be paid an award rate of so much an • hour for the annual job of writing for the Government, would probably be cried,/ down as political propaganda. Actually the May list by no means completes the total of writing the average taxpayer has to do. Many people carry on for some weeks an interchange ,of letters with the Income Tax Department; . others have land tax forms to add to their total of writing fo- the State, and there are all sorts of little things such as filling in forms for radio set receiving licences, and, when required, giving the number of fowls kept and fruit trees in one’s garden. Farmers have their own troubles each year with statistics about their production and probable production,-and manufacturers also keep in close touch with the Government. Actually many a man with no pretensions to being an author or literary figure of any sort would be surprised if someone in a Government * Department could tell him the number of words he had written on Government forms in, say, 10 years.. Freelance writers, paid by newspapers at so much the line, would have a pleasant time calculating how much they would have earned if their writings had been published,' instead of finding a final dusty resting-place, in a departmental storeroom. The only thing to be thankful for, while using liniment for the writer’s cramp, is that no one has yet thought of the extra check there would be on all statements made on Government forms if they, were to be filled in in triplicate. It is to be hoped no one ever thinks of it, for if someone did- the argument would be sure to appear that such procedure would be economically sound . because it would mean more work for filing clerks, and for paper and ink manufacturers and printers.