BURDENS COMPARED

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 142, 17 June 1932, Page 6

BURDENS COMPARED

A. release of unspent City Council loan t money was recommended yesterday by a deputation of the council to the Minister of Unemployment. There is £13,000 available of the western access .loan —that amount being unspent because, it would seem, of the hitch over die cemetery route—and the council is prepared to spend this capital sum—on which, of course, interest will have to be paid by the ratepayer for many years-^-for purpose's of unemployment "relief. The • Minister, Mr. Coates,' readily fell in with the request to ask Cabinet to give the council a promise in writing of legis- , lation authorising the diversion of the city's loan money from western: I access to relief work —a .promise 1 which will probably enable me council to arrange' with the banks to secure the use of the money at once. Then Councillor Appleton, who is ! impressed with the fact that loan initerest and permanent charges already accdunj;-for too high a proportion Jof the council's rate-revenue, suggested that the Government's direct unemployment' levy on wages be raised from Is .to Is 6d in. the £, so that, the "Unemployment • Board might have more revenue and might be able to shoulder some of the relief burdens now "falling on the City Council-^-that is to say, on' ratepayers whose position, because of uncollected rents and pressure of interest,' is in many cases becoming untenable. But the Minister did not readily fall in with that—he talked of more taxation, but would like to avoid,further direct taxation: So' the-position resolved itself into a comparison of" miseries between the City Council—with its ratepayer vie-: tims—and the' Unemployment Board, with its levy-paying victims: In the meantime, that £13,000, of loan money may help to tide over a winter of our discontent which is also a 1 time' of special financial pinch. These financial shifts are. mere expedients,1 but there seems to be no alternative..