Area boards in a league?

Is there any useful way in which one can compare the distribution costs of the Area Boards, with all their differences in load, type and number of consumers, size of Area, etc.? At a lively meeting of The Institution on the 3rd February, 1955, Mr. D. J. Bolton, M.Sc.(Eng.), Member, set out to show that there is. He was presenting his paper entitled ¿A Criterion of Distribution Cost,¿ in which he expounds a clever, though controversial, method of assessing the relative ¿economic efficiencies¿ of the Area Boards¿a method which seems, especially, to have increasing use for the future, as further annual accounts of the Area Boards become available. Most of the speakers at the meeting did not, indeed, take to Mr. Bolton´s method and its results. But, as we shall see below, these results have a geographical bias, which, whatever the cause (and there was more than one suggested at the meeting) is set against London and the Southern Counties. Would it be incautious¿despite the objectivity of the London discussion¿to suggest that the paper might have a smoother passage in Caledonian waters? For Mr. Bolton has in his paper added a few well-tempered notes to the two Scottish Boards´ swansong, while in contrast the London Board appears to be some-what out of tune. However, we must away from fancy and on to fact¿at least fact as nearly as we can have it in the cost analysis of power distribution. What is in the paper and what points were made in the London discussion of it?