BRISTOL & THE HIGH COMMISSIONER

Evening Post, Volume XCIX, Issue 77, 31 March 1920, Page 13

BRISTOL & THE HIGH COMMISSIONER

A DEAD AND GONE PERIOD. (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, 28th January. "Better forget that we ever lived in 1913-14, and try to make the best of things as they are. We must live in the present, after all." This is the conclusion come to by the Bristol Times, which tells its readers that the Food Controller is disputing with "our fellow-citizen, the High Commissioner for New Zealand," or. the subject of profiteering. "Sir Thomas Mackenzie has suggested that the Ministry wei'e making undue ■profits out of imported meat and butter, and we know that there are members of the Bristol Food Control Committee who have held that the Government charged j too much for the meat coming from New Zealand, even if they do not still hold to j that idea." The Food Controller says that Sir Thomas appears to have omitted the cost of storage, freight, insurance, and interest on advances to the vendor,, costs which bring u_p the price of Australasian meat as nearly a.s possible to the price at which the Ministry sells it. And as for butter, it is sold at a figure which leaves only, a narrow margin for contingencies, The retail price is by far the lowest in Europe, and is S,d per lb below that charged in the United States. "Very well; then we are to suppose :that Sir Thomas Mackenzie's charge fails," says the Bristol scribe, "but he is not a man easy to refute, we would warn the Minister. _ Meanwhile, what, philanthropic British consumers hope is that the quai- . ity of 'Government' butter in other countries is little better than ir England."