WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 8 January 1930, Page 7

WELLINGTON TOPICS

POST AND TELEGRAPH DISMISSALS, DEPARTMENTAL CONCERN. Correspondent.) .WELLINGTON, Jan. 6. Sir Joseph Ward has been floodct with representations and appeals ii connection with the dismissal of tin Post and Telegraph officials adjudged by a stipendiary magistrate to !> guilty of the grave offence of divulg ing tho contents of telegrams on trusted to them for transmission. - Happily for the Prime Minister himself and for the public service in general the handling of such problems was removed from political influenceyears ago and Sir Joseph' Ward could only inform the friends and sympathisers of the officers immediately concerned to this effect. The Secretary of the Post and Telegraph office has solo control of the staff of his department and the only review ol his decision in disciplinary matters must Ist made bv the Board of Appeal provided for that purpose. The officers concerned probably will take advantage of this tribunal to state their case and meanwhile the position is not open to promiscuous discussion. It is plain, however, that neither political nor personal influence will weigh in the final decision. PRIME MINISTER’S VISITORS.

Lord and Lady Crnigavou were among the visitors to the Prime Minister at his private residence at Hcretaunga on Saturday and both weir able to congratulate him upon his improved health and upon his keen interest in life and affairs. Lord Craigavon was not so intimately acquainted with Sir Joseph as he hao been with Air Massey, his lordship and the Dominion’s late Prime Minister having been fellow Ulstermen and close personal friends; but he was able to remind Sir Joseph of a chat thev had together in London some eighteen or nineteen years ago and to chat interestingly of Irish and New Zealand affairs. On returning to his hotel the distinguished visitor confided to a personal friend that be had found the New Zealand Prime Minister even more alert than he appeared to be two decades before. Wellington, he said laughingly, had not turned to him its sunny side, but it had impressed him as a very live and prosperous city, PUBLIC ACCOUNTS.

The “Dominion” this morning, rin its happiest vein, suggests to the Government that it should abandon the dilatory methods of the past and render its accounts more promptly. “On the first day of tho, New Year,” it tells its readers, “the British public was informed by the Government of receipts and expenditure for the /previous nine months. . . In the Dominion the Budget is delayed four oi five months and the actual details, as set out in the annual taxing Bills, generally appear six or seven months affer the opening of the financial year to which they apply.” There would he advantages, as the morning paper says, in having the public accounts, showing receipts and expenditure, on New Year’s Day, but as the sessions of Parliament both here and in the Mother Country ar e mninIv regulated by the seasons, it would bo necessary to so readjust the two magnetic poles that their respective hemispheres would brought into harmony in this respect with one another. MAKING FARMERS.

The* Government’s scheme for training Near Zealand boys as farmers, in which the Prime Minister himself and the Hon. G. W. Forbes, the Minister of Lands and Agriculture, have taken very particular interest, does not yet seem to have occasioned a great deal of enthusiasm among the youths it is intended to assist. The •ridding principles laid down by the Department of Agriculture for the control of the scheme are simple and direct. Tile lads are not to he under the age of fifteen ; they must he of good character and they must remain under the nominal control of the Department until they have reached the age ef twenty-one. The great majority of the. farmers who have had experience with (English public school boys under similar conditions speak highly of the character and intelligence of the lads, and can see no reason why Dominion school hoys, putting their hearts into the business, would not achieve the same measure of success. That is the Minister’s goal.