Alleged Oil-droppings.
Page 2
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At last week's conference of delegates appointed by certain Metropolitan borough councils, which took place at die Battersea Town Hall, and to which we made a brief allusion in the preceding issue, various inane remarks were put forward. None, so far as they disclosed complete disregard for facts, exceeded the several references to the alleged serious extent of a supposedly-continued dropping of oil and grease by motorbuses. Is it possible that these municipal busybodies are unaware of the fact that trays and other intercepting devices are compulsory in the Metropolitan area, and are rigidly enforced by the police? If they are unaware of these facts, their assumption of rho charge of public interests is nothing short of ludicrous ; if, on the other hand, they are aware of their existence and satisfactory employment, they are merely seeking to impress credulous ratepayers—whose votes they periodically seek—with a false idea of the work attempted. We would commend to their attention, as a matter upon which they might usefully exercise any excess of energy, the equal treatment of horse-drawn vehicles, and the due protection of road surfaces against impurities which account for a huge annual expenditure upon street-orderly and cleansing operations. The motorbus has been treated in adverse fashion for long enough: we do not necessarily complain, as series of regulations have at last placed those vehicles on a plane where they are practically free from attacks which are capable of support on reasonable grounds. Only in respect of mud-splashing troubles, the expediency of dealing with which we consider to be such as to commend itself to the directors of London companies, does anything now remain for the exploitation of the man in the street by the local councillor, who, of course, must go about his tub-thumping on some score or other. There is, as readers of this journal are aware, a low-priced and satisfactory fitting to guard against the splashing of mud, and we might refer back to our examination of the pros and eons anent its employment in our issue of tire 2.1id December last.