Word: strachey
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...House of Commons last week brisk Brigadier Ralph Rayner, a Tory, made an eloquent plea to Food Minister John Strachey. All that he asked on behalf of his constituents in the tiny Devonshire village of Kingsteignton was one ram. Each spring for many centuries (no one knew exactly when it began) the villagers celebrated a legendary pagan rite: they thanked the gods for their spring water by sacrificing a ram. Then they drank and danced, roasted the ram and feasted on the mutton. Rayner pleaded: "Is the Minister aware . . . that it is very unlucky to interfere with customs and traditions...
...Denmark these days, the beer bottles must have square labels, because the Government decided that oval ones waste too much paper. In Providence, R. I., stonecutters have refused to cut names into tombstones shipped ready-shaped from Sweden and Finland. And in Britain last week, Food Minister John Strachey told a truly shocked House of Commons that the tea ration might have to be cut, partly because India and Ceylon did not like Government-regulated tea buying...
...pace of work had begun to tell on other Ministers. John Strachey (Food) had been down with flu. Sir Stafford Cripps (Trade) had been out with a chill. Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin was nursing his high blood pressure. At a cocktail party a friend told him that he looked well. Said Bevin: "I feel worse than I look." Clem Attlee, an early riser, toiled to the Churchillian hour of 2:30 a.m. to handle the extra work...
...Strachey declined to reply, but last week Manhattan's unco-guid tabloid, PM, ever on the alert for economic injustice, had the answer. In a front-page diagram, PM traced the history of a $7.84 bottle of Scotch from cask to customer, showed that the semiprecious liquid leaves British shores, bottled and labeled, at 97?, reaches U.S. shores at only $1.04. A sizable chunk, $2.32¼, goes into the U.S. Treasury in custom and excise duties; but the biggest slice ($3.14) goes to U.S. retailers...
...MacDonald government had collapsed. Their movement was wasted by feuds, weighted by inertia; socialism in Britain was moribund. Something had to be done. In desperation they decided to start a tuppenny weekly. To get it going, people like Stafford Cripps, Aneurin Bevan, Ellen Wilkinson, George Russell Strauss and John Strachey chipped in ?10 apiece to buy stock...