HEAVY TAXES IN BRITAIN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19808, 9 December 1938, Page 14

HEAVY TAXES IN BRITAIN

LOCAL EXPENDITURE

* ‘TERRIBLE” HEIGHTS

LONDON, Nov. 2,

“Terryfying” local government expenditure was referred to by Lord Howard de Walden, chairman of* the National Union of Ratepayers’ Associations, at the association’s .annual general meeting in London.. He estimated that the dead-weight debt of local authorities, apart from trading undertakings, was now £1,000,000,000. “Rates, taxes, and public debts are soaring to new and terrible heights,'’ continued Lord Howard. “We have left the expenditure of 1931 far behind. If we were on the verge -f bankruptcy then, I do not know how our financial experts would describe our present position. “In 1931 we were paying in rates an average of £3 15s 4d a head; we are now paying £4 Gs 3d a head. The total cost of local government—that is, to ratepayers and taxpayers—was £7 4s 3d a head in 1931; we know it was £7 6s 3d in 1936, and, although official figures are .lacking, we can estimate that it is not less than £7 10s. now. without taking into account the cost of the recent emergency. •‘Unnecessary Schemes” "When we express our willingness to pay more for national defence we should make it quite clear that we expect to pay less for unnecessary, schemes. There is no reason why we should pay for cinemas and parlours in mental hospitals, or for.’, swimming pools for people who are too lazy to keep fit in a reasonable way. “There is no reason why village children at the age of 11 should be snatched from unwilling parents so that they may receive, at enormous cost, the doubtful benefit of a theoretical urban education.

“I doubt whether we gain anything as a community by paying policemen to arrest poor men who bet with shillings in the street, rich men do it in thousands on the Stock Excnange.”