CITY COUNCIL AND COLOUR

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1066, 2 September 1930, Page 8

CITY COUNCIL AND COLOUR

ON Thursday afternoon a special meeting of the City Council will be asked to approve the new by-law in which unprecedented restrictions are placed on the use of colour in advertising signs. Before the council makes its decision, representations will be made to it by representatives of the business interests affected, and the arguments against the proposals should leave some of the councillors better informed on the subject, if not actually wiser, than they are now. The history of the proposal represents a typical case of official meddling. Nobody particularly wanted the new by-law. There was no public demand for it, no outcry of any kind. But somebody connected with the council apparently decided that the time was now ripe for another example of its facility in the promotion of unnecessary legislation, and the proposal to restrict colours was a part of the result. Another part of the proposed new by-law is that prohibiting the use of “dipped” as against stained-glass bulbs for coloured electric signs. This, if carried through, will destroy a minor local industry. At the present time most signs in which coloured globes are used are formed of ordinary transparent bulbs imported in that form, and dipped in solution, locally, to give them the required tint. Under the new by-law more costly coloured bulbs will have to he imported, and the men who perform the work of dipping the transparent bulbs will be deprived of at least a part of their livelihood. There may be some case against the use of dipped bulbs, but if there is it has not been stated. The fact that both the works and town-planning committees of the council have endorsed the general proposals does not mean that they are well-informed about them. They have merely followed the principle of not examining the different aspects of a subject until an expression of public opinion forces them to do so. Definite and concerted action by the signwriting and other business interests affected by the new by-law has already been taken, and the City engineer, who appears to have Revised the schedule of permissible colours to which the City Council has committed itself in the draft proposals, may be required to justify his selection in the face of opinion a good deal more expert than his own. If it is felt that any Auckland signwriters or business firms have been erecting signs or using colour schemes so hideous as to corrupt the public taste, a system of general supervision rather than one of definite, hard-and-fast restrictions should supply the remedy. And if there is to be a censorship over colour, it should be exercised by an expert, and not by a layman, even if that layman happens to be the City engineer himself.