LOCAL AND GENERAL

Evening Star, Issue 20257, 19 August 1929, Page 3

LOCAL AND GENERAL

A bust of Sir Edwin Mitcbelson, president of the Auckland Racing Club, made by Sir Bertram Mackennal, was unveiled at tho Ellerslie racecourse on Saturday afternoon (says a Press Association telegram), in the presence ot a large crowd. The mayor (Mr G. Baildon) presided. The Acting-secretary of the Post and Telegraph Department has been advised as follows by the Chief Postmaster at Christchurch (reports a Press Association telegram from Wellington) :—“Postmaster, Kaikoura, reports extensive bush fires in Puhi Fold Valley,'- fourteen miles north of Kaikoura. A sawmill and six or seven settlers’ homesteads are endangered.” The police made a raid on the betting fraternity at Gisborne on Saturday afternoon, four prominent residents being arrested on charges of breaches of the Gaming Act. The cases will be beard to-day. On Saturday morning, Detectivesergeant Hewitt, Sergeant Abel, and Constables Beadle and Nesbit, acting under a search warrant, visited the bouse of Thomas H. Brewer, jun., at Invercargill, and arrested him on a charge of keeping a common gaming house. The accused appeared before justices of the peace in the Police Court in the afternoon, and was remanded until August. 19, bail being allowed in the sum of ..Cloo.—Press Association.

The Minister of Public Works (the Hon. E. A. Ransom) and a large party of Government officials, engineers, members of Parliament, and public body representatives made a tour of the Waikato River on Saturday. The river is gradually silting up, and it is hoped that the Government will give material assistance towards dredging it. The present shallowness causes winter flooding, affecting 10U,000 acres of swamp laud which, if brought under cultivation, are estimated to carry 1,000 families. It is believed that the deepening of the river channel will drain this land. Mr Ransom promised to spend £1,500 on an investigation. As a result of a dispute between the Seamen’s Union and Messrs A. G. Frankham, Ltd., the owners of tho auxiliary schooner Hokianga, the schooner ha. been declared black, and the members of the union are now debarred from signing on the vessel. Tho Hokianga carries a crew of eight, including two able seamen and one ordinary seaman. Tho dispute is due to the"fact that Messrs A. G. Frankham, Ltd., are not members of the Shipowners’ Federation, and the company will not work three seamen on the Hokianga in accordance witli the agreement made by the Shipowners’ Federation and tho Seamen’s Union. The latter is not registered under the Arbitration Act, and the union cannot cite Fraiikhams to become a party to the agreement. Non-union labour has been engager! to fill the seamens’ positions on the Hokianga.