Extravagance.

Feilding Star, Volume IV, Issue 20, 24 July 1883, Page 2

Extravagance.

At this melancholy period of our exist* ence, when business is slack, times bad, money scarce, and the weather so miserably cold that every good or generous quality we possess is withered or frozen, it appears simply atrocious the manner in which the Press Association treats us and its other subscribers. On Saturday last a pile of telegrams were forwarded from Wellington, and in the thousands of words for which we had to pay, there was not one single item of news of the slightest interest to a soul in the colony. Who cares a doit as to whether Labouchebe made a bet of £1000 or not? and why should we be irritated about the thing P We are told that "the thought reader" won the bet, and "demanded the money," but we are not told whether he got it, and we hope he didn't, or whether Fibth, who held the note, was held by anybody P The Prince of Wales winning £20,000 is nothing to us, and that he was so hard up that he could only pay his debts with his turf- winnings we think is a deliberate lie. As to his purchasing popularity in tbis way is a libel on ihe nation. The usual number of clerical scandals which appear peculiar to American journals, are put in to make up tho bill. If the Press Association Manager be actuated by patriotic motives and a desire to increase the revenue of the country from the cost of ; these telegrams, he deserves a certain

amount of credit. Yet we might venture to hint that such sudden drags on the purses of his clients is a mistake unless there is tendered something in the shape of a quid pro quo to sugar the pill. If he would only send news that was within the bounds of probability, or if this was impossible, such startling intelligence that would be at least interesting, we could pardon him, but when a column of American gush is cut out of a New York paper nnd wired all over the Colony as English mail items it is really too bad.