NEWS AND NOTES “ACTUALLY NO DIFFERENT.”

Hokitika Guardian, 4 July 1931, Page 6

NEWS AND NOTES

“ACTUALLY NO DIFFERENT.”

“There is no question that the members of the Russian Government are passionately sincere in their political beliefs,” writes MV Montgomery Belgion in the “Dublin Review.” “There is no qeustion that they actually do believe that they can at least prepare the way for a transformation of human nature and the coining ol a Golden Age in which there will he no classes and no State. ' But they also believe in doing all they can to remain m power. Since, then, theii political theories, to the realisation ol which they are, as they think, directing their policy, are contradictory and unjustifiable, in reality it i& only the second belief that, whatever they may think, they are living up to. The Russian Government, despite the programme which, it claims, makes it superior to all other existing Governments, is actually no different from any other Government. It consists of a group o; men who, being in power, wish to remain there as long as possible, and are simply doing all they can to that end.

DIRECT TAX FOR UN EMPLOY. MENT. “We are strongly attracted,” says the “News-Chronicle,” “to one prin--1 ciple in the Trade Union Council’s scheme for unemployment, and that is the proposal to finance the unemployment fund by a special tax, levied, independent both of rates and Budget, on every householder. We think that the contributions of employers and employed should remain; but if the balance were met in the way proposed it would give everyone a direct interest in reducing the number of 'the unemployed and emphasise the real magnitude of the evil. The surcharge proposal would bring home to everyone! the immensity of the burden which the present monstrously swollen unemployment figures entail; and would rouse the nation, as perhaps nothing else now can, to a definite resolve to reduce it by every possible means.”