Labour and the Tramways.
At the meeting on Monday night in Ferry road Mr J. McCombs, M.P., said that "if the present mismanagement " [by the Tramways Board] is con- " tinued, a tramway rate will be inevit- " able." To avoid this calamity he prescribed making " the service more "popular." Mr P. C. Webb advised a protest, through the ballot-box, " against the state of affairs existing " through the whole world." Another candidate, Mr A. H. Scales, proposed to put things right by floating loans out of the Board's " own reserves and " saving the extra percentage and " charges." Mr George Manning supported the " popularisers," finding the " only remedy " in " inducing people to " make their day of leisure a day of " pleasure in the open air," to which the trams would carry them. Mr R. M. Macfarlane had been looking for remedies in " the speeches delivered by " sitting members," and was convinced that the only hope of avoiding a rate was to avoid the men who said such things." Mr Thurston proposed to avoid a rate, "to which Labour is abso- " lutely opposed," by " administering " a publicly-owned concern in the in- " terests of the owners." How the voter is to reconcile all these remedies in the two or three minutes allowed him in the polling-booth we are not told, but the wise man will n6 doubt seek for the highest common factor among them, and find it in the Labour Party's anxiety for the ratepayer. The trams are to be made popular by being made cheap, and kept cheap by being kept popular, for no other reason than to avoid a tramway rate. Labour is so much opposed to a rate that it will carry people to the beaches and up the hills—on Sundays—if only they will take return fares and "restore the " tramways to a sound basis." It is indeed so anxious to do this that it is the only Party, Mr McCombs says, which is determined to spend thousands of pounds on shelters in the Square for the sole purpose of annoying Mussolini. The argument no doubt is that defying Mussolini makes it easier to defy everybody and everything else, | from motor-cars to the laws of economics. The trams do not pay when I the Board runs them as a business con- | cern and not in the interests of the owners. To make them pay you give the owners cheap rides, buikl useless shelters, call for a "higher standard of living," and send people out to grass on Sundays.
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Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20095, 26 November 1930, Page 10
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417Labour and the Tramways. Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20095, 26 November 1930, Page 10
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