Things They Get Worked Up Over!

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 58, 21 June 1948, Page 5

Things They Get Worked Up Over!

BEER PRICE ORDER & CORRESPONDENTS By “LEFT HAND CORNER” It is surprising what people get worked up about, and equ-* ally surprising what they don’t get worked up about. So far the Editor hasn’t had a single letter about the spot of bother in Palestine. Generally speaking, polities only seem to cause a stir once in three years, but when it comes to beer .... About an hour after the first copies of a city paper carrying the Price Tribunal’s new beer price order started to get about the town the other day, the comments started to come in. Some liked it. Others didn’t. We had a letter from “Disgusted.” No, he wasn’t a prohibitionist. Not at all. He wanted the price of bottles and kegs (full ones) halved. Why, he wanted to know, should the fellow who does all his drinking at the bar get all the benefits? After all, didn’t the man who bought a keg every Friday night and a couple of dozen on Tuesdays and Wednesdays merit a bit of consideration? Particularly when he always had half a dozen of stout for his hangover on Monday 'morning. Maybe there’s sense in what he said. Though a bit unsteady on the feet when he delivered the letter (written on the backs of a lot of old bottle labels), he seemed frightfully earnest. Of course, no correspondence on a matter of national importance would be complete without “Mother of Ten”. She was there, sure • enough, just a short head behind “Disgusted,, with “White Ribbon” and “Old Soak” challenging strongly as they passed the pfost .... Sorry people, we seem to have gone all race conscious. Must have been the smell of “Old Soak’s” letter. It reeked of meths. He wanted to know why, if the Government won’t take that coloured muck out of the grocer’s stuff they don’t knock down the price of whisky to a decent level so a man can ruin his inside respectably. After all, to be a methylated spiritualist carries a certain social smirch, he said, but it was not of his choosing. He much preferred brandy, or rum, or almost anything, but what, could a working man do about it when his wife spent all the housekeeping money on bad port and even pinched his meths to pep it up a bit? Well, we don’t know. That’s his problem. , “Mother of Ten” thought it wasn’t right at all to make any move to reduce the price of beer when a baby cost so much to feed on milk. “First things first”, she said. “If this Government wants us to raise children .with strong enough constitutions to drink themselves silly enough to vote Tor .... etc., etc”. We got the idea she was a weakminded woman with strong ideas and the best of intentions. The sort of woman that might sway the destinies of nations, if she could ever take time out from rearing ’em. “White Ribbon” made it clear the price of beer didn’t worry him personally. But he hated the thought of anything that would make it easier for somebody else to do something he didn’t want to do himself. He seemed a bit churned up about something. Very vehement, but not too coherent.