CORRESPONDENCE

Taranaki Daily News, 11 September 1922, Page 7

CORRESPONDENCE

CRAZY COMPETITION. (To’the Editor.) ® ir ’ Two adys ago, when a letter signed Missed the Last ’Bus” was read to me, I .thought that the phrase sounded familiar. Then I remembered that in the Opunake Court one day, a battered wreck pleaded the missing of the last 'bus as the reason why he had "wrastled” all night between the pavement and the gutter, and here we have him again; Waking up in the D.T.’s, he grabbed the first Daily News he saw at some settler’s gate, and, noticing my short, simple note about the inconvenient running of this early procession of cars, he sent you a letter. I submit, Sir, in your long journalistic experience you never got one smelling more strongly of the "Jim Jams.” First, he called me "good,” which I never pretended to be, as I was always careful. Then something about my dead body being found off the North Cape, and he, hunting through the Dominion for a claimant; then some unore about an American heiress who slipped up her boy, and then gets tangled up between the Egmont County and dead meat, which must have been a lean hock all grissel (to which I will add a bit of fat) and, finally we find the letters "W.R.W.” stuck into every line, but, Sir, never a suggestion about improving the situation, where these ownerimproverishing cars seem to have no other mission than contribute 25s to the’ Taranaki County Council daily. Mental defectives like "the last 'bus” man and the other Opunake mud slinger consider it good bush form to embellish their "stutterances” with "W.R.W.’s”. Therefore, we excuse them, nor do they know that to us, public men, abuse is real jam, as we know there is "some crook cornered.” These mental defectives haven’t heard of public men when they go stale paying people to write letters reeking with abuse under an assumed name so as to liven things, up, but I I disclaim paying them anything. Everyone knows I am one of the best abused men in Egmont, but easily topped the poll at the council election. Why? Because the ratepayers have got it into the back of their brain that I do the fair thing all the time, and the squealers are those who tried to work points on the county, and if I were soft enough to stand, history would repeat itself in the morning, but, like Councillors Brophy, Chapman and Green, I resigned to save my good name, because I would not be associated with the "comedians” whq forced the hospital board to issue a writ against the Egmont County Council, the costs of which it is reported the auditor-general has ordered the "comedians” to pay out of their own pockets, which will hit some people mighty hard, and others. so, it is alleged, that they were too good men to stand the game. Ratepayers who study the question know the high state of repair the roads were in two years ago. Since then the council has been living on the roads I left, for except for a few chains at Oaonui, not. a yard of new work has been laid down in the Rahotu riding. Comparing the rate now proposed (2%d) with the work lately done, it would be easier to carry on now with l%d (Id for by-roads, %d for main), than if 3<i had been paid during the war, when I not only allowed the overdraft to go up, but I raised the roads to a high state, and the big overdraft cost nix, as the defaulters’ penalties paid interest. I am continually being congratulated on not raising a loan three years ago, fifty per cent, of which, as the Hon. J. G. Coates said, would hare been wasted, and until a new council is elected loan proposals may be kept out of sight.—l am, etc., W. R. WRIGHT. Rahotu, September 8.