City and Suburban

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 104, 27 January 1931, Page 11

City and Suburban

Items of Interest

Thomas Bradshaw, a seaman, whose home is in Dunedin, received a lacerated wound to the scalp at 7.10 last evening as the result of a fall down a stairway at the Royal Hotel, Lambton Quay. He was attended to and removed to the hospital by the Free Ambulance.

The race for the Mercantile Marine Cup, between the ships’ boats of the various overseas companies, will tahe place at 5.30 p.m. to-day. The course will be from the Pipitea Wharf to the Taranaki Street Wharf. The race is always a keenly-contested one and should be worth watching. The cup will be presented at the rooms of the British Sailors’ Society, 57 Cuba Street, this evening by Mr. C. M. Turrell.

Taking fire while climbing the Wainui Hill Road at about 4.30 a.m. on Sunday, a touring ear belonging to Mr. F. Baker, of Byron Street, Petone, was almost totally destroyed. Six hours afterward the wreck was so hot that the salvagers had to use extinguishers before any work could be done. But even then thieves had been at work and removed some of the detachable portions of the car.

“With all respect to our local authorities and their officers. I can never be persuaded that they are competent to pose as arbiters of public taste on aesthetic questions,” stated the Director of Townplanning, Dr. J. W. Mawson, at a recent meeting of the Wellington branch of the Town-planning Institute. He continues: “I am sure that any local authority which adopted or even attempted to adopt such a pose, would lay itself open to ridicule. Nevertheless. I doubt if it would be possible or even desirable for a local authority to divest itself of the responsibility of issuing building permits, particularly as questions of public health and safely must always take precedence over purely aesthetic considerations.”

Following the conference of the New Zealand Horticultural Trades Association, New Zealand Institute of Horticulture, the Wellington and Hutt Valley societies, and the Association of Directors of Parks and Reserves, a national flower show is to be held in the Town Hall on Thursday, at which some unique exhibits • will be seen. These will include a huge’ spike with nine heads of the rare “Banksia Grandis” of Western Australia,, grown by a New Plymouth firm; a splen-. did collection of the'new hybrid “Calla.” from a lady grower in Otahuhu; dahlias, gladioli, phlox, and spireas in profusion, and a collection of grape fruit, sweet oranges, and lemons from Auckland, showing what can be done in New Zealand in the way of growing citrus fruits.