Two Depressing Statements In Week

Northern Advocate, 24 January 1947, Page 3

Two Depressing Statements In Week

EXTORTIONATE PROFITS

FOOD AND PRODUCTION .. .

(Received 10.30 a.m.)

LONDON, January 23

AFTER Lord Henderson had told the House of Lords that acute shortages of major foodstuffs would persist throughout the crop for 1946-47, Lord Woolton, a former Food Minister, claimed that the speech would have a depressing effect.

The country had already listened to another depressing statement this week in the white paper on the labour situation.

He claimed ihe time had come to

drop the system of bulk buying adopted m wartime, and adopt purchasing methods which would obtain better value for the money expended. He was convinced the people wanted inducements, not exhortations, to work harder, and believed an extra pound of meal a week would give more stimulus to the miners than the contemplation of state-owned coaln^ncs.

The shortage of food, in his view, was hampering production and causing a great deal of unhappiness to housewives.

He suggested the Food -Minister should do something to lighten this burden.

The present system of bulk buying was keeping prices high and permitting overseas traders to make extortionate profits, as in the case of the recent sale of linseed oil by Argentine interests. It was high time'the people had a break in this debilitating austerity. If the Government would give the people more food and less restrictions, the people could be trusted to achieve their own recovery.

Lord Addison justified the bulk purchasing by pointing out that this year Britain would be obtaining wheat from Canada at 35 cents a bushel under the world price, while favourable longterm contracts had been made in Australia. New Zealand and the West Indies.

Lord Cherwell said Britain was faced by the incontrovertible fact that in the first year of peace the people had less to eat than in the last year of war. and now, halfway through the second year of peace, in spite of bumper harvests in practically every exporting country, they were told they .would have to put up with eyen more meagre rations. ‘SHEER NONSENSE’

It was sheer nonsense to pretend that the people were better fed than they had been before.

There were a few people better fed now than before the war because there were no longer any unemployed, but that had nothing to do with rationing.

He also doubled the assertion that the people were healthier than before the war.

•‘The only figure we get is a calorific figure, and all the mortality figures prove is that our diet is'not lethal,” lie said.

If shortage of dollars was the trouble the Government should take the public into its confidence and face the fact that the period of austerity they must endure when the American loan ran out would be much worse than at present.