Manawatu Daily Times Parliament As Usual

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3265, 8 February 1926, Page 6

Manawatu Daily Times Parliament As Usual

The Prime Minister’s "statement that Parliament this year will meet at the usual time, whether, an Imperial Conference is held or not, will set at rest many speculations concerning the intentions of the Government in this regard. , It had been rumoured, on the one hand, that the (session would be opened early in March in order that Mr Coates might be free to leave for London before the end of May, and, on the other, that in the event of the Conference being held, Sir Francis Bell would attend as the, representative of New Zealand and so enable Mr Coates to give' his individual attention to the affairs of'the Dominion at this end. But the Prime Minister has made it. fairly obvious that he has no intention of assigning his Imperial obligations to other hands, and that he will be in London himself if the Conference is summoned. This, of course, is as it should be, close personal relations between the administrative authorities here and in the Home Country being highly desirable. At the moment, however, it looks as if Mr Coates would have some difficulty in finding a locitm tenens that could adequately fill his shoes. Were the Hon. Downie Stewart in robust health the position would be different, but things being as they are, the problem would not be easy of solution. However. there may be no Imperial Conference this year. PERILS OF THE RACECOURSE. There are words of commendation for Mr P. K, Hunt, the Stipendiary Magistrate at Auckland, who at the opening of the inquest into the death of the jockey Preston, at Takapuna, announced his intention “to have the whole matter thoroughly investigated.” There is no suggestion that the Takapuna racecourse offers more perils than does the average course throughout the Dominion; but there is a growing feeling, as strong among sporting folk as among uninitiated people, that far too many accidents have been happening on racecourses during the last year or two. . Whether the death roll to-day is larger proportionally than it was ten or twenty years ago is a question on which the experts differ, and no precise statistics are available; but it is argued in many quarters that the increased pace at which races are run and the decadence in the art of horsemanship, which appears to be pretty generally admitted, have added largely to the perils of the sport, and that these perils have not been modified to any material extent—except in the case of a few leading clubs—by the provisions of medical attendance and ambulance equipment. There is a very wide field for investigation in these respects and the Auckland magistrate is the man to explore it with discretion and understanding.