ANGRY ISLAND BAY. Let Us Cut the Painter.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 268, 19 August 1905, Page 6

ANGRY ISLAND BAY. Let Us Cut the Painter.

ISLAND Bay's anger boiled over to the extent of a column, and a-half the other evening. It didn't get its tramway by the end of last year, and it hasn't got its tramway yet., and it is very fearful that it will have to help pay for the tramways to other suburbs of the Empire City. Which is very wrong, and very improper, and makes Island Bay cry bitterly. Island Bay is, apparently, not a part of Wellington, and its people evidently are not Greater Wellingtonians, and don't want to be. Island Bay for the Island "Bayers" is their cry. • * According to the chairman of the indignation meeting : "Island Bay should be responsible only for Island Bay's undertakings." The Island Bay indignation tramways meeting seemed to emphasis© the presence of this spirit of parochialism. The rating of small areas of a city for improvements to those areas seems to be averse to the spirit of unity. Anyhow, if it could be proved that only Island Bay residents were to use the trams that would have a terminus in that suburb, it would be fair and reasonable that Island Bay residents only should < pay for their privileges. » ♦ • Also>, if this were so, it would be equally reasonable that the guards on the Island Bay cars examine every passenger to ascertain if he or she came from the hated city of Wellington, or that haunt of the foreigner — Kilbirnie. Any declaration that each separate ward in Greater Wellington should be separately rated on the specific improvements apportioned to each locality is an absurdity. If Kilbirnie had a guarantee that Island Bay people wouldn't

use their roads or trams — when they get them — or if the other suburbs swore on their oath that they desired to live and die in thenr own locality, this petty spirit of parochialism and separate rating might be reasonable. • * • But, when we expand our little waistcoats, and each stands on. his own pebble, and cries : "Kilbirnie for the Kilbirnians !" "Island. Bay for the Bayites !" and so on, we merely make ourselves ridiculous, and revive memories of the farcical days of the Melrose Borough Council. We are living in Greater Wellington now-a-days. If Island Bay objects to a citizen of Wellington taking a carride to steal some of its ozone, then Wellington must retaliate by prohibiting it from annexing glimpses of the scenery in Lambton Quay. Let's have a "wEole" city, as the Mayor says, and not a thing of shreds and patches. In fact, let brothely love continue.