20 JULY 1951, Page 5

The ideal citizen is a terribly difficult figure to reconstruct.

If you look at him in the light of his own economic interests, you seem to see an austere, abstemious figure, domiciled in a barge (to avoid paying rates and to lessen the stresses to which the Government's housing programme is subject) ; a stranger to wireless and television ; a subscriber to none of the newspapers,' which the Government, after describing them as universally unreliable, has caused to become very expensive. This sad but reasonably selcsufficient figure keeps, as the main appanages of a full life, an untaxable cat and rides an equally untaxable bicycle ; in their joint financial interests he has refrained from marrying the lady he loves and lives with, so that their incomes) are not taxed jointly. *