The Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century] FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 1918. RED TAPE RUN MAD.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 44, Issue 134038, 4 January 1918, Page 4

The Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century] FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 1918. RED TAPE RUN MAD.

. » Many people in England had hoped that one result of the war would be. the substitution of common sense for red tape in Government departments. Thousands of business men have been ''absorbed" by the Government in connection with the food control and other new departments which have been created during the war, but common sense is apparently not a plant that will survive transplanting into official soil. The wholo position is one of red tape run mad. Everywhere there is a lack of common sense in officialdom, and England continues to muddle along. The Government of course, has long ago demonstrated its utter incompetence to handlo the war situation properly. A London newspaper correspondent wrote recently in a very trenchant, manner in regard to the lack of common sense displayed in the sugar edntrol. "We are short of sugar in the Old Country,'* he writes*. ''Our good ladies of the house who were wont to buy by the pound, now find themselves having to eko out ounces, and to wait in long queues at grocers' stores in order to secure a share of tho restricted quantities available. To every housewife sugar is a most valuable commodity, and tho man who can take home a pound of it by way of a smrprise present for tho wife or landlady makes surer of absolution for small domestic fling than he could have done with a, silk blouse in pre-war days. One would think that under the circumstances the Government would look upon tho man from overseas who brought home small quantities of sugar as a person to be encouraged, but the Sugar Control Board sot up by it is evidently composed of men imbued with the notion that the' strict observance of their cumbrous import regulations is of far more importance than the augmentation of our sugar supply. They won't permit a seaman or other seafarer to bring into the country so much as a single pound of sugar without a license, and to obtain that is apparently an achievement involving the would-be importer in a great deal more trouble than the sugar is worth even in those times. The consequence is that thousands of pounds of sugar brought to this country in small quantities have been dumped overboard to sweeten the waters of our harbours and docks. The most glaring case of wastage was that which occurred in an armed transport. A large number of men had brought sugar homo with them as presents for their families. They found that they could not land it, and not having time to waste in the necessary formalities, threw their parcels overboard." As the correspondent points out, this sort of thing has been happening every week for months at British ports. Who has benefited by

the wastage? No one individually. Sugar prices are officially fixed, and tho largo importers stand to lose nothing. The Customs receipts have been lower than they need have been, and many women have had to stand in queues for sugar for hours in which they could have gono about useful work. Official muddliug is just as conspicuous to-day as it was 100 years ago, aud it will continue until England wipes away the absurd red tape that has made her the laughing-stock of moro up-to-dato nations.