RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 59, 2 December 1933, Page 6

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current

Events

LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By Kickshaws.)

An Act to make half-crowns legal tender is all right, but a far more difficult act is to acquire a few.

Distilleries in Scotland, it has been announced, have resumed operations after being closed for two years. This spirit of confidence is maturing.

According to a meteorological expert forests have no effect on rainfall. More effect on rainfall may be obtained by forgetting to take an umbrella.

“Your 'suggested remedy to prevent bumble bees injuring broad beans, ‘grow peas,’ recalls an old story,” says “W.L.”, “of a man who sued his neighbour for half-drowning his fowls by allowing water from his garden hose te come over the fence. The Irish magistrate after much consideration turned to the plaintiff and said, ‘Did it never shtrike ye to kape ducks.’ ”

Mention of the fact that the new half-crowns will be legal tender up to £2 is a reminder that the absence of the farthing from New Zealand spares us the problem of having to carry around a pantechnicon in case one encounters a legally-minded shopkeeper. Legal tender for bronze is one shilling. In halfpennies it is bad enough, but imagine t.he problem of stowing away 4S farthings. An evening’s shopping might require a lorry. As a matter of fact tbe farthing is a mystery coin even in England. Now and then one encounters it, but statistics seem to indicate that the farthing docs little more than get itself lost. Since the year 1860 250 million farthings have contrived to get lost. Nobody knows where they are. Converted into pounds, shillings and pence, it is a sura that few people would ignore, even in farthings. The Mint continues to turn out some 20 million farthings a year. As fast as they are made they get away into tbe corners never to be found.

While on the subject of our new halfcrowns it was stated recently that they were very durable. This virtue in a coin does not interest the person in whose pocket the coin happens to be residing temporarily so much as the authorities who have to supply the coins. The fact is that quite an appreciable wear occurs when coins are in circulation. In England alone nearly 100 tons of silver is ground into silver dust in the pockets of the public and utterly lost. In ten years a silver coin, experience proves, loses one per cent.’ of its weight. Some mathematicallyminded member of the public can now work out how much our 300,000 halfcrowns will lose in their first year. In pre-war days, when gold was in circulation, nearly 14 tons of gold was converted every year into gold dust in the public’s pockets in England. As a matter of fact coins of different values do not last equally long. The longest lived is the half-crown. The life ot this coin is some 65 years. At the end of that period tbe half-crown is so worn that its inscription is illegible. The life of a florin is 45 years, a shilling 41 years, a sixpence 28 years and a threepenny bit 32 years in England, about 25 years in New Zealand, and 20 years in Scotland. ■• • • No doubt the present agitation by air-minded wing commanders in the House of Commons to increase the size of the air force is backed by common sense. Nevertheless, one cannot help feeling that little has been lost by Britain’s decision to disband her huge collection of wartime machines. Progress is so alarmingly rapid in aviation that even if the machines that, helped to win the war had not been disbanded they would now be useless against modern machines. Far more important than keeping a collection of unwanted military machines in the air Is the need for organisation, so that when it is necessary to increase the air force the men can be readily found to fly the machines. It is a fact that an aeroplane can be built far quicker than men in the raw'can be trained to pilot them. Unlike battleships, which take at least a year to build, a few thousand aeroplanes can be turned out in the matter of months.

It is obvious that Britain must always have the nucleus of an air force. But if the authorities were to be frightened by enthusiasts there would be chaos. Admirals and even midshipmen consider that a bigger and bigger navy is the only way to save Britain. The generals and the acting unpaid bombardiers believe that bigger and better armies with bigger .and better canteens and larger and better guns is what Britain wants, The air force enthusiasts want more and more aeroplanes and the scientists in common with the politicians consider that gas is the only thing that will save the Empire from ruin.

The air force enthusiasts can certainly point to the fact that under certain conditions that arm is decidedly economical. By substituting aircraft for infantry tn Irak the British taxpayer was saved nearly £20,000,000 a year. Indeed the £lB,000,000 spent annually on tbe Air Force is money economically spent because the cost of policing the fringes of the Empire has been reduced to a negligible amount. The argument that London could be blown to bits by invading air armadas comes under a different category altogether. Unpleasant as it is to be bombed, tbe fact remains that 100,000 aeroplanes on the job for one night and one day would be unable to blow London to bits.

“How was the excellent colourprinting done in your recent special issue?” asks a reader. An expert on the subject kindly explains that two and three-colour printing in newspapers is simply a matter of impressions. Most people know that newspapers are printed from solid plates of type called stereo plates, clamped on revolving .cylinders. In producing two or more colours, a series of plates are cast, tbe part to be printed in black is left on two of the plates, the rest of the matter being removed. Two more plates are. then treated so that tbe parts to be in colour are left, and the black portions are removed. For each colour a separate cylinder is used, in order to give tlie required number of impressions. The paper is led through these cylinders, and by special rollers, known as register rollers, the various colours are brought into their proper relation. * • • “He slept beneath the moon, He basked beneath the sun| He lived a life of going-to-do. And died with nothing done.” —Old Epitaph.