Reporter’s Diary

Press, 16 September 1976, Page 2

Reporter’s Diary

Arms deal THE GOVERNMENT Stores Board is looking for international arms dealers to buy 135 revolvers from the Police Armoury and 240 9mm Sten guns from the Defence Department. It has called tenders for the sale of those arms — but on condition that they be exported. They are not allowed to be kept in New Zealand. And the Government will not hand over the arms until it knows which country they are destined for. It also reserves the right to supervise the dispatch of arms purchased for export, and will want to see an import approval certificate from the country of destination before it issues an export permit. Also up for tender, not necessarily for export, are thousands'of rounds of ball and blank ammunition, and 462 short magazine Lee Enfield .303 rifles as used in World War 11. Religious books

COLLINS, the publishers, have announced what they call their largest publishing project — a first-print run' of one million copies of the Good News Bible, the work bf a committee of the American Bible Society. “As far as impact is concerned,” says Collins’s publicity sheet, “we expect something similar to the ‘Colin Meads — All Black’ success.” It is not often that our two national religions each produce a best-seller in the same year. Air crew's food AIRLINE pilots should be served different food from the passengers and from the rest of the crew just before and during flights, said Dr John Sumner, a Lincoln College food technologist, at a hygiene seminar this week. He quoted a case last year in which 196 passengers on a flight from Tokyo to Co-

penhagen developed food poisoning, and nearly three-quarters of them had to be admitted to hospital. The food implicated was the ham served on top of a cheese omelette, and the common food-poisoning organism Staphylococcus aureus was isolated from the hands of two in-flight®-cooks and from the nose of an assistant. Fortunately none of the crew ate the omelette because their working day had advanced to suppertime, and they, were served a steak dinner. Dr Sumner added the sombre postscript that the head of the catering company involved later committed suicide. First tanks

YESTERDAY was of special significance to men of the armoured corps. It was the sixtieth anniversary of the first use of tanks in battle. The British Army’s Mark 1 rolled across the mud for the first time in the Battle of the Somme on September 15, 1916. The first tanks were not deployed to very good effect, or in ideal conditions, but they were said to have had a devastating moral effect. Large bodies * of the enemy surrendered as the seemingly invincible juggernauts rolled up to the trenches. TV critic

“ROMPER ROOM.” TV2’s afternoon programme for pre-schoolers, sometimes gets the sort of spontaneous social commentary that Gordon Dryden and Brian Edwards would give their clip-boards for. Miss Helen (as the tots call their hostess) showed them a picture of a football match, and remarked, “Some daddies like to watch football, don’t they?” A little voice replied, before the camera could swivel round to him, “Sometimes I tell my Daddy to shut that rubbish off and pull up the blind.”

Precaution A FARMER’S wife near Coes Ford has added to the already extensive lore on women drivers. Her car became bogged down, and she enlisted the help bf a neighbour’s tractor to get Her out of the mud. But whenever he signalled her to. let out the clutch, her car’s wheels just skidded and the engine stalled. The neighbour came around to have a look, and found that she had the car in reverse gear. “I didn’t want to slam into the back of the tractor when my car started,” she explained. Hand inspection RUGGED freezing workers will be lining up every day to have their hands inspected by pretty girls, if Dr John Sumner, a Lincoln College food technologist, has his way. He ,told a hygiene seminar this week that the meatworks of some European countries have “a daily rigorous hand inspection, invariably conducted by a sumptuous, buxom blond—a measure which could be implemented in New Zealand.” Slip cure ONE of the farming writers on the staff of “The Press” believes that soil conservation practices in Victoria and New South Wales could help arrest the movement of the slip which threatens the home of the Schenkel family of Hawkhurst Road. Lyttelton. The hilly regions of both Victoria and New South Wales have a soil erosion problem largely because of the light nature of the soil covering. When a slip becomes evident, say at the head of a gully, the practice of landowners is to break up and spread baled straw, cover it with fine netting, and peg it. The object is to arrest and reduce run-off and, our writer avers, it is tried and tested. Last one

DROUGHT-stricken Britons are being urged bv a sign in one butcher’s shop to “Buy mutton while stocks last. I‘ll never find another ewe."

-—Garry Arthur.