NO SURPRISES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 April 1942, Page 3

NO SURPRISES

REACTION TO BRITISH BUDGET IMPORTS ON LUXURIES APPROVED. COUNTRY EAGER TO FOLLOW LEAD. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, April 14. The first reactions to Sir Kingsley Wood’s “austerity Budget” indicate that it produced almost no surprises and, indeed, found people generally relieved that strictly unnecessary items bore the brunt of the new taxation.

“The Times” says that if the Government gives the kind of lead which the Chancellor indicated, the country will not only be willing but eager to follow.

The “Daily Mail” declares that the Budget, coupled with the Cabinet plan for rigid control of hotel and restaurant meals, marks the beginning of a profound social change. The Government’s determination to put luxuries out of the reach of even the richest clearly emerges. The “Daily Herald,” in a leader characterises the Budget as “mild, merciful and mediocre,” and says it does not even enter the anteroom of financial realism, and comes nowhere near decisively grappling with the money problems of total war. Cabinet has not decided to implement the enthusiastic precept of “equal sacrifice.’ The “Herald” praises the additional luxury imposts but says that the Budget does not contain proposals-which end the disparity between the working classes and the happier section to whom the war so far is a prolonged flag day, instead of an event demanding the utmost sacrifice from all classes. j