DO POLITICS PAY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 5 July 1924, Page 10

DO POLITICS PAY.

SOME TELLING FIGURES. At Westminster, as in Wellington, tlie hint of dissolution has a c-alming tendency. It has helped to keep the minority Government in office. Mr Ramsay. MacDonald is not likely to ask for a dissolution; he might not get it if he did ask for it; hut in the minds of members who don’t in the least want to be called on to fight for their lives the/bare possibility counts. The fall of a Government means only that some members, a score or two, lose position and salaries; all other members, numbering hundreds, sit tight and are safe. According to Mr Maxse, whose habit of telling iinpleasant truths puts his National Review amongst the ‘‘best, sellers,” ex-M misters may fare not badly. "When they leave office some tiimble into the fattest directorships carrying salaries of £IO,OOO a year,* or even more; while others earn fabulous sums by literary labours which owe their market value to the official position previously held by the writers, and to the official knowledge thereby acquired. This is partly to the address of Mr Lloyd George, who, for a consideration, supplied a series of articles to the antiBritish Hearst press in America. Had to do something for a living, he said. Lloyd George’s excuse of poverty had been previously advanced in the Marconi affair. He then stated that v? i a year from investments. ISow he has the annuity of £2OOO a year left him by Mr Carnegie; he has £4OO a year as an M.P.; and he has the right to a pension from the State as soon as one becomes vacant. .So it is not only the common or garden type of member that contrives to make politics pay.