RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 174, 20 April 1937, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events (By Kickshaws.) There are cynics who declare that the sit-down strikes in America are an aggravated form of infantile paralysis. ♦ * * Trotsky says he is not an angel. Maybe that is why his friends in Russia decided he was not competent to run their earthly paradise. * * * Bank robbers at an American township were captured when their car struck a pot hole in the street. Does this explain the almost complete immunity from bank robberies in backblock streets in New Zealand? * * * “Tell ‘G.P.O.’ that his question about the letters is an easy one. The answer is that when the postman delivered the key he also put it into the locked letter box,” says “Colin,” aged 11 years. [What about the black men and the white men of the previous day? Or. perhaps “Colin” can think of a real poser?] * ♦ ♦ “Do members of the Royal family receive an annual allowance at the expense of the taxpayers,” asks “D.G.F.,” “or do the funds .they receive come from properties left by their ancestors; and are these properties and the titles of same held by the Royal family, or by the Crown or the Government?” ' [Full details are given below.] The answer to ’’what does it cost, the nation to maintain the monarchy,” is “nothing.” Indeed, the business shows a handsome profit. Up to the reign of Willian HI the sovereign had control of all incomes arising from royal lands and other property. This system had existed since William the Conqueror. William 111 maintained out of his owa pocket the Royal House and the civil and armed forces. William divorced the forces of the Crown from the authority of the Monarch and vested it in Parliament, or in other words the people. At the same time he gave up part of his royal revenues for their maintainance. George HI completed the transaction by surrendering all the remaining Crown lands in return for a fixed civil list. Under the supervision of the Treasury these lands are now controlled by the Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues. At the beginning of each reign the civil list is revised and fixed. This is the system in vogue to-day . The King gets an annuity, the people get the interest accruing from the Crown lands, less the money paid yearly to the King. Crown property does not decrease in value, and Parliament made a good bargain for the people when it arranged to take over the Crown lands and promised to pay a fixed civil list to the King, v/hen George 111 surrendered the Crown lands and revenues the income was £89,000 a year. By the beginning of this century the income had increased to £450,000 a year. Last year it had risen to about £2,000,000. A normal civil list for a married King is between £400,000 and £500.000 a year. King George V got £470,000 a rear. The allowances made at that time to other members of the Royal family amounted to £106,000 making the total cost of the Royal family £576,000. From a business point of view Parliament receives about £2,000,000 a year from the Crown lands,. After deducting working expenses the income to the nation is £1,230,000. The grant to the Royal family of, say, £o< 6,000 must be deducted from this, leaving for the nation a profit on the Crown lands of £654,000 a year. » * * “D.H.L.” has drawn attention to, the effect of the moon on the weather, in a recent article. Not even the most enthusiastic anti-mooners could possibly take exception to it. Nevertheless, this suggestion about the moon and the weather adds another link to the oldtime superstition that “Old Man Moon does more than merely shine. Astronomical experts, aided by the scientific fraternity generally, resolutely refuse to believe superstition. They will tell you that the moon is about 250,000 miles away. It reflects nothing but sunlight. Moreover, so little of the sunlight gets reflected to the earth that it would require 680,000 full moons to give us as much light as does the sun. Obviously the skv would be grossly overcrowded with moons. Yet these scientists have not yet explained how the moon manages to convert starch crystals into sugar although they admit that the moon does so. Another effect admitted by the experts is the change in weight caused by the moon. The liner Queen Mary, for example, weighs 201 b less when the moon is overhead.

If the experts have to admit that the moon has a certain effect on world affairs, some of them perhaps having been caught by the tide, the superstitious non-experts have elaborated upon this to an almost unlimited extent. It is difficult to explain away the superstition that moonlight has an effect on the mind. One finds this superstition in almost every civilisation and uncivilisation. Even the experts cannot explain why certain insects refuse to move abroad when the moon shines ■brightly. This fact they accept. Moreover, it is a well-known fact that some forms of lunacy do appear to reach a crisis during the wax of the moon. This fact is also accepted, but no investigations have been made. It is a well-known fact that some of the most troublesome times occur in mental hospitals during the waxing of the moon. A convicted murderer at the Old Bailey a few years ago summed this up with the remarkable plea, “I don’t know what possessed me to do it. When there is a new moon or it is in its first quarter, my head gets funny.”

It is very nice to be able to talk about the romance of making wood pulp in Tasmania for newsprint, but actually it is a sign of the coining wood pulp shortage. For the last 50 years we have been living on the past where wood pulp is concerned. Today the situation is such that a large daily newspaper circulating in highly populated areas —round American cities, for example—demands 25 acres of trees for each edition. If one multiplies this out it is obvious that we are eating up wood pulp at such a rate that the trees will not be able to compete. It takes perhaps 40 years to produce more wood pulp from the areas emptied of their trees. The wood pulp problem is further complicated by the fact that the stuff is now used for making silk stockings. Moreover, experiments have shown that wood pulp can be converted into sugar and other foodstuffs. Tlie wood pulp problem is even worse than the woodchuck chucking wood ditty suggests, because very soon there won’t be any wood for the woodchuck to chnek.