As I Hear . . . Fish Stories

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31333, 1 April 1967, Page 19

As I Hear . . . Fish Stories

rev y.H.v.sj Yes, but what happened to the Christchurch fishmonger who, as "The Press” told me, decided that it was high time the consumer got a break and cut his prices accordingly? Is he making a fortune? Has he thought better of it and fallen into line, under his competitors* or his suppliers’ pressure? This is the sort of story that fascinates me; but I seldom hear the end of it, and sometimes not the origin and the surge of it As when some of the Dunedin publicans cut the prices of their nips and went doggedly on doing it, I never was told why, or why in the end they stopped this cutthroat business. « • ♦ But to go back to fish. My latest news is that the New Zealand fish industry is going to embark largely into fish meal, not being interested in canned fish or fish prepared for the table, but in the world demand for a stock food and in the New Zealand demand for pig food and for broiler chicken food. This is something, surely. But I also read that the Japanese, regardful or regardless of our sea-mile limit, come to our shores because they are profitable, whereas the Australian shores are not But does that not suggest that the Australian market should be a good one for us? Then why does Australia turn from us to Europe for canned fish? Is it our own fault? I fear it is, since for many years I have been able to buy German and Polish tinned fish, of excellent quality, that shades my fresh fish off the slab.

There, on the evidence, is a

market, a good one, but we are beaten to it by competitors 12,000 miles away. And that beats me. * * * Then I read that the Japanese trawlers, searching our waters, throw overboard fish that we rate highly but Japan does not; and that we may buy these fish from them for the domestic market And then I read that a New Zealand company may combine with a Japanese agency to export fish to Japan. That I can understand; but an arrangement in which, effectually, Japanese fishermen will be hired to trawl our waters and supply our fish shops seems to me to have an element of craziness in it An old colleague used to like talking about "the matchless flexibility of private enterprise;” and perhaps that is the answer. But my friend always used to apply this phrase, with a short laugh, to some glaring example of commercial extravagance or ineptitude. As when it appeared that the manager of a prosperous company had diminished its prosperity and enhanced his own, over a period of years, by embezzlement of which his bookkeepers and Ms auditors had remained serenely unaware. • * • This tipping business, again. Mr Muldoon, assuming his portfolio as Minister of Tourism, has butted into it, deprecating the proposed 10 per cent service charge at the new Intercontinental Hotel in Auckland and observing that the present New Zealand system against tipping is in the interests of the country and its tourist industry. What

present system? Mr Muldoon ought to know, or should have been told, that there is no “present system” rejecting tips; that in fact the system prevails, though it is observed Irregularly. Some do not tip at all; some tip as a matter of course, and often unwisely; and some tip when they have been well served and wish to acknowledge quick, responsive service, and why not? As I have said before, I have never known a tip to be rejected (but once) when it had been earned, and have never given one when it had not been earned. Why should politicians intervene upon questions that are not political? • • « I do not know how it may be in Christchurch; but in Wellington, a town which throws more bread out in the gutters than any other known to me, it is pretty clear that removing the subsidy on flour has begun to check waste and this particular disgusting manifestation of it The pigeons will probably not go short; for they chiefly frequent the grounds of the Parliamentary building and the lawns by the War Memorial and the Public Library, where the hundreds of sandwich eaters will continue to toss the beggar-birds a bit of crust But will the ducks on the Avon be as well fed as ever? ♦ * • So much for one good result of ending one food subsidy. It would be another if bakers set themselves to increase the output of loaves that keep well and housewives encouraged these by finding and choosing those that do. There is such bread;

and though it la generally more expensive—and now must cost still more—the eco-

nomy of eating it to the very heel, still fresh after days in the crock, is equated with the pleasure of it. I remember one Easter week when Sir Otto Frankel, who directed the Wheat Research Institute and took great pride in its test baking, brought us (I can still see his happy grin. No man looked more like a cheerful urchin than this eminent geneticist) a present of three or four small loaves from his latest bake. We had already laid in bread for the long week-end, put Otto’s by, and chewed our dogged way through the more perishable goods. In fact, it was a week before we began on his. It was like new bread; and when we finished it, a few days later, it was still fresh, moist, and delicious. Why are such things hid? But I ought to add something about one, local, unhappy result of discontinuing the distribution of milk to schools. The headmaster of one of Wellington’s large post-primary schools reported to his governing body that his bays were now filling the void with sweets and cakes. Perhaps his observation is unique? It seems unlikely. If the consequence of saving a million or so on free milk is to vitiate tile diet of growing boys and girls, the price of the saving will be heavy. It

will be abated, of course, to the extent that the move to maintain the supply by volun. tary payment is successful. One who would wish it well —and perhaps excoriate those who made it necessary—is Bernard Shaw. An old hand in broadcasting told me a few days ago in Wellington's Gossip Parade, which is of course Lambton quay, of Shaw’s broadcast, when he visited New Zealand. Autocratic old radical, he had told nobody what he would talk about He arrived at the studio, dismissed ail the top brass assembled in dinner jackets to greet and serve him, all but the announcer, after whose few words he took the microphone and said, "I’m going to talk to you about MILK." As he did. The milk for schools scheme had just been announced. He approved it.... Having ended, he ignored the top brass, who had surged back into the Presence, said goodnight to nobody but the announcer, and withdrew to his car. The top brass, so my friend the old hand told me, had never taken up with Shaw the question of his fee. They found it embarrassing after the event, never made up their minds, and never paid him sixpence! I am glad to have heard this story, but I cannot vouch for it. My friend the old hand is a good hand at stories. None better, or more libertine.