LONDON LETTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 204, 29 August 1935, Page 17

LONDON LETTER.

SERGEANT-AT-ARMS. I LOOKING FOR OIL i DANGEROUS MOTORISTS. ' (From Otir Own Correspondent.) LONDON, August 2. Sir Colin Keppel, who ha* retired after being Sergea,nt-at-arms in the House of Commons for 20 years, has had a more placid period of oflice than most of his predecessor*. The sergeant-at-anns is Parliament's own policeman and "chucker-out." It is his duty to arrest ".strangers who intrude themselves into the House or otherwise misconduct themselves," and he also has the job of ejecting M.P.'s who refuse to leave after having been suspended by the Speaker. Strangers seldom have to be arreiited. hut the task of dealing with unruly M.P.'s was a formidable one up to about the time when Sir Colin Keppel 'took oflice. From JSSO onwards the scrgeant-at-arms was often called several nights a week to eject disobedient Irish members. Since then Labour M.P.'s have occasionally dplied the Speaker, but it i* four years since the sergeant-at-arms had to' deal with such a situation. England's "Oil Rush." There are now no fewer than 43 hopeful firms and individuals who believe there are vast fields of oil under England, and who are prepared to put up the money to bore for it. It is estimated that the sinking of each well, together with other preliminary expenses, will cost about £25,000. Though the marshes of Cambridgeshire are generally held to be the most promising spot for oil, the first well is actually being sunk in a Sussex forest. Here the oil-seekers have already bored to a depth of ISSGIt without find*ing anything. But they arc full of confidence, and are now planning to sink a new well to a depth of over 3000 ft. The chief ground for hope comes from German geologists who have visited the spot. They found in this part of Sussex conditions exactly similar to those in the oilfield of Hanover, which produced over 130,000 tons of oil last year. Strikes and Combines. Three times during the past month London's omnibus services have been disorganised by lightning strikes. The last has just been defeated by the cmployers, who issued the ultimatum: "Go back to work or your place will be filled." The men, though protesting, went back. These strikes have more than a mere local London interest, for they show the almost absolute power of a big combine to defeat a strike. In this case the combine was the London Passenger Transport Board. It owns every means of public transport in and around Lon-

don, except the taxi-cabs. Had the men resisted, they would never have got another job except in some other part of England. "Log-books" For Motorists, "iet another step in the regulation of the British motorist is foreshadowed. He may soon, like a ship's captain, have to keep a log-book in which he would be obliged by law to enter hie daily mileage, together with particulars of any accidents in which he was involved. Statisticians investigating insurance companies' records have discovered a striking fact—that three-quarters of all the accidents are caused by one-quarter of the motorists on the roads. The other three-quarters of the drivers arc perfectly safe. In other words, the roads of Britain would be entirely free from accidents if only it were possible to get rid of the dangerous 25 per cent of "motorists. Hence the suggestion that every driver should carry a log-book with iv record of his accidents, trifling as well as serious. If this were done, a glance at the log-books would show the authorities which were the motorists who ought to be eliminated. Sixteen Times Round the World. Although the recent air exercises are held to have shown that Britain is very vulnerable to attack from across the Channel, they have also proved the more cheering fact that military flying to-day is remarkably safe. With " over 350 machines manoeuvring under weather conditions that were not always good, one might have expected several crashes. Actually the only mishaps were two forced landings, in which one man was slightly bruised. This record of safety is all the more remarkable when it is remembered that the K.A.F. 'planes between them recorded 4000 hours' flying during the exercises, and covered a total distance of 400,000* miles—l 6 times round the world. Tons of Records. Every day an average of 875 people go to Somerset House, in the Strand, pay a shilling, and ask to consult the records of one of the hundreds of thousands of public companies, whose papers are Hied there. Now the gloomy old building (which also houses records of all the births, marriages, deaths and wills in Britain) has become too small for this mass of documents. The Registrar of Companies has had to move across the road to a new oflice block, and his assistants spent a busy Bank Holiday shifting 850 tons of papers. These records, occupying nearly nine miles of shelves, contain particulars of over 300,000 companies. The people who pay their shillings to acan these records are generally investors, who want to know all about a- firm before they put their money in it. A decision involving thousands of pounds may hang upon one of these shilling searches. News of Work. Job-hunting in London has been speeded up this week by the installation of teleprinters in most of the London employment exchanges. As soon as a vacancy i*> notified the news is flashed to these exchanges—at one of which, perhaps, an ideal applicant is just queuing-up for his "dole."

The teleprinters have been installed in the hope of persuading employers to make more use of the Government employment exchanges. Many employers, believing that the right type of man ie not to be found at an exchange, prefer to advertise their vacancies in the Press, As a result, the unemployed are developing a hopeless attitude towards the exchanges, and often look upon them merely as dole-paying centres. Now the authorities are trying to ehow that employment exchanges really can find jobs. School Homework. The headmaster ot a big secondary school near London recently took a vote of parents on the question of homework. A large number of parents (though not the majority) expressed the opinion that homework was definitely bad for their children, that it kept them up late at night and prevented them from taking outdoor exercise. Now another school, at Lincoln, has launched what appears to be a successful experiment in abolishing home tasks altogether. Instead, the children spend a slightly longer day at school. To make up for this extra classroom work they have a daily spell of physical exercises. The children are reported to be healthier and happier, and their work does not suffer. Cheap Reading. The "twopenny libraries" which have sprung up in their thousands all over Britain are having a healthy effect on the local public libraries. Almost all the public libraries report a big fallingoff in book borrowing since tliese cheap shops began to cater for the ordinary novel reader at a fee of only twopence a volume. But the public libraries are glad of the competition. It means that they can now concentrate on serious books. Hitherto they have always had to face two camps of critics —one of which kept demanding more Edgar Wallace and the like, while the other complained that public money was being spent on "trash."