Point Comfort

"This is one of the happiest days of my life," trilled Grocer Billy Brown of Whitby, Yorkshire, as he hung the Union Jack outside his shop. "I'm sick of points. With me, it's been nothing but scissors, scissors, scissors for years."

During 8 1/2 years, to be exact, Grocer Brown and his fellow food merchants in Britain had snipped their scissors at some 68 billion pesky, elusive food coupons in the ration books of Britain's housewives, stored them in little tins to send to the Food Ministry at the end of each month. Each year they had filled out 20 million official forms. At 5:02 p.m. one day last week the Ministry called a halt to the point system. Formerly, a housewife had to decide how to divide her points between canned fish and fruit, molasses, rice, jellies, mincemeat and other delicacies. "Thank heaven," gasped one housewife, "I don't have to toss up between a tin of salmon and a tin of syrup any more. What a relief!"

The end of points meant not only an end of coupon headaches but a saving for the Ministry itself, which had employed more than 1,000 clerks to keep track of the points. The change did not, however, mean the end of all rationing. Such basic foods as meat, fats, bacon, cheese, tea, sugar and sweets were still rationed. The fair distribution of everything else was up to the food sellers.

"It's hectic now," said President George Mean of the Brighton and District Grocers Association, as Britain's housewives swooped down on the precious jellies and biscuits in a first frenzy of point-freedom, "but everything will settle down very soon."

There was only one cloud to mar the horizon. The tea ration, announced Food Minister Maurice Webb, would soon be cut from 2 1/2 to two ounces a week.

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