IMPORTED LUXURIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 May 1920, Page 11

IMPORTED LUXURIES.

BRITAIN'S BIG BILL. Foreign wines and spirits TOTAL £26,090,000. One of the great problems that the authorities will have to solve in connection With the excliangs rate is how to cheek the extravagance that has been and still is so rampant throughout the country, says an English exchange. We are producing more, certainly, but we are spending too much. Almost an important a factor as increased production in improving the value of the £ sterling is strict economy, especially in the matter of imported luxuries

Mr. Walter Leaf, chairman of the London County, Westminster, and Parr.'s Bank, Ltd., and a leading authority on finance, had some strong, things to say on on this question at the meeting of his bank.

Dealing with the luxury imports, Mr. Walter Leaf said:—Have we done our best to reduce our importations of articles of mere luxury. Take one heading which we can fix upon with confidence as representing luxury and nothing else. I refer to the heading of foreign wines and spirits. Observe that lam not saying anything about the use o£ alcohol as such, I am not presuming to lay n hand on the sacred shrines of beer and whiskey. The main articles to which I am referring are foreign brandy, ruse, port and champagne. It is to my mind ft scandal, that, when everyone should be earnestly doing his best to put the national balance ■ sheet straight, we should during 1919 have imported no less than £20,696,000 of foreign wines and spirits. It is an increase over 1918 of sixteen and a half millions—all a dead loss. It would not be an over-estimate, I think, to say that of the gap of 150 millions or so which last year represented our addition to foreign indebtedness, at least one-third, perhaps a half, might have been saved if we had been content to live in comfort and eschew mere vulgar ostentation." This is straight talking with a vengeance, but no straigliter than the occasion demands.