So much attention has been concentrated on the Budget in
the past week that the new burden telephone subscribers are to have laid on them has gone almost unnoticed. Take the London area. After July 1st private subscribers are to pay a basic rental of nearly £8 a year instead of just under £6, an increase of over 33 per cent. In addition, instead of getting a basic allowance of 200 free calls a year they are to get only 100, which means less than two free calls a week. This deserves consideration by the critics who accuse the Budget of making the poor poorer and the rich richer; it is not the poor who have telephones in their houses. Strictly speaking the new charges are not imposed by the Budget, but they are enough part- of the general financial set-up to have been announced in the first instance by Mr. Butler.
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