South Yorkshire Times – Saturday 18 April 1942

Spendthrift

The Budget is a present for a good boy. Those who are already putting their earnings into the war effort and living frugally on their rations have no ground of complaint. The Chancellor, though he has to find over five thousand million pounds, has dealt mercifully with them.

Having done what they could, they are passed over for the present, while special and necessary attention is given to those who in greater or less degree, cling to their luxuries and leave austerity to others. Those who have been deaf to every appeal to limit consumption to plain necessities in order to free shipping, transport, and labour for vital war work, must be impressed as tax collectors, and forced to convert their earnings or profits into national revenue while going through the motion of enjoying themselves.

The fierce increase in the tax on wines and spirits will be generally approved, for in this field of consumption are to be found the grosser forms of indifference to suffering, sorrow and sacrifice. A smart addition to the cost of beer is more regrettable for it will hit a large body who are doing their duty to the nation, scorning delights and living laborious days.

At the same time the fact of their doing so gives most of them the means of buying their favourite beverage, even at the new price. There is more self-indulgence generally in this country than can be justified In the light of the situation with which we are confronted. Far too many people are eating and drinking and making merry while to-morrow someone else must die. This persistence in selfish indulgence would not be possible at all if Britain had not been preserved by its own valour and the sacrifices of its allies, from the horrors of invasion. The threat is ever present, and if it is fulfilled the Budget will be unbalanced, together with a great many citizens who are now forced to contribute through their vices.

Our griefs are borne and our sorrows carried at the moment by our Russian allies and our own sailors and airmen, as well as by our Forces in the Near East. We have received enormous aid from America, without which our economic structure must have collapsed under the immense burden placed on it.

Remembering all this, we shall the better remember our duty to put all we have and are at the service of the nation; or if we are incapable of doing this of our own volition at least to pay without demur the toll taken of our selfishness. The Budget accomplishes a difficult task while keeping real hardship to a minimum—even contriving to ease existing hardships and irritations.

“Go, presently enquire, and so will I where money is,” said the Merchant of Venice.

That is the search undertaken competently by the Chancellor, who has ceased to soak the rich— For they are past saturation point —and is socking the spendthrift. But the Budget does not yet touch the heights of austerity, which the first war Chancellor, Lord Simon, hinted at when he forecast that we should be called upon for incredible sacrifices before we were through.

Some taxpayers, whose sacrifices scale up to nineteen shillings in the pound, may feel that the adjective is not altogether an over-statement, but even they are left with a living and considerably more than their eyes to weep with. The majority of us have not squeaked a pip yet.