NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1509, 3 August 1912, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

Although the debate upon tramway fares and sections which occupied the City CouncH on Thursday night was not very" striking, there is reason to feel thankful for the Council's decision to adopt (in the main) the Board of Management's recommendations in the direction of increasing the revenue. The figures showing the drift of the system towards disaster have been so often set out in TnE Dominion that it is unnecessary here to do more than remind the public that owing to unprofitable concessions, over-lengthy sections, and enormously increased expenditure (chiefly on wages and maintenance and repairs), the deficit period had arrived. There are two complaints that must be urged against the Council. In the first place, although it is true that _ the present scale of _ fares and sections gives such excessive value for, cash received that economy in management alone will not restore soundness to the system, yet tho Council should have showed on Thursday, what it did not show, a real desire to get the very' most out of the policy of being economical. In the second place, the situation revealed by the Board's analyses was' plainly one that called for an emphatic declaration, not simply that the tramways should be made to pay, but that they should be made to pay because if they did not the ratepayers would be robbed. Councillor Atkinson appears to have been alone in properly stressing this elementary but too often overlooked principle. It is, as he said, both an "extraordinary" and an "atrocious" view that the ratepayers and' not the users of the trams should pay for the • service; and we trust that it will be a long time before a Wellington City Council will rise up in defence of such a piratical theory. In the' meantime itis to be hoped that no long time will before the finances of the system begin to show signs of recovery.

There was much serious truth behind the member for Mataura's halfjocular suggestion that the business of Parliament would go on much better if the Opposition had one leader instead of three. The three leaders Mr. Anderson had in mind were, no doubt, Mr. Russell, Sir Joseph Ward, and Mr. Wilford, but there . may be others, "mute, inglorious Miltons" or "guiltless Cromwells." So far as the embarrassment wis causes to the Opposition is concerned, that is the Opposition's own business; but it is not a matter of tho Opposition's embarrassment only. Tho ridiculous plight of the heterogeneous minority on tho Left is an impediment to Parliament. Quite apart from the fact that time and money are wasted by the uprising of tho .three "leaders of the Opposition on tho occasions in debate when there is only room and need for one, it is inconvenient that "the Leader of_the Opposition" should be a nonexistent person. There aro in the ranks of the Opposition many members who have ofton enough showed in tho past that they agree that the "Leader of tho Opposition" is as necessary, and not much less important, in the working of the House, as tho Prime Minister. How can Mr. Massey consult tho Leader of the Opposition, as he sometimes will require to do, when there is not one'/ When Sir Joseph Ward was Prime Minister, this difficulty did not exist. It is only in the interests of the House that we should like the Opposition to pick a Leader and sort itself out. To do so would, of course, at once cause a split and let the public see what the Opposition is composed of,- but that is a little mishap ■that cannot be helped. Mr. Massey, by the way, was informed in the House by the member for Awarua that tho Opposition Whips' Room was too small, and the Prime Minister, instead or insisting upon tho complaint coming from the Leader, or the Chief Whip, or someone in authority, promised to look into the matter. The room was not considered too small for 38 members in the short session, by the way. But we fancy that it will be quite big enough very soon for the Opposition that will lie left after the first real shako of tho box.

Last Tuesday we made bold to take up the cudgels on behalf of Wellington's weather and climate against the Christchurch I'rcss, and we aro sorry to say, that while the weather has responded handsomely, tho Press has responded with such hostile gusts as to suggest that it was spoiling for a fight. It quotes a mass of statistics in disproof of our suggestion that Wellington's weather is better than the weather of Christchurch, and we must confess that on paper it makes out a very good case. But it is really ho use quoting sunshine figures: there may be a few more sunny days per annum in the southern city, but there are also—we were going to say several hundred, for that is the impression they leave—a vastly greater number of frosty, foggy, rheumaticky days. (We trust that the Fress will not overwhelm us with a masß of statistics to show that there are more cases of rheumatism in Wellington than in Canterbury.) Frost and fog are almost unknown here; they never aro combined, as they are in Christchurch for days and days in succession every year. Nor can we give way on the point of rainfall. "Days on which rain fell" can obviously be delightful days, both here and in the South, since one pleasant little shower lasting five minutes can give a day a bad mark in the statistician's records, but a good mark with the public. It is grievous to hear that Wellington still has the reputation—in Christchurch—of being windy. But when Christehurch gets an idea into its heacK that idea sticks as it would stick nowhere else; we call in witness the pathetic persistence of OhristcJiurcn's notion that

the presence in Parliament of Mr. Eli, and Mr. Lauuenson is necessary to the nation's welfare. Out of what now seems to have been a mistaken consideration for our Southern friends we did not refer to the nor'wester, which, as every visitor to Canterbury must agree, outweighs all the favourable statistics. For the present, however, thero is no occasion for further strife, especially as the weather in both places begins to appear as if it wore really ashamed of its recent exhibition of itself.