OLD JUNK CARS.

Southland Times, Issue 22948, 22 July 1936, Page 7

OLD JUNK CARS.

To the Editor.

Sir,—As the proposal of the Hon. R. Semple to abolish what he terms old junk cars is going to materially affect many impecunious people and compel them to buy others or do without, as we had to in the early days, it is reasonable to conjecture that there may be much more behind all this than meets the eye at first sight. Firstly, Sir, there are thousands of people compelled to drive ancient cars, who are quite aware of their own and their family’s safety, and also the public safety, without going to the expense of employing people with the same political ideas to tell this one and that to go off the road or stay at home. I note that there is to be no compensation for the entire loss of the only means many people have of getting about, although they have been compelled to register their derelicts and pay for new number plates. Mr Semple is very solicitous for the safety of the people, but I am wondering if Mr Semple would take a tip from an old human junk who is equally anxious to preserve life and limb of the general public, and foster the health and happiness of our crippled and underfed mothers and children, by firstly sweeping the public houses off the roads. Without doubt, they are the incubators of crippled and undernourished children throughout New Zealand to-day. Let Mr Semple attend to the most impoi’tant things first, and leave this rather doubtful matter of junk cars alone to the more able judgment of their owners. It is not, Sir, the junk cars that we see pulled up at death-dealing liquor houses. It is the fine up-to-date cars that we see standing outside for hours, and more good will be done by dispensing with these public houses, than by depriving the poor man of his only means of getti:i;; anywhere. His talk of no compensation, strikes me as being the most overbearing and one-sided piece of legislation I have ever heard of. Why does Mr Semple not term as junk horses and traps, which are equally as dangerous, if not more so, than cars, as few of them carry lights of any description? I feel sure that Mr Semple has had a hurried brain wave, but there is probably more in it than meets the eye.—Yours, etc., y OLD JUNK. Invercargill, July 21, 1936.