‘Let us not become too emotional over fantastic figures produced by arithmetical acrobatics,’ appealed Mr Ronald Doel at the Urban Council last week. The theatre has cost the ratepayers £55,000 in the last six years, including £17,000 on the summer show, with predictable press headlines. Of the total, more than half, £28,476, was for interest and instalments of principal on the loan raised to construct the premises in 1967, similar in nature to the mortgage most of them had on their houses – in other words, the creation of an asset, not a “loss”.’
