Hoardings.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18233, 18 November 1924, Page 8

Hoardings.

The further discussion by the Council last night on the subject of hoardings leaves the evil very much where it was. The only new point raised was the relation between hoardings nnd ordinary shop signs, and the discussion on this was not very instructive. It ii> no more sensible to say that "if •'the hoardings are to go, then all the " shop signs, bulletin boards, et;.. must "go" than it would be to argue that if it is forbidden to stick bills on the Cathedral walls it is, or ought to be, an offence for C'r. Andrews to wear a button-badge in his coat. Everyone understands quite well that the hoardings which are complained of are hoardings in the ordinary popular sense, and that the bulletin boards and shop signs of which complaint is not made are those which do not offend by their size, position, or prominence. And it is unfortunately the case that the amendment (to C'r. Agar's motion) which was carried will not make it much more difficult than it is now to evade or overcome the objections of local sentiment. It is certainly right that those who might be, and if men were all alike would be, most offended by a shrieking hoarding—the people who live beside it or have constantly to pass it—should have an opportunity to lodge objections; and we hope they will make the fullest use of the period of grace now allowed them. But it is quite wrong to argue, suggest, or assume that, if those living nearest to a hoarding do not object, no notice need be taken of the complaints of others. It may easily be the case that the strongest objections to the hoardings of Woolston or Sydenham come from dwellers in St. Albans or on Cashmere Hills. The only amendment worth passing would have been one that would have declared without any equivocation that hoardings are an offence in city or suburbs, and- that to tolorqte them in return for a paltry revenue of £203 is unworthy of any community of a hundred thousand souls. ' It is not merely for the dwellers in this or that locality that we oppose hoardings, but for all the dwellers of Greater Christehureh. And we do it, in spito of thg taunts of the vulgar, without any thought of the benefits to our own advertising revenue. There are half a dozen ways in which the wares proclaimed on postors could still be advertised without the assistance of the newspapers, but if this did not take place, and all the monoy now spent on hoardings entered the newspaper offices, the offect would be negligible.