Reporter’s diary

Press, 3 May 1983, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Posters not on “CANCELLED” notices pasted over unwanted posters in the new City Mall have proved highly effective, according to the manager of the mall, Mr W. H. Stevens. Offenders were given plenty of warning that posters advertising band appearances and the like would be “cancelled,” but rashes of posters continued to appear through the mall until the management proved as good as its word. The poster problem stopped abruptly, and while the “cancelled” stickers have enraged the offenders, the move has been strongly supported by mall customers and members of the public, according to Mr Stevens. “One of the funniest cases was when three bands turned up to play at a hotel and ended up blaming each other for the ‘cancellation’,” he said. Taxi emissions THE USE of liquefied petroleum gas (L.P.G.) by taxis in Victoria, Australia, is preventing the emission oi

some 3300 tonnes of pollutants into the atmosphere each year, according to the Victorian Environmental Protection Authority. About 80 per cent of Victoria’s 3463 cabs are running on L.P.G. at present. On average, each cab uses about 21,000 litres (11 tonnes) of the gas a year. This compares with the average petrol-powered cab’s consumption of 18,000 litres a year.

Leading the field AMERICA is still catching up with New Zealand in some respects. Construction of the United States’ first building on “shock isolators” has just started in San Bernadino, California. The 21,000 square metre building, costing SUS3O million, will be built on “elastometric bearings”—steel and rubber “sandwiches” which absorb the shock of earthquakes. The technique has already been used in New Zealand, which is regarded by architects in the United States as a pioneering country in earthquate-resistant architecture.

Change of heart SUCH IS the paranoia of one Christchurch caniphobe (dog-hater), that he believes neighbouring dog-owners actually train their pets to excrete on the lawn and garden of his home in St Albans. In desperation, he recently bought a gas-oper-ated pellet revolver with which to discourage the offending dogs. “I wasn’t really sure if I was actually going to shoot them, or just frighten them,” he admitted yesterday. However, the man’s resovle weakened when a test-firing showed the pistol to be both too powerful—“l didn’t want to hurt them too much”—and too noisy. He feared that innocent neighbours might be alarmed, and, even worse for a caniphobe, each shot set all the dogs in the neighbourhood howling. In the end, the man found a much more harmless use for the weapon. He used it to to shoot tomatoes off a tall vine in his back yard.

Nice people WHEN a speeding car

crashed into a loan office in Los Angeles this week, nobody bothered to help the driver. Passers-by surged through the three metresquare hole in the wall and helped themselves to everything they could lay their hands on: a photo-copier, a computer printer, a postage meter, a coffee machine, and a wall clock. “When our helicopter arrived above the scene, one of the looters had removed a tyre from the car and was trying, to strip the rest of the vehicle,” said Sergeant Angelo Scotillo. The driver, who was Charged with driving under the influence, abandoned the car and went home. Straight talking AN ADMIRABLE example of honesty in local government is being quoted in Sunderland, England, where a borough council leader, Mr Charles Slater, is on record as having said: “Some of us are standing for re-election ... but we have no intention of shirking our duties until after that election.”