RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 189, 9 May 1934, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events

(By

Kickshaws.)

What are the needs of a plus child asks an education expert. The answer of course is an increased golf handicap.

Mr. Baldwin may have discovered a shy novelist, but nobody has discovered a modern novel with a similar complaint.

Dancers at Hamilton are reported not to have been unduly alarmed when a charge of gelignite exploded under the hall. They thought that the saxophonist had sneezed down his instrument.

“Lately you. have been alluding to geography,” writes “H.W.” “Now in relation to our official mean time, can you state the place from where New Zealand time is taken? Presumably to be just to the majority of a country’s inhabitants, official time should be taken from a meridian about equally dividing the population. Is this so in New Zealand? If not where would that place be, and what difference would it make in our time?” The meridian adopted lies midway between East Cape and West Cape and passes very close to-Christchurch. The whole of the North Island is east of this meridian. The centre of population for the North Island lies in the vicinity of Waimarino in. the Tongariro area. With the meridian situated as it is, sun time is fast at Wellington from January 1-14 by a period that varies from 6 to 0 minutes. From January 15 to March 14 sun time is slow on New Zealand standard time. The •greatest difference is five minutes on February 1. For the rest of the year it is fast, the greatest difference being 25 minutes on October 23.

With ti stroke of the pen Hitler has created 1000 new towns. That is just about the easiest part of the proposition. Towns by the dozen have been created before now on paper. The real problem after you have built your new town is to persuade people to live in it. Hitler would be well advised to study this side of the problem. If he had done so it is doubtful if even his arrogance would have permitted him to lead people to believe that one could create towns like one creates a pile of bricks. The fact is that mankind is very conservative about its towns. Only tested and tried towns are tolerated. As it takes a hundred years for this sea l of approval to be set upon a town, the creation of towns, as if they were packs of cards, is beset with difficulties of a psychological nature. Have we not got that white elephant in Australia as an example of the difficulties that lie to trip up those who think that they can produce a complete new city as a magician produces a rabbit? Millions have been sunk in Canberra. It has an ideal climate, lovely buildings, nice suburbs, but nobody living in them except civil servants who are ordered to do so.

Presidents of some of the smaller States of South America have sought since the war to create new capital cities. Hitler, who seeks to create 1000 new towns by a stroke of the pen, might well contemplate the uphill fight it is to make these dream cities going concerns. The only thing that “goes” in them is money. When the Turks decided upon a brand new city it is doubtful if they realised the conservative ways of city dwellers, who resent being transplanted. Twenty years ago or more a company sought to found a new town in Britain called New Southwold. Iti was to be a great fishing port. It was to capture the whole fishing industry of Scotland. The mouth of the river Bly th was dredged. Houses were built. A pier was erected. New Southwold was to be a dream city. It would grow and grow until it absorbed Old Soubhwold as a suburb. To-day New Southwold is for. sale at an upset price of ten shillings. It was found that people could not. be persuaded to live in the new town. Meanwhile Old Southwold flourishes.

When the Commissioner of State Forests declared that timber buyers are always ready to praise the timbers of the days that are gone he did not go far enough. The truth is that all of us are always ready to praise the days that are gone. Usually we refer to them as “the good old days. The real fact is that the “good old days were rotten. One lias only to go back a hundred years to realise how lucky we are to have missed them. Every youth was in perpetual danger of the press gang. Suddenly whisked away by scamps in authority a youth of the "good old days” found himself suffering the incredible brutalities of a life on the ocean wave. Those who stayed at home or escaped the press gang were > not much better off. A. farm labourer was paid about 1/6 a week. He was as near destitute as could be. He knew what it was like to starve, not in the midst of plenty. So far as the law was concerned the “good old days were rotten. There are instances galore of children being sentenced to transportation to the Sydney convict settlements for theft of a handkerchief. Men. moreover, were hung for the same crime. • • ♦

The more one examines the “good old days” the worse they become. ’ Simplicity it is said was the keynote of those days. The weary ploughman ploughed’ his weary ways endlessly home. He had no cinema when the shades of night arrived. His home was certainly simple. There was little furniture in it. Usually he was in debt for what there was. Even if there had been radio sets he would have been unable to afford one. The curfew was his only musical recreation. Next day he got up and started all over again. If he were lucky statistics show that he might live to be 35 years old. More often than not lie died before that of some trivial disease cured to-day by a minor operation. When he wanted a tooth out he went to the village blacksmith. The offending tooth was wrenched out by the man of sweat and iron. Quite often the result was a broken jaw. There were no anaesthetics of anv kind. Pain bad to be endured. There was uo aspirin, few drugs, and very little medical knowledge. The chances <>f his children reaching maturity were remote. Throe quarters of them preceded him into the village *

"Another Scotty” writes“ Like ■Scotty’ (Random Notes 3/5/34) I also derive quite a lot of amusement and knowledge from your column. 1 think ‘ScoM.v’s’ problem really knotty. The only answer I can give is that ’A" and ‘C’ must be very ‘close’ relatimis (thev are both Scotch ye ken) I As for vour problem. My answer Is rbat the speaker who says ‘Sisters and brothers be had none but that man’s mother is my sister’s mothers mother in-law’ is the grandson of the gentleman. who on the previous occasion said ■Sisters and brothers have I none, but that man’s father is nty father’s son.’ Am I right.” (Yes, go up top).