ELECTION SMALL-FIRE

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 27, 23 April 1927, Page 12

ELECTION SMALL-FIRE

SHOTS FROM CANDIDATES —AND AT THEM Mr. George Ashley is not quite as old as THE SUN was informed by the Progressive Citizens’ League, which body is supporting his nomination for the City Council. Mr. Ashley has just reached his fifty-first milestone. * * * “The provision of further traffic outlets from the city has been before the council for the last two years and it is hardly likely that Mr. Baildon will be able to give it the immediate attention he promises when he has been unable to bring the council to making a decision in the last two years.”—Mr. Bloodworth. That the tramways would have to show a profit of £II,OOO a year before the fares could be reduced to a penny, was a statement made by Mr. J. A. "Warnock at Grey Lynn last evening. He also said that the loss on the buses amounted to £13,000 a year. Mr. Bloodworth: “If this pamphlet ©f Mr. Baildon’s was true and he had done all he says he has done then the charges of extravagance that have been made against Sir James Gunson should not be levelled against him, but against Mr. It 1 so happens that most of the things for which Mr. Baildon takes credit for were approved or actually started in Sir James Gunson’s time.” * * * At his meeting at Grey Lynn last evening Mr. J. A. Warnock contradicted the statements which had been made that he had been approached by a deputation consisting of only four or five people. He exhibited a list containing 102 names of influential citizens of all ranks who had asked him to stand for the mayoralty". “There seems to be an idea that the business of the City Council can be successfully conducted by men who have reached the retiring age in private business. I say emphatically that it cannot. The City Council requires men in their prime who are prepared to devote energy and modern ideas to the work.”—Mr. Bloodworth. * * * “The one thing about Mr Baildon’s platform that is peculiar is that there is no mention of the bigger problems we have to face,” stated Mr Bloodworth. ’Nor have I noticed any mention of them in the reports of his addresses.” m m * “I have been accused by Mr. Bloodworth that I have never shown any aptitude for leadership,” said Mr. J. A. Warnock at his meeting last evening. “If I have the honour of being elected I’ll show that I have. People have a mistaken idea of the duties of a deputymayor. He is nothing but an ordinary councillor when the mayor is in town.” • #■ * “Mr. Warnock had this advantage over the rest of us, that he did not issue his platform until some time after the three other mayoral platforms had been published. He then had a chance to embody the main points of all the other platforms, and to put in anything that we had missed. Probably that accounts for his platform being so long.”—Mr. Bloodworth. • * * Mr Bloodworth: The present deputymayor says he has never had the confidence of the mayor. I have always looked upon the deputy as the mayor’s right-hand man, and if he did not have the mayor’s confidence he should have been man enough to resign the position.” • * * “The Civic Square Commission’s report cost the ratepayers of Auckland over £1,000?” stated Mr. Bloodworth. A voice: “A crying shame.” Mr. Bloodworth: “I maintain that the ratepayers should have the opportunity of saying whether they want the commission’s recommendations adopted. It is not for any candidate to say that he knows better than the commission.” * • * “I probably will be a dire calamity to some of the people who wrote this letter to Messrs. Baildon and Warnock endeavouring to get them to go to arbitration, but I will not be a dire calamity to the majority of the community as they suggest.”—Mr. Bloodworth. * ♦ * "We have not brought the band out to make a big flourish over every little job we finish,” said Mr Baildon at Ponsonby last evening. A questioner at Mr. Baildon’s Ponsonby meeting: “How is it that I couldn’t get a bath yesterday morning?” “That question is beyond me,” replied the mayor, and in the general laugh the questioner subsided. “The Mayor has the right to appoint who he likes to the position of deputymayor, but I have often wondered to myself during the past two years whether Mr. Baildon was satisfied that he had done his best for himself.”— Mr. Bloodworth.