Reporter’s diary

Press, 10 July 1985, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Logo UNTIL NOW, the Internal Affairs Department has used New Zealand's coat of arms as its logo. Now, in bold strokes not normally expected from public servants, the department is adopting a new logo that resembles not much of anything, unless it can be seen as a broken Mobius Strip, one of those twisted lengths of paper that mysteriously have only one side. Internal Affairs does a bit of everything, and has sometimes

been called a catch-all department. When you have so many different things to do, you start to make a virtue out of variety, says a circular sent round the country with the new logo. Its role includes civil defence, passports, wildlife conservation, the arts, youth affairs, film censorship, national archives, recreation and sport, lotteries and gaming, Royal tours ... on and on. Additional jobs keep coming its way. Internal Affairs likes to be known as exciting and experimental, and cites its works with gangs and groups seeking alternative employment as examples of how much fizz it generates. Where’s Toot? THE LIONS Club of Rangiora used a traction engine to help it with a street collection during Telethon. Members thought it was a good idea — the engine made a lot of noise and its steam whistle attracted attention. Club members dressed up, some as clowns, and walked along with the engine as they carried buckets to collect donations. Two men, this year’s president and first vice-president, decided things were going a bit slowly at one point. They called at a friend’s house to have a cup of tea. They lingered, then left to rejoin the engine, which was no longer in sight. They had no idea which street it might have gone along. They finally had to retrace their steps to their car and drive back to the base station. Counselling RANGIORA police picked up a possible culprit off the streets the other day, then could not think what to do with it, or what it might have done except get itself lost. The white rabbit was obviously a roaming pet with an owner who was hard to find. Police officers

decided to palm it off on the Rangiora Borough Council, and informed the council that they may have found the vandal that had been damaging trees. In the end, a detective tossed the rabbit through the council building’s front door and walked away. The Town Clerk is reported to have said, apropos of reorganisation talks, that the community had decided not to be a “burrow council” any more. The rabbit was sent to the Mount Grey Downs rehabilitation centre to be looked after — and perhaps for a little counselling. Back home A NAVAL pennant that usually flies on the bonnet of an official car is coming back to New Zealand after flying many thousands of miles in a windless clime. The red-and-blue pennant of Rear-Admiral Cedric Steward, the New Zealand Chief of Naval Staff, was aboard the April flight of the space shuttle Discovery. More than a year ago, during a visit to the United States, Admiral Steward was at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas. He met an astronaut. Navy Captain S. David Griggs, who was getting ready for his flight and asked Admiral Steward if he could fly the New Zealand officer’s pennant on board the spacecraft. The admiral was happy to oblige. Now the pennant will come back home with Captain Griggs when he arrives in Auckland next month to address a New Zealand Computer Society conference. Admiral Steward said he never expected the pennant to be returned, but will be glad to have it. Its waving days are through, however; it will be too prized a memento to be flown car again.

Don’t pass Go I WILL trade you Oxford Terrace for your Municipal Electricity Department. Next year, the Auckland company that makes the game, Monopoly, in New Zealand will bring out a New Zealand version, with local street and place names. The local game will probably be made in a limited edition, perhaps over a couple of years. An Australian version was released a few years ago with some success. Last weekend, an Ham man won the regional Monopoly championship against nine other players, and will compete against six others at the national championship contest in Wellington this weekend. The New Zealand champion will travel to Atlantic City, New Jersey, in September for the international championship during the game’s fiftieth year. Atlantic City, America’s newest gambling mecca, provided street names for the original game. Richard Porter, the regional champion, had a little more than $12,000 in assets to win his games. Dinner golf WANAKA’s golf course rabbits are nothing new for a Christchurch man whose father used to play on the Hawkstone course in Shropshire. All the wild rabbits on that course were alike except for colour — some were black. The man’s father returned home one day with a dead black rabbit which had been killed by a powerful drive. The next day, the family had rabbit for dinner. After that, the man’s mother always suggested that Father should bring back another rabbit when he went out golfing. The colour did not matter, she said, but would he please skin it while it was still warm?