Reporter’s diary

Press, 18 February 1986, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Running free FORElGN*'diplomats in New Zealand seem to be able to get away with drunken driving before they are sent home; but in London they could face expulsion for parking infringements, although they would need a long list Scores of foreign diplomats in London persistently use their position to escape that most insidious of enforcement agencies — the parking ticket police. A remarkable 108,000 parking fines were waived there in 1984 on the grounds of diplomatic immunity. The worst offenders were the Egyptians, with 6885 tickets for 1984, Nigeria with 5902, and Saudi Arabia with 4956. Not to be easily beaten, the parking police have introduced a totting-up system for offenders. Thirty unpaid tickets bring a personal warning, while 60 are supposed to merit instant expulsion. One Third World diplomat has just passed the magic 60, but nothing has happened to him yet We wondered if foreign diplomats here were smugly over-parking without the repercussions that the rest of us must face, buL-the Ministry of Transpol’ assures us that

most of them are not. “By and large the embassies do tend to pay up on their parking tickets,” said a spokesman for the Ministry’s legal division in Wellington. “Their cars have ‘D.C. (Diplomatic Corps)’ plates, so very often they don’t get tickets in the first place,” he said. Over-parking here was not a criminal offence and he had not heard of anyone claiming diplomatic immunity to beat the rap. “I can sympathise with them in London,” he said. “You have only to stop your car there and you commit an offence.” ‘Submarines’

SHIPWRECKED passengers from the sunken liner Mikhail Lermontov who were transferred into the covered-in lifeboats of the Tarihiko must have thought they were going from the frying pan into the fire. The covered boats like those almost invariably found on Russian vessels at Lyttelton (the Mikhail Lermontov, ironically, had open ones) look like something out of Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” totally enclosed except for a little portholed cupola for the helmsman

where he is going. Actually getting into one of these claustrophobic vessels — daunting enough prospect on a ship tied up on a sunny day at Lyttelton — must have been a terrifying experience for the passengers of the Mikhail Lermontov. One of the enclosed lifeboats apparently had a metre of seawater sloshing round in its darkened interior. Three rescued passengers, interviewed yesterday by reporters of “The Press,” referred to them as "those submarines.” Mikhail who? A READER called yesterday to say that he did not understand why there should be a difference between “Mikhail Lermontov” as it was written in “The Press” yesterday morning, and the Russian language version painted on the bows of the illfated liner. The reason is simple; the type-setting resources of “The Press” do not extend to back-to-front Cs, upside-down Ns, and funny Ss. Beginner’s luck A BETTING syndicate at the Alliance freezing works in Southland is still reeling from an outstand-

ing example of beginner’s luck. The syndicate had five members and was comfortably ahead of the tote, as they say in the racing game. Then came the turn of a new member, who hardly knows which end of a horse eats grass, to do the picks. His return for the day was a tidy $11,500. Trials THE “Wall Street Journal” has an interesting variation on Murphy’s Law. It defines the First Law of Flying as: "The proximity of a screaming child to you in the aircraft will be directly proportional to the difficulty of the highly technical reading material yoii must absorb for a job Interview at your destination.”. Final approach ONLY THE Emerald Jsle could have produced this beautifully Irish| announcement: “The official opening of the Connacht Regional Airport at Knock has been postponed. It was to have taken place in April, but will not now happen until midsummer. The delay is to allow the work to be on time.” —Peter Comer