TE KUITI STATION.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 291, 3 September 1910, Page 5

TE KUITI STATION.

Promises and Pie-crusts. When the King Country conference met at Taumarunui in July a very representative deputation was sent to Wellington to wait on various members of the Ministry. On the; return of the delegates the "Chronicle" representative interviewed his Worship the Mayor of Te Kuiti (Mr James Boddie), and got his impressions the results of the deputation's visit. Mr Boddie was pleased with the results obtained, stating, amongst other pleasing news, that the Minister for Railways recognised the necessity for the new station and promised that the work should be commenced "as soon as the men were available." • The Minister of Railways now writes to Mr W. T. Jennings, M.P., as follows: —"Sir, —With reference to the representations that were made by the deputation that waited upon me recently at Te Kuiti in regard to the rearrangement of the station and to the position of the cattle yards at Te Kuiti, I have the honour to inform you that a plan for the re-arrangement of the whole station accommodation at Te Kuiti has been prepared but the expenditure involved will be considerable, and I regret that there will be no opportunity of carrying out the whole scheme at the present time. Arrangements are, however, being made for locating the cattle yards in an improved position, and this work will be put in hand during the current financial year.—J, MILLAR, Minister of Railways." The decision is most unsatisfactory. The work is vitally urgent. Every day the station continues in its present position passengers run imminent risk of loss of life. No woman or child is safe when negotiating the lines of waggons and trucks that bar the approach to the platform. Coming on the top of the Minister's refusal to grant ordinary facilities for travelling on the morning and evening goods trains it makes one wonder whether there is any relation between the old supposed association of promises and pie-crusts, especially if those promises are Ministerial ones. The decisions are profoundly unsatisfactory.

At the Auckland Supreme Court this morning, the Chief Juscice sentenced Arthur Winter Sudgreen to two years' imprisonment on eight charges of theft, and false pretences, at Thames; A. Baxter for embezzlement, to nine months' imprisonment; and John Cecil Pascoe, for indecent assault at Tauranga, to 12 months' imprisonment. —Press Association.