THE INSOLENCE OF OFFICE SIR,—As a taxpayer constantly exhorted to
tighten my belt to aid a crisis-stricken economy, I should like to protest at a recent, and as it seemed to me blatant, example of
waste of public money. The owner of a recently acquired summer weekend cottage in Sussex, I was called to jury service in Lewes Quarter Sessions, though I had written to the Clerk to point out that in fact my real residence was in London. I cut short a holiday abroad in order to attend, spent over three and a half hours each day for four days in travelling backwards and forwards from London (since my cottage is let and I could not have stayed there in any case), a considerable amount on fares and meals, and the almost complete waste of my own earning time as a free-lance writer and publisher's reader. After all this I was not even called for the first two days though with about twenty-odd other redun- dant jurors (who actually lived in the vicinity) I was kept hanging aimlessly about the court from 10 a.m. till late afternoon. And each day more jurors arrived to swell our numbers.
Surely it would be possible, and only prac- tical, for officialdom to take some notice of the real addresses of jurors and at least to ensure that the names of those forced to travel such long distances should be included among those first drawn from? or, not to call so large a number of redundant jurors? This would, in my case alone, have saved the taxpayer over £3 a day and myself the almost total loss of daily earnings, not to mention my time as a housewife with a household of four to care for.
I explained these circumstances to various officials, and, after two days' pointless attendance, was finally blandly told by the magistrate that I would just have to 'extend my weekend a bit longer' (this was already a Wednesday afternoon!). So I was forced to continue the long daily trek from London, largely, it seemed, to bolster the pompous bumbiedom of those 'dressed in a little brief authority' and with too little imagination or adaptability to see that the taxpayer might have been saved a considerable sum in my case alone, though it cannot, I feel sure, be the only one. If a woman were to run her house on half such wasteful lines, she would soon be ruined : I wonder if this country can long afford such methods?—Yours faithfully,
ALISON BLAIR 18 Chepstow Place, London, W2
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