CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 51, 21 July 1914, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

DEGRADING PARLIAMENT. The fact is that the administrations that are in power for the time being can sec no virtue in Elective Executives, and they persistently block any attempt to secure reform. "We are pursuaded, however, that the time is coming when private members will demand the restoration of the privileges that have been filched from them. They will not be satisfied to remain political ciphers. The sooner that time arrives, the better it will be for the country- Party Government, as we know it to-day, is a form of autocracy that should have 110 place in a democratic community. It destroys individuality, fosters hatred and recrimination, and degrades our Parliamentary institutions. —Wairarapa Age.

CONTROLLING THE WEATHER. A chance of our ever 'being able to control the -weather at our will seems remote, yet we have all heard tales of people who could do so, or who claimed that they could. Sir Oliver Lodge is said to have suggested that the. discharge of large, quantities of positive electricity from the tops of mountains into the atmosphere would be one step in the right direction. He believes that the sun discharges a mixture of positive and negative electricity upon the earth, but that the magnetic poles attract the positive and negative portion and leave the rest of the world'only with negative ions. This unbalanced condition leads to irregularities of climate, which would be corrected by the above suggestion.