LITTLE RIVER AND PIGEON BAY MAIL SERVICES.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 423, 10 August 1880, Page 3

LITTLE RIVER AND PIGEON BAY MAIL SERVICES.

To the Editor of the Akaroa Mail

Sib,—Happening to be in Christchurch" last'Wedtea lay, I accidentally heard that -an organised attempt was being made by a number of residents on the Peninsula to quietly do away with, or at.least, to suggest that the subsidy for .the. Mail service via Little River should be done away with. In these days'of retrenchment I could quite understand tho action of these oh economical grounds, but judge my surprise when I heard that the subsidy proposed to be taken,from tho Little River service was to go to'make the service by Pigeon Bay'a daily one, and this too in the face of information from,the Chief Postmaster, Christcharcb, that it was pro r , posed to curtail tho postal expenditure by, way of Pigoon , Bay. How the Pigeon. Bay people came to be possessed of this, bit of special information from the officer named before the postal estimates fer the year wore bofore Parliament, ■ will no doubt be answered by 'that, gentleman through the proper quarter. Suffice it to say that the possession of tho piece ■of information in ■ question gave the inhabitants of Little Pedlipgton ft start) in the race of the scramble for public money, which they were not slow to avail them-, selves of." Accordingly meetings ,arev instantly heSld arid resolutions are passed' and delegates despatched to urge upon any {Postal officer they l -can waylay the great importance-of the- proposed schemerHaving ascertained that the delegates had all duly arrived and were in session aolemnly. deliberating, how they could, best deprive a largo part of the County of the Postal' advantages they wished doubled in • their -' own case, I, along with several other %eiitlemen Who hare large interests on "i„e" Peninsula, called at ! the Hotel the'delegates hbriofed with theiripatrdnage and i requested toibe allowed to be. present' at the meetirig. We were at once- informed that the meeting was strictly private. The idea of a meeting being private that had under consideration questions affecting every resident in the district is simply absurd, and only savours of the bottling up system of conducting public business so much in vogue on your side of the range. I for one, and I- am sure many of riij* neighbors as well will not allow the Throe Tailors of Tooley Street to .regulatotour postal affairs without either allowing its a voice or consulting us in the matter, and I have to suggest that the people of Little River make their voica heard in' this matter.—l am, etd.,JOHN OLPHERT.