General News

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30235, 13 September 1963, Page 12

General News

Trade With East New Zealand was not matching Australia’s ability to “get oat and sell” on Eastern markets, said Mr L. G. Amos, who has just returned to Christchurch from a world trip, yesterday. In Bangkok and other capitals in the East there were shops laden with Australian goods, but diligent searches would produce nothing similar from New Zealand. “Our trade commissioners are doing a good job, the best they can, but there is too much baby talk in New Zealand about trade promotion,’' Mr Amos said. “The markets are there for our primary produce, but because we can get another penny or twopence a pound we seem to be concentrating on the American market.” Sparkling White Lucre Some 205,000 bank notes—£s. £1 and 10s—were so badly mutilated last year that the Bank of England had to decide whether they were still negotiable. Most of the damage was done by washing machines, as notes swirled round in pockets of shirts and troupers. The bank says in its quarterly bulletin that though £5 notes might be blue, £1 notes green and 10s notes brown, after they had been in a washing machine with detergent they all came out whiter than white. “It is evident some detergents could claim among their other characteristics the ability to reduce a bank note to a perfectly white sheet,” it says.— London, Sept. 12. Dilemma “I am a handsome Sikh teen-ager whose betrothed is beseeching him to purchase a motor vehicle. Sometimes I am exchanging brake for exhilerator and other times am passing wrong side oncoming traffic at great rapidity. My beloved covers eyes with hands and moans softly and now declares she will be accompanying me only by public transport or Shankers’ pony. Shall I bow to feminine whim or seek another to occupy hot seat?” —a letter to a Malayan newspaper reprinted in the “Daily Telegraph.”— London, Sept. 12. Big Mob What the driver described as the largest mob of sheep he had seen on the road delayed a Newman Brothers bus travelling from Picton to Christchurch for more than half an hour recently. The bus entered the mob on the main road near Maungamauna about 3.30 p.m. and took about 35 minutes to reach the open road again The driver estimated the sheep blocked the road for nearly three miles. TV Fault Channel Three’s television programme was interrupted for 24 minutes last evening when a component fouled in the vidicon camera. During the break, which occurred about 10.5 p.m., a substitute programme was used. When •lie fault had been repaired the original programme resumed where it left off and subsequently Channel Three was screening 24 minutes later than normal.