VARIOUS CABLED ITEMS

Hokitika Guardian, 6 April 1922, Page 1

VARIOUS CABLED ITEMS

lleilltAMAN AND fi.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION

BRITAIN’S NEEDY PEOPLELONDON, April a

In th e House of Commons, Sir J. Bees moved for a Royal Commission to inquire into the publjic expenditure on public and unemployment assistance. The c ost of this, he said, had risen from £25,000,000 between 1890-1 to £332,000,000 in 1920-1.

lit moving his motion he pointed out that excluding the unemployed 30,000000 more, out of the British population of 48,000,000 were receiving publie assistance in some form or other.

Mi - Hilton Young speaking on tlie motion, said lie desired to emphasise that there was a vast difference in the conditions existing in the periods which the mover cited. He pointed out that the most expensive social services, such as war pensions, old age pensions, public health and unemployment were of recent origin, and no member would suggest a discontinuance of them.

N.Z. ADVANTAGES.

LONDON, April 5

Mr Robinson, former Agent-General for Queensland, lectured before the Society of Arts on New Zealand. He said that the numerous ports of distribution and the many centres of trade and commence in New Zealand prevented the growth of congested and overgrown capital, like those of Australia, which cities, happily had no parallel in New Zealand'. Consequently, New Zealand possessed a better distribution of population, and a happier combination of town and country settlement than Australia..

SYDNEY TRADES HALL

SYDNEY, Ao.il i A new organisation has been formed at the Trades Hall, known as the Or ganised Workers Group. It demands that all Labour Candidates sha 1 ' Vmembers of trade unions, and sliri 1 he selected by trades unions, orgfl.nised into industrial groups. The new movement will run candidates at the m<t election.

BRITAIN AND RUSSIA. LONDON, April 4. “The Times’s” Paris correspondent states that when interviewed at Moscow by the “Excelsior,” M. Trotsky admitted that the British Government lias now made proposals to Russia asking, on certain conditions, for the extnterritorialisation of a considerable zone in the city of Port Petrograd, whicn zone would eventually become a British base. M. Trotsky added that the Soviet had not replied, hut. is considering the question.