This is a tolerant country, but I confess to some
astonishment at its acquiescence in the present food fiasco. It is not merely that Mr. Webb's persistence in haggling with the Argentine— right enough, no doubt, up to a point—has landed us in some- thing very near the non-existence of meat as an article of diet. The effect of the virtual non-existence of meat is, naturally, to send prices of alternatives to meat, such as poultry for those who can afford poultry and fish for those who can afford fish, to intolerable heights. This is mismanagement which hits every household. It may be no worse in essence than the groundnuts muddle, but it is very much worse in its effects, for the ground- nuts affair merely cost the taxpayer £36,000,000. The meat affair is costing the individual taxpayer more than that per annum in the increased price of the unrationed foods he has to buy in place of the meat he ought to have, and there is the immeasurable anxiety and frustration of the harassed housewife—literally im- measurable because there is no way of measuring it—into the bargain. Of course, if Mr. Webb succeeds in getting his meat from Sefior Peron at £119 a ton instead of f120, he will be able to observe pointedly (to me and others). " There, you see." Well, we shall see when we do see.
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