Reporter's Diary

Press, 28 March 1980, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Cost of dying FUNERAL directors in Christchurch might' not think much of cardboard coffins, as reported in “The Press” last;, week. But Mr M.' A. Scott, advertising manager of Kiwi Packaging, Ltd, maker of the alternative ' Composite caskets, as he calls them, has made some interesting points in their favour. Nor only do they make'sense at a time when con-' servation of New Zealand’s native timbers is demanded — but fuel savings of up to 25 per cent •' are achieved at the crematorium, he says. The cardboard coffins-include tim-.. - ber strengthening, provid-

ing the same carrying ca-; pabilities as conventional ones. There would be no chance of the corpses fall-’ ing out the bottom in the, middle of a funeral, as suggested by one Christ-, church funeral director., The cardboard version has. al! the visual characteristics of a conventional, wooden coffin, as can.be seen iri the picture above. 1 “At a saving of about $2OO, composite, caskets rhake a lot of sense,” says ’ Mr Scott; Especially’ when the average cost of a funeral these' days is about $lOOO. . Expensive cut BAD as things may seam

economically, they could be much worse. A recent visitor to Istanbul says she watched a Government television broadcast at the beginning of this • month in which. it put up the price of meat by 400 per cent. At the wheel THE CRUISER Belfast which. is now a museum ship moored .opposite theTower of London has -a new display, opened earlier this month, , featuring items of interest from the Battle of the River Plate. One of them is the wheel of the Royal New Zealand Navy, Cruiser Achilles,, one of the ' three that

fought the German pocket battleship.- Graf Spee. The wheel was given by Adrrri-' ral .oi’ the Fleet. Sir Te-, rence Lewin, Chief of the Defence Staff, who found it oh a trip to India. The Achilles was. eventually taken over by the Iridian Government and was renarned Delhi. Admiral Lewin found that the' Delhi was being broken up, successfully negotiated for the wheel, and sub-' sequently brought it home in his luggage. .He began his naval career as a midshipman, in the Belfast in 1939. Leave whale alone WHALES face yet another survival- hazard. Now that they have become objects of friendly concern and strong political bargaining everywhere — apart -from Russia and Japan — their very popularity may be their undoing.- Harassment • of -whales by tourists is ■ becoming a serious problem in Hawaii, home of almost half the humpback whales in the North Pacific. In Baja, California, .where, grey whales normally separate them-

selves from the group to r.ear. .their . calves, in the safety of’ lagdpns, disturb-, ance by .tourists is causing them'to remain in. the, open .' ,sea. The disadvantage of this, it seems, 'is that .the mothers are' then chased by rapacious males, and, by the. time they have shaken them off, they cannot find their calves. Rubbish AN exhibition that opened at the Pentonville Gallery, in London earlier ' this month was a self-con-fessed load of rubbish. Called “Detritus,” it was the work of an G. Roy Levin, and as far as could be gathered fromhis description, -it appeared to be the garbage from his flat — framed, boxed, or photographed. The question posed by the exhibition, -according ,v ; tb; Levin, was:. “Does obses--siveness transcend. mere v neurosis by producing art?” Rubbish, cried ’ the critics with one accord.