City Elections “RATES HIGH, ROADS BAD”

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29051, 13 November 1959, Page 15

City Elections “RATES HIGH, ROADS BAD”

Mr H. E. Denton’s Views “Never in the history of Christchurch have the rates been so high and never have the roads and the amenities of Christchurch been so bad,” said Mr H- E. Denton, who is seeking re-election to the City Council, at a Labour Party open-air meeting in St Albans last evening. Mr Denton examined the addresses of Citizens’ Association candidates, and said the majority of them lived outside the city. “They describe themselves as businessmen, but they do not have confidence in themselves as businessmen, because they called in consultants at the council, at great cost to the ratepayers,” he continued. , . A person’s home, whether it be “mansion or four-roomed cottage,” was sacred to the individual, Mr Denton said. Any council should encourage industry to come to the city, but industry should be put apart from the people’s homes. Mrs N. G. Pickering, a Hospital Board candidate, said she had spent many years seeing the hospital from the inside looking out; now she would welcome the opportunity of giving her time to helping the work of the boardMrs G. Cree. City Council candidate, drew her listeners’ attention to the absence of a woman on the Labour side of the City Council and urged them to send a woman to the council “to put the view of the working women and the wives of the working men.” “Too Many Doctors” Mrs L. E. Macfarlane thought there were too many doctors on the Hospital Board, to which she is seeking re-election. “Everyone has a right to stand for the board, but all the same I feel you can get too many doctors.” she said. “I can’t understand why it is necessary for the Hospital Board to be run by doctors. The Labour Party is putting up ordinary men and women, but they are people with vision.” She promised that a Labourcontrolled board would eliminate the smog and smoke nuisance from the hospital chimney by installing new boilers “and something else” to eliminate the smoke.

Mrs Macfarlane’s husband, the former Mayor, Mr R. M. Macfarlane, M.P., reverted to Mr. Denton’s theme, arid said that if’ Mr H. P. Smith, the Citizens’ Association mayoral candidate, was successful, it would be the first time the city’s mayor was not a city resident.