IMPERIAL POLITICS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13639, 6 July 1908, Page 5

IMPERIAL POLITICS.

ROBBING THE TREASURY. THE CHANCELLOR DESPONDENT. HUGE COST OF PENSIONS: Press Association-ByTelegraph-Copyright Ar, LONDON,, July 4. -Air Lloyd-George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaking at the Mansion House banquet to bankers and merchants said that with a stunning deficit, a dwindling revenue and depressed trade, he was in no mood for jesting. Though the depression was not.confined to -Britain, everything was diminishing except the demands on the Treasury. Apparently there' was a regular conspiracy to-'rob the Exchequer and he greatly doubted if they were getting value. The cost of the. old age. pensions would be thirty millions instead of seven millions. A Treasury statement shows that the various Government. Departments hold £200,000,000 of Government securities, including £158,000,000 of 2i per cent, consols.

ihe Select Committee has approved of the Daylight Saying Bill, and advised a. single alteration of the clock by one hour on April L>t,:,and September Ist. • The " Times " and " Chronicle" disapprove of th- Bill:

Owing to complaints by -taiilf ,ref :ini newspapers of inaccuracies in . the official ■Uhie Book, as to the relative cost of living in Geriiian towns, the Board of Trade has withdrawn the .publication. While the English Nonconform'cts applaud the liberality of Mr Dillon',; recent utterances on education, Cardinal Logue, speaking at Kilkenny, protested against a i-mall clique of lrii-;hin;-n. Who, he said, were touched with the mania that nearly ruined education in France. They wished, like their Nonconformist friendr,, to keep the priect out of the. schooii.. THE PATENTS. ACT.,. STATEMENT IN GERMANY. BERLIN, July 3. Hen- Bethmanholweg. German Minister of the Interior,- in reply to a patentee's petition stated that Sir Edward Grey, British Minister of Foreign Affairs, had' intimated that the'manufacture in Britain of every patent iu not unreservedly required under the new Act. .