RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 180, 28 April 1939, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights On Current Events (By Kickshaws). The learn-to-swim week is stated to have been a success. Let us hope it is going to help folks to keep their heads above water. Once upon a time we thought that insulation was the stuff they wrapped round live wires to prevent other people getting nasty shocks. * A British M.P. complains that the recent Budget has omitted to tax racing. Nevertheless, as a race folk in Britain seem pretty well taxed already. * * ♦ “I was interested in the remarks of ‘Manawatu’ regarded the similarity of words in Japanese and Maori,” says “R.J.H.0.” “This is a most fascinating subject, and worthy of closer study. I have read that in India and Egypt, etc., words similar to Maori can be traced. In a book I have just read I came across the word ‘meldeganger,’ meaning ‘messenger or trench runner”; note the similarity to the Scotch 'gang,’ to go truly.” ° * * * There has always been a lot of hue and cry concerning the merits of conscription for British-born folk, but it is very difficult to get away from the fact that when a crisis does arrive every able man and many able women are urgently wanted for jobs for which they have failed to fit themselves. It is surely better for a football team to get its training before a match rather than hope to snatch sufficient experience in. the first half to be able to defeat the opponents in the second. Lack of conscription has been partly the cause of the “muddling through” for which British folk are famed, and for the fact that they lose all but the last battle. The waste of time and life, material and money, caused by this curious policy must be prodigious. There is bound to be waste in war, but it would appear sound to take such steps beforehand to make sure that waste is reduced to a minimum, especially waste of human life. War is a complicated affair. If able-bodied men imagine 'that they are saving their skins by dodging conscription they are making a big mistake. The largest slaughter occurs in untrained or only partially trained armies. Every able man may gain experience in peace-time that will stand him in good stead in war; a period when it is too late to gain experience I„w to conduct oneself in self-defence.

Sir John Simon used tax-teasing methods when he pointed out in his, recent Budget speech .that in Gladstone’s first Budget income tax stood at 7d. in the £ and was to disappear finally in 1860. This was not the first time that income tax was “abolished,” but it is still with us for better’ or worse. The truth is that income tax was started by William Pitt in 1799 at a time of crisis as great as, if not greater than, the present one. It was an emergency measure to finance the Napoleonic War. The tax was then 2/- in the £ for incomes above £2OO a year. Pitt hoped to get £10,000,000 a year in this way. He got £6,000,000. Pitt had permitted people to give particulars of their incomes in a lump. Unearned and earned income were not shown separately, and there was no method of checking. The tax, however, had been introduced as a temporary measure and little was done to make the legislation fool-proof. A lull came in the war in 1802 and income tax was dropped as had been promised. * * *

Those who imagined that they had seen the last of the unpopular income tax, dropped in 1802, were no doubt disappointed when the tax was resurrected in 1803 when the war started again. Addington, who was Prime Minister at the moment, promised the tax was only a wartime measure. It would cease six months after peace ws.l declared. The tax unfortunately was an immense success. The famous schedules A, B, C. D, and E, appeared. Moreover, •wherever possible income tax was deducted at the source. A shilling tax produced as much as Pitt’s two shilling tax. It would seem that folk had been dodging the tax 'when Pitt introduced it. We mustthani these people for the fact that income tax forms have tended to become more and more complicated until today only experts really understand their true significance. Income tax went on in creasing as Napoleon made himself more and more troublesome. In 1815 when Waterloo settled him the British Government wanted to continue with income tax, despite their promise. A crisis developed. M.P.’s described the tax as detestable, mischievous, immoral, and ferocious.

Protestation assumed such a proportion when the British Government tried to continue income-tax after the Napoleonic wars that newspapers suggested taxpayers go on strike. The Government’s proposal to continue in-come-tax in peace-time was defeated. The income-tax and every trace of its existence was abolished “for ever.” Oh, yes! The returns were all destroyed and repulped into paper. Every little thing had to be taxed to replace the money lost when income-tax was abolished. By 1820 everything was taxed “that enters the mouth or covers the back, or is placed underfoot.” Warmth, light, locomotion, ermine for judges, and ropes for hanging criminals, nails for coffins, and ribbons for brides. The schoolboys’ tops were taxed, and the dead man’s marble gravestone. After 26 years the people were ’sick of these ever-increasing petty taxes. By their wish Budgetary deficits were remedied by Sir Robert Peel by means of an income-tax. He promised that the tax would last only three years. From then on the tax was always on its deathbed, but it never died. In 1574 income-tax was only 2d. in the £, and Gladstone promised to abolish it, but he lost the election. From then on the ailing patient staged an alarming recovery.

The manager of Union Airways has recently stated that it may not be long before flying-boats replace steamships for the carriage of freight and passengers. The progress that aviation has made during the last decade would certainly indicate that air-liners may attract the passengers. Au air-liner can cover 3000 miles a day, compared with a steamship’s 300 or perhaps 400. 'ln contrast, however, a steamship can still carry a given cargo as quickly as an airliner if one compares the total amount carried ::i a given time. So far steamships have shown little disposition to make any attempt- to compete with air-liners in matters of speed. Nevertheless, if as much scientific thought is nut into speeding up steamships as has been put into air-liners maybe vessels with speeds impossible under present, conditions would be developed. Small craft can now travel at over 100 miles an hour. It remains for nautical experts to expand these principles to large liners or huge ocean-skimmers.