HOUSING AND TELEPHONES

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 55, 3 September 1945, Page 4

HOUSING AND TELEPHONES

(To the Editor.) Sir, —It was most interesting to read in a recent issue of your paper the remarks of the Acting PostmasterGeneral (Mr. Jones) with regard to telephones, and I wonder why such a policy does not apply to housing. The report reads: "With a view to attaining a more equitable rationing of new connections it has been decided that until conditions return'to normal a residential subscriber on moving away from an address will not be permitted to transfer his telephone connection to the incoming tenant or to anyone else. Hitherto a new tenant who has been able to take over the connection of the outgoing tenant gained an unfair, advantage over many Gther would-be telephone subscribers, some with very high degrees of pi-iority." I frequently notice tenants of Government houses advertising that they are leaving for another district or wish to get a larger place in their own district, and they use their present tenancy in the bargain to secure their own end. Now, I would like to know, if tenants in Government houses can nominate their successors, why cannot telephone subscribers do the same? The injustice to waiting tenants' for houses is a hundred times more than to those waiting for telephones, when an occupier can transfer his place over the heads of people with a very high degree of priority, as the Minister justly says about the telephones.—l am, etc., PARADOX.