Reporter’s Diary

Press, 7 September 1976, Page 2

Reporter’s Diary

Precedents STATIONARY engine drivers are a small, but elite band, and those in authority would be welladvised to tread cautiously in the present industrial dispute. Any one of them, judging by New Zealand’s history, could be a future Prime Minister. Michael Joseph Savage, the first Labour Prime Minister, was a stationary engine driver in Australia before he came to New Zealand, and Norman Kirk was a stationary engine driver for Firestone in Christchurch before he entered Parliament Newer, but slower THE LABOUR Department’s “new look” employment service appears to have an unfortunate flaw. Under the old system, the unemployed were interviewed as soon as they called at the public counter and were told whether there was a job available. Under the new system, the customer is told to fill in a form and come back for an interview as much as a fortnight later. A tradesman who called at the Christchurch office on September 1 says he was told that his first meeting with an employment officer would be on September 15. “We’re busy,” was the explanation when he told them he needed a job straight away. Mr Pat Cunningham, the department's district superintendent in Christchurch, said yesterday that interviews were now being done "in depth”, with the purpose of trying to match an unemployed person with a job suited to his capabi-

lities. It was necessary to arrange interviews a short time ahead — up to nine days, although Mr Cunningham said the man concerned could have been given an interview date a fortnight away. “If he had said that was too long to wait, we’d have interviewed him on the spot,” he said. He added that the delay would not affect any entitlement to an unemployment benefit. It would be backdated to the day he applied. (Our man, of course, was after a job — not the dole.) Flying stags THE WISHBONE, a poultry shop in Colombo Street, Beckenham, has a blackboard outside advertising that it sells “stags”. But it’s not venison that it wants people to buy — it’s big roasting roosters. Mr Earl Edlin, manager of the shop, explained yesterday that “stags” were raised from an imported breed of poultry called Shaver, developed in Australia and America especially for roasting. A “stag”, he said, was a rooster that had not been breeding — a male virgin. It grew to 81b in 10 months and sold at less than 50c a pound, compared with 70c to 82c a pound for chickens. Chickens weigh in at l|lb to 41b, so the 81b stags are well up into the turkey size range. “You can’t fry them,” said Mr Edlin, “but they’re excellent roasted.” Stolen knowledge THINGS are so bad these davs that some people will go'to any lengths to learn ways to make money. Desperate thieves in Aix-en-Provence, France, have made off with the com-

plete library of the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the local university. Police said the gang used several lorries to haul away the library’s 30,000 books. The theft, which took place during the summer holiday, was discovered when the faculty reopened. Wants a ‘bleeper’ MENTION in the “Diary” a week ago of the electronic “bleeper” being used by Americans to ward off mosquitoes struck a chord with the New Zealand Electricity Department. It is plagued by sandflies in its work at Lake Manapouri, and has been looking for some relief. An officer of the department is writing to the American bleeper-makers for more information. Sandfly man ANOTHER Christchurch man who is keen to try out a ’skeeter bleeper is a dermatologist who has been studying ways of protecting people against biting insects for the last 20 years. He thinks the principle of an electronic repellant is an excellent one, mainly because it does not involve killing the insects and so upsetting the natural environment. The specialist, who was called in to advise on protection for orkers at Deep Cove when the Wanganella was moored there, has been working on substances which could be taken by mouth to make the skin unpalatable to biting insects — “so that you could go into the danger area and come out unscathed.” But he thinks it will be a long time before anything dramatic comes up. Most of the work has been done in America and Canada, and was stimulated by the presence of

American troops in Vietnam. The dermatologist said he was forming a charitable trust so that his line of research would continue in perpetuity. Hindsight A YOUNG man who was fined $lOO in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday for possession of cannabis seeds had told the police that he just didn’t know what to do with them. He had 416 seeds according to the police count, but he could not get rid of them. The Magistrate (Mr B. A. Palmer) told him he should have got himself a budgie. —Garry Arthur