Reporter's Diary

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34132, 20 April 1976, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Doubling up SOME people who have seen their savings battered about by the effects of inflation are taking radically different steps to protect themselves in future. They are spending instead of saving. “What’s the use of putting $lOOO into the bank for your retirement?” said one Christchurch man who has watched the price of virtually everything go up and up. His answer is to buy now the consumer goods he reckons he will need when he retires on a fixed income. The result is a house which has two of virtually everything — from tin-openers (“they’ve trebled in price in the last couple of years”) to warm sheepskin boots. “I think a lot of people are doing it," he said. “Some are cashing in their insurance policies to spend the money now.” Survival cellar

OUR forward-thinker has not overlooked the little comforts of life in planning his retirement supplies. The pride of his hoard is a cellar containing 500 bottles of wine. He estimates its value at $lOOO on today’s prices, but it did not cost him that much. He makes it himself from grapes, apricots, peaches, and other fruit from his garden and the gardens of nis friends — fer as little as 10c a bottle (20c if he has to buy in the fruit). His cellar is not full by any means. “I’m aiming at 1000 bottles,” he said. “It's always open house at our place, and I don’t want to suffer the humiliation of not being able to continue in that style when I retire.” Prefabs SUBSTANDARD prefab classrooms should be a thing of the past in New Zealand schools within three years, if the present

rate of replacement is maintained. According to the Educational Institute’s newsletter, there are now 355 prefabs requiring early replacement or progressive replacement. The institute thinks its own survey of prefabs in 1974 might have had something to do with the considerable progress now being made with replacements. The number of substandard prefabs was so high at that time, and the replacement rate so slow, that the institute threatened to withdraw all teacners from substandard rooms. Hamilton road A READER who saw the TVI documentary about Kurdistan, ’‘Peshmerga — Those Who Face Death,” was a bit disappointed with the commentator’s description of the Hamilton road as a British engineering feat. E. Morrison, of Governor’s Bay, notas that the road was the achievement of a New Zealander, the late Archibald Hamilton, who wrote a book about it in the 19305. Mr Hamilton was born in Waimate in 1898 and studied engineering at the Canterbury University College. Working for the Lyttelton Harbour Board, he designed a wave model for planning improvements to tne port, and then he went to London to work for the Admiralty, designing the Singapore naval base. He devised a new type of bridge with which any span or strength could be erected quickly from standard parts. It was used by the War Office in World War IL Mr Hamilton was a consultant to many governments on engineering matters. According to the foreword in his book, “R<»ad Through Kurdistan,’’ he “had to teach the arts of hill blasting and of road-making as he proceeded. He alone had to supervise operations, con-

trol, pay and feed his gangs, and for some five years in the blazing heat of summer and in the icy blasts of winter, isolated among savage tribes, he played these responsible parts till he brought his great work to completion.” Shantytown A GOLD CLAIM is proving a goldmine at Shantytown, the West Coast's reconstructed gold-rush era boom town. More than 32,000 visitors panned for gold there in the nine months to December 31, making a considerable contribution to the total revenue of $85,000 for the period. After expenses (including $70,000 for running the town) the West Coast Historical and Mechanical Society was left with a credit of $9362. This year’s main project is the construction of a station for the stage-coach the society is negotiating to buy — complete with harness — from Australia. A road will be built specially for a stage-coach run. Easter mail THE POSTMAN no longer delivers mail to households on the Saturday of Easter week-end, but the sorting of mail goes on behind the scenes throughout Easter. Indeed, it may even be expedited by the reduction in the volume of local business mail during the long week-end: an English weekly publication which usually reaches "The Press” on Tuesday afternoon or evening was sorted into the company’s Post Office box on Monday afternoon. * Rupert’ THE "SUNDAY MIRROR" was right in New Zealand’s corner on the day the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) arrived in London — even if it did get his name wrong. "Welcome!” it exclaimed in big fat type. “A friend of Britain is arriving here to visit us this afternoon. The Rt. Hon Rupert Muldoon. the new Prime Min-

ister of New Zealand. He will have a very warm welcome. We have had to make some new trading arrangements. But we know where our heart is. And that certainly includes New Zealand.” ‘The Final Days’ CARL BERSTEIN and Robert Woodward, the “Washington Post” reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal, say that their latest book about Richard Nixon’s last days in office is “basic reporting” which might contain minor errors, but is “the best obtainable version of the truth." They were questioned closely on an American television programme during the week-end about both the style and content of “The Final Days,” which is now being serialised in “The Press”. It contains purported revelations about Mr Nixon’s intimate family life and reports that many of Mr Nixon’s closest advisers, including the Secretary of State, Dr Henry Kissinger, did not like or trust Mr Nixon during the height of the Watergate pressures before Mr Nixon’s resignation as President. When asked about claims of inaccuracy by some principals in the book. Woodward said some of the more than 300 people interviewed told the reporters that they would have to deny speaking to them or dispute what they reported when the book was published, to save their own positions. Both authors emphasised that everything they wrote had been told to them by several sources, and “the thrust of what’s there” was true. "We’ll stand by it and be happy to research it,” Woodward said when told of a denial by the White House physician that he had said Mr Nixon had a "death wish.” He said that initial Watergate revelations in the "Washington Post” aiso were attacked as inaccurate, although nearly all that was published has been confirmed.