Source: Burnie Advocate
URL: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/68995517
Date: 01/04/1947
Event: Cold spell and floods "have made prospects here gloomier and gloomier"
Credit: Burnie Advocate, Trove (National Library of Australia)
BURNIE ADVOCATE - APR 01, 1947
LONDON LETTER
FOOD PROSPECTS GLOOMY
(By air mail from a London correspondent)
The extension of the cold spell and the floods which have resulted from half-hearted thaws have made prospects here gloomier and gloomier. Production losses at the time when power was cut off in the factories seemed serious enough, but these have been far outstripped by agricultural losses. If the workers are willing to put in extra time, it is possible to make good factory losses, but it will take at least a year to make good the destruction of the crops, and many years to build up again the stocks of cattle and sheep lost in the blizzards.
According to calculations made to date, a million sheep, more than 1000 cattle, and numbers of pigs, horses and ponies have died from exposure, isolation and starvation. The loss in sheep represents one-twentieth of the total sheep population of the country, and is said to be the greatest farming disaster within living memory. Floods and snow drifts are still making it impossible to move fodder, and all over the country farmers' stocks are running out, and there is a prospect of livestock losses becoming even heavier.
The repercussions on our food supplies are incalculable. Bread rationing will inevitably be continued far longer than had been anticipated; the meat ration, already meagre, might possibly reduced. At best it could be maintained, only at its present level of approximately 1 lb, per head per week. From the British whaling ships in the Antarctic comes a ray of light - the whaling season has been successful. Even then we are warned not to expect a larger fat ration, because supplies of groundnuts from India are far from certain.
Austerity In Sport
After consultations with representatives of all the principal sporting organisations, the Government have banned practically all mid-week sport. Chief victims will be the football matches played regularly during the week, afternoon dog racing, and irregular horse-racing fixtures. Chief reason for this move seems to have been to take temptation out of the miners' way, and so remove one cause of absenteeism. The Government is at present considering whether mid-week cricket shall be allowed this summer; this in certainly responsible for little enough absenteeism, in the mines or elsewhere, but in the interests of uniformity it may have to go.
The ban has aroused a good deal of controversy. There are the people who are against austerity in any shape or form; then there is a more reasonable group which points out that, if the double daily shift recommended by the T.U.C. comes into operation, more people than ever will have their afternoons free, and the need for entertainment will be far greater than now. People who work at the week-ends, but have free days during the week, will likewise be deprived of opportunities of seeing sporting events.
The reactions to the ban on midweek sport are typical of the reactions to any form of austerity. One school of thought says that if we were a gayer nation we should reach a higher of level of productivity; the other school points to the record of mine absenteeism and recommends all work and no play. The Cavalier and the Roundhead are with us to this day.
The B.B.C. and Controversy
The B.B.C., after frequent proddings in Parliament and press, is gingerly poking a toe into the deep waters of controversy. For years it has maintained a colorless and impartial attitude to politics, a strictly orthodox attitude to religion. This week it has announced two departures from these attitudes - but they are no more than a hesitant beginning.
On the political side it has agreed with the main political parties to allow a limited number of controversial party broadcasts on the lines of those given at the time of the general election in 1915. Twelve such broadcasts are to be made this year - six by Government speakers, five by members of the Conservative Opposition, and one by a member of the Liberal Opposition. The parties will choose their own speakers and subjects, and will be free to use one broadcast from their quota to reply to a previous broadcast. Twelve spread over nine months is little enough, and it seems a pity that a limit so small has been fixed. Ad hoc broadcasts on topical subjects of national and international importance, given by spokesmen of Government and Opposition, would have seemed a more practical course.
General complaint was that none but purely orthodox views could be broadcast over the B.B.C. As far as the Corporation has been concerned, atheism, agnosticism, or any of what are termed the "fancy" beliefs, simply did not exist. Now the Governors have announced: "The Corporation's highest duty in this, as in other fields, is towards the search for truth. They recognise that this must involve the broad casting of conflicting views, but they are of opinion that affirmations of widely differing beliefs and of unbelief can be made constructively, and discussions conducted on such a plane that the controversy, which is bound to be an incidental to the primary purpose, shall not wound reasonable people or transgress the bounds of courtesy and good taste. Such a broadening of policy will be gradual and experimental."
The results are yet to be heard. But it is difficult to see, in the light of such a statement, that any great advance has been made.