LOCAL AND GENERAL

Evening Star, Issue 17731, 4 August 1921, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL

For the month of July four bankruptcies we.ro recorded with the Palmerston North Official Assignee. For tho .corresponding month of last year there were none. So far this year there have been fifteen bankruptcies, as against eight for the whole of 1920.— 1 Manawatu Times.’

“ My client is on the verge of collapse, and cannot attend,” explained counsel at a meeting of creditors in Wellington in a bakrupt estate, in accounting for tho nonappcaranco of bankrupt. “Weil,” remarked a creditor, “all I can say is that for a man in his condition he has pretty strong nerves, Only the other day he was working on a five-story building.” (Laughter.)

Something novel in the way of State finance is described in Australian files just to hand, which relate that the Queensland Prime Minister, having failed to float a loan on the London market, arranged for temporary accommodation from tho Bank of England to the extent of a million sterling. This, it appears, is to be paid back in instalments,. £200,000 in September, £50,000 in October, £200,000 in November, and £550,000 in July of next‘year. The rate of interest fluctuates with tho bank rate prevailing from time to time.

At the. meeting of the City Council last night Cr Hancock mentioned a letter which .had been published in ,the ■ ‘ Evening Star’ recently on The question of ferns, and challenged the statements contained therein. The letter, ho said, appeared over the signature of Dr Gordon Macdonald, and stated that certain experts had declared that the ■ ponga, or silver fern, would not grow in this district. As a matter of fact, no such declaration had been made. What l)r Macdonald had asked was that tho mamnka, or black fern, which grows on the West Coast, should be obtained and .planted in Dunedin, and he had been told that it would not thrive here. The silver fern, as everyone know, would grow anywhere’ in New Zealand. Cr Hancock added that he made this explanation in fairness to Mr Reid and Dir Tannock, whose names had been mentioned in the letter.

Quito a novel confidence trick liao been worked off on shopkeepers in Auckland twice daring the past fortnight. A man walked* up to the counter of a shop in Great North road the cither day with a £5 note carefully folded and knotted, as careful people frequently do fold.and knot such bank paper to • eliminate the chance o, confusing it with £1 notes. Ho earnestly requested that the man behind the counter should do him the favor of exchanging five £1 notes for the fiver. On having the. singles carefully counted cut to him he gathered them up with a careless sweep, tossed down his knotted note on the counter, and with a curt “ Thanks! smartly made his exit. By the time that the shonkeeper had discovered that _ ho had paid away five £1 notes for a piece of crinkled, knotted, and blank brown paper th'o trickster had made good his escape. The same trick was worked, this time with a piece of blank dirty-white paper, at a business place in Birkenhead. “ I do not think for one moment that the seagull can ever be a rival to the kea in the destruction oX sheep -and lambs, writes a defender of the gull. “ The kea, like all parrots, has a tearing bill, and likewise sharp claw’s with which it can hold on to the.wool of the sheep. Ihe feet of the gull are webbed, and it would be impossible for it- to bold on to t.:e sheep’s back, even if it the same k i.d of bill as t-lio kea. The bill of me gull i is not a tearing bill in the ordinary sense. It may be that some gulls have tie. n scon eatine the flesh of a sheep that had been attacked by the keas, which, bar n<; had their fill, left the carcass. To nestr"y the gull would lead to an enormous 10-s't" the noricaltural farmers by it.son of the good thev do in following the plough and eating grubs and caterpillars tbit are turned up in the operation of rirvghjng Anyone who has lived in the Canterbury, and Otago provinces cum at vh, time of ploughing and harr M'lng* see hundreds of gulls following i-ne ploughs qfnd eating the grubs, etc. Tie City Council last night decided to m e" the name of Gaol street to Dun wi-st-/eo and that o! Brunswick street to lovalty street. This having been do*', Cr‘Scott said he would like the chairman of the Public Works Committee to take into consideration the naming of a street after Nurse Bao, who had lost her hie when the hospital ship Marquette foundered. Cr Wilson replied that this .v vi d be easily done, as there would be sevaeal streets to be named shortly. •Speaking at the annual meeting of the Wellington Chamber 61 Commerce. Mr Carr (president) urged economy in Government and private concerns. Regarding taxation, the whole system was crying for reform. The method of • assessment of income tax on companies has been a constant source of complaint. In his opinion, tho method of imposing graduated income tax was entirely wrong as it was applied to the income of companies. New concerns could be carried on only with large capital and expenditure. To tax such incomes in a graduated scale was inflicting considerable injustice on the shareholders, the great bulk of whom could not be regarded as capitalists. If tho present system continued, capital should first bo allowed a fair return, and the graduated tax made only on the surplus over a fair return. There was a limit to the taxation of industry, and he believed tho limit had been reached.

Several prisoners appeared at tho Auckland Supreme Court for sentence before .Mr Justice Adams yesterday, and, in granting probation to a forger,_ His Honor took occasion to express his views on tho meaning of probation, and also in another case to refer incidentally to tho Court of Appeal's recent decision in regard to the standard of punishment. “ The Court of Appeal,” said His Honor, “ did net, in fact, lay down any new principle. The application of the principle has been in practice for twenty years.” “Probation,” said His Honor at a later stage, “is not a license to do wrong, nor is it very desirable to differentiate it from punishment in actual fact. It is itself, in my judgment, a somewhat serious punishment. A prisoner put on probation must understand ho'must be exceedingly careful to comply implicitly with the directions of tho probation officer and with tho conditions laid down in the 1920 Acty