PRICE INDEX

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 72, 22 September 1943, Page 7

PRICE INDEX

MR. SCRfMGEOUR AS CRITIC Cost of living figures prepared by the Government Statistician and quoted by the Government were5 criticised by Mr. C. G. Scrimgeour, Independent, Wellington Central, when speaking to a large audience at the Town Hall last evening. Whereas the living standards of the worker had been standardised, all the profit-making elements of vested interests had been allowed freedom and had actually been encouraged by the Labour Government, he said. Mr. Scrimgeour, who was accorded three cheers on taking the platform, spoke for an hour and was given an enthusiastic hearing. The floor of the hall was packed. Mr. R. M. Griffin presided. It was untrue to say as Mr. Fraser had claimed that the cost of living had gone up by only 13 per cent, since the war began and that the price of things generally had increased by only oneeighth. Such statements were merely blinding the people with a mathematical smokescreen. The Government Statistician's percentage figure, called the retail price index number, had been used as an index of the cost of living, notwithstanding the fact that the Statistician had carefully made it clear in the Official Year Book that it was not a cost-of-living index, and that it omitted nearly 20 per cent, of houeshold expenditure. This index, he said, was based mainly on groceries, dairy produce, meat, home rent, fuel and light, clothing, and miscellaneous items. But the figure for groceries, for instance, was dominated by the price of pota- | toes, and a drop in potato prices automatically, disguised the fact that other ! grocery prices had gone up steeply. With home rents, the figures, collected half-yearly, took no account of recent lettings, or rooms, flats, or subletting. With the fuel and light cost, emphasis was placed on candles and kerosene, relics of the early days. On the other hand, no secret was made of the fact that share prices had. increased steeply between 1939 and 1943, particularly those shares directly associated with the accumulation of profit from the war. This, he contended, showed that the sympathy of the Labour Government lay with vested interests- rather than with the common people. Other speakers at the meeting were Mrs. Scrimgeour, wife of the candidate, and Mr. J. Dyer.