Hoardings.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20105, 8 December 1930, Page 10

Hoardings.

lnvercargill telegram on Saturday reported an encouraging movement by the South Island Motor Union, at its quarterly meeting, against roadside hoarding's. While the Union finally carried a resolution in which the emphasis was laid upon " dangerous" hoardings, the discussion showed that members also objected to the ugliness of advertising misplaced, where it obstructs or spoils the view; and it is possible that this objection is intended to be conveyed in the phrase about hoardings " detrimental to road users." On either point, the danger of some hoardings or the distressing ugliness of others, due to their design or their situation or to both, motorists are of course important witnesses. On the country roads, at least, they are the public at whom the advertising appeal of a hoarding is particularly aimed. Their protest therefore carries exceptional weight, not only because of their great and increasing number but because of their being specially interested. If they say that this or that hoarding adds to the risks of the road, it would b- ridiculously rash to contr iet them If they say that the countryside spattered with hoardings is the countryside spoiled for them, nobody has a better right to say this, though the pedestrian or the horseman has as good, and noL>dy can say it more influentially. It is to be hoped that they will go on saying it, and that the North Isl&nd motorists will come to the aid of the South. The harm that has so far been done in the country is considerable, but not yet of such extent as to lake correction a very difficult matter. It is becoming wider and worse, however, and action now, to prevent the worst and promote reform, is worth a hundred times as much as action later, to undo the worst. Unfortunately, as a speaker pointed out in Invercargill, the Government is a gross offender and must be appealed to against itself; but if the Government is plainly shown what hostility it has provoked and has by example encouraged others to provoke, it will give way.