"EXORBITANT RATE"

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 133, 7 June 1937, Page 8

"EXORBITANT RATE"

PROFITEERING ALLEGED

Dark shopfronts and unlighted windows will present a silent protest against the City's Council's charges for commercial lighting, charges which are described as exorbitant and entirely out of proportion to the council's own costs for the power and the charges it makes to other consumers (states the "Press").

The organiser of the "black-out" is Mr. R. B. Owen, who explained that the idea was to make a "gentlemen's protest against ungentlomanly profiteering" on the part of the council. A considerable section of the retailers has agreed to join Mr. Owen in the

"black-out," but another section, headed by the electricity department of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce, prefers to approach the City Council with a more constitutional protest.

Two of the largest city drapery establishments, acting independently of protests, and simply considering their own costs, have decided to turn off their lights at night lor the rest oi the .winter. The whole situation is a part of a dispute which has been carried on for several years, collectively and individually, sometimes mildly and jmetimes vigorously, betw-cn the commercial consumers and the City Council.

"The council is profiteering at our expense," Mr. Owen said. ' "There is nearly £250,000 lying in the bank to the credit of the Municipal Electricity Department, yet the council continues to charge an exorbitant rate to commercial users. We have protested time and again, and by means of the 'blackout' we hope to bring the situation forcibly before the council and the public."

To this complaint Mr. M. E. Lyons, chairman of the City Council's electricity committee, replied on Friday night. He said: "If any section of the community wishes to turn cut its lights it may do so. I have nothing to say to Mr. R. B. Owen, except that if any aggrieved section of our. customers wishes to make representations to us we are prepared to receive them. Complaints of this kind should be made to the electricity committee."