Reporter's Diary

Press, 9 August 1976, Page 3

Reporter's Diary

Pumpkins PETER, PETER, pumpkin eater must have been a Yank. Recent mention in the Diary that pumpkins were hard to find in Britain because they were grown only as cattle fodder drew the response from a farming Briton that only swedes and turnips are fed out there in winter. So what of pumpkins? Professor R. H. M. Langer, professor of plant science at Lincoln College, obligingly went to the best scources and pronounced that although marrows can be grown quite successfully in Britain, pumpkins require a longer growing season than is possible in the British climate. Pumpkins, marrows, and squashes all belong to the species Cucurbita pepo, first cultivated in Mexico and South America at least 9000 years ago. Thev were to be found from Canada to Mexico by th" time Europeans arrived, and were quickly introduced to Europe. Professor Langer has been unable to discover any evidence to suggest that plants of the species are being cultivated for animal consumption. Another fallacy laid to rest. “Not us”

MR B. J. DRAKE’S recent remark at a Canterbury Rugby Union meeting that black Africans should “go back to the jungle” came up at last week’s meeting of the Canterbury University professorial board. Mr Drake represents the University Rugby Club on the union’s management committee. The professors passed, without dissent, a resolution publicly dissociating themselves from his remark. Clear at last

THE MEDICAL profession’s princinal professional body, the Medical Association of New Zealand, has announced that it has changed its name to the New Zealand Medical Association. It makes no mention in its press release that the reason it wan’t called that in the first place was that Dr Erich Geiringer’s break-

away group got in first an< took that name back in the 19605. It is a complicated story. The principal body started off in 1887 as the New Zealand Medical Association, but in 1896 became the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association. It intended in 1967 to revert to the earlier name, but Dr Geiringer beat them to it, and in something of a huff the main group took the almost identical name of the Medical Association of New Zealand—much to the confusion of everyone concerned. Only now, when Dr Geiringer’s group has thrown in the towel, has the Medical Association of New Zealand been able to take the name it wanted. Spirited away THE BISHOP of Wurzburg, West Germany, has been charged with negligent homicide after the death by starvation of a woman student, aged 23, undergoing exorcism. The charge has been brought by Hamburg lawyers acting on behalf of an unidentified client. The fatal exorcism took place at Klingenberg, Bavaria. The bishop is accused of responsibility in the young woman’s death because he authorised the exorcism and did not ensure that she was forcefed when he was informed of her seriously weakened physical condition. Taking names TONY KUNOWSKI, the Values Party leader, spent Friday afternoon knocking on doors in his own street, Watford Street, Papanui, collecting signatures for the Campaign Half Million petition against the use of nuclear reactors in New Zealand. Values Party members all over the country are helping with the campaign. Rent-a-sheep HOUSEHOLDERS and businesses in Bonn, West Germany, who want their grass cut cheaply are being urged to use sheep. “Woollen lawnmowers are the cheapest, cleanest,

quietest, most nonpolluting ones you can get,” said a spokesman for the German Sheep Raisers’ Association. Sheep are already being rented by schools, factories, large home-owners, and a helicopter landing field to remove grass. Annette van Dorp, a young agriculture student, started a rent-a-sheep company with 300 sheep at Bonn in April, and has been so successful that she plans to increase her flock to 700. “Blue box” THE millionaire financier Bernard Comfeld’s former housekeeper told a Los Angeles court last week that she made overseas telephone calls for him by using a “blue box” to bypass telephone billing equipment. But the housekeeper, Rebecca Borland, said she could not remember mentioning the device to Mr Comfeld and never used it in his presence. Mr Comfeld, the former head of the collapsed Investors Overseas

Services (1.0.5.) mutual fund, is accused of allowing the “blue box” to be used at his Los Angeles mansion to defraud the telephone company. Miss Borland said she was shown how to use the box by Mr Cornfeld’s former secretary. The prosecution alleges that Mr Comfeld caused the device to be used more than 300 times to make calls to British lawyers and other people. From the cellar WINE statistics are well matured by the time the Department of Statistics gets them out. The department’s latest brew of figures has been fermenting since the 1974-75 production year. The statistics show that new wine put down during that year totalled 24.7 million litres, 20 per cent less than was put down the year before. Sales also fell by 5.5 per cent. The industry was left with 4.6 per cent bigger stocks at the end of the year than at the end of the previous year. —Garry Arthur