Goodbye to the Basic
From last Monday motorists may only use their cars if they have been granted a special allowance of petrol, and they may use them only for the specific purposes for which that allowance has been granted. How long this inconvenient state of affairs will prevail nobody knows. The Government have indicated that they will review the position next June, but it seems possible that they may be driven into restoring some form of basic petrol ration before then. The present restrictions, besides being universally unpopular, are unlikely in the long run to save more than a very small quantity of dollars, against which must be set a long list of less easily calculable losses, of which the average motorist—who used his car very little fbr " joy-riding "—is now a practised and embittered enumerator. An element of unfairness in enforcement is inevitable. Regional Petroleum Officers, handicapped by shortage of staff and by arbitrary and muddled regulations, cannot hope to ensure that supplementary petrol is granted only to deserving, and withheld only from undeserv- ing applicants ; and their frequent if forgivable aberrations cause bad blood and resentment all over the country. Motorists to whom extra petrol coupons are granted have no documentary evidence to show the purpose for which it was granted, so that the police can only check their statements by reference back to the regional officer who granted it ; and his records are by no means certain to yield evidence on which the police could obtain a conviction. As usual in these days, it will be the law-abiding who will suffer most, while the plausible and unscrupulous find formulae to circumvent the regulations. The price of a few dollars saved will be a further decline in our moral standards as well as in the microscopic amenities of our life.
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