LONDON MUNICIPAL DEBT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8386, 22 March 1907, Page 5

LONDON MUNICIPAL DEBT.

Received March 21, 8.25 a.m. LONDON, March 20.

After six hours' discussion the London County Council decided to have a special audit, on a commercial basis, to discover the present financial position. ; The Progressive members withdrew from the meeting in a body, owing to a doubt as to the council's powers to expend money for that purpose. City men have offered to subscribe £5,000 to defray the outlay. (The Progressives were defeated at the elections, mainly on the issue of extravagant expenditure and socialistic enterprise raised by the Municipal Reformers, who were returned with an overwhelming majority. "Foolish municipal trading, with heavy loss and confused book-keep-ing," was one of the charges levelled at the Progressive administration. Mr R. A. Robinson, the Municipal Reform Leader, stated, in an election speech: When eighteen years ago the Progressives began their rule, the rate was 12Jd; to-day it is 17d. The former rate, too, would to-day produce £625,000 more than it did when first levied. The debt of the council had, excluding education, risen from £18,000,000 to £33,000,000 in eighteen years, but there was a floating debt of £4,500,000, on some of which the council was paying up till recently 6 per cent., and now 5 per cent. Mr Robinson declared that the rates were driving factories out of London).