Notes and Comments.

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 1962, 4 January 1913, Page 2

Notes and Comments.

Seems Almost Too Good

The latest in automobile paints is coming, not from Yankeeland, but from England. One of the largest firms there has just brought out a new varnish, called "Lumino Aluminium Paint," and it is stated that the glow of the paint on a dark night ig so bright that tho car is visible for two miles without being fitted with lamps. It is said that people on the roads near the factory were frightened by' the strangely glowing, lightless cars, which silently skimmed through tho village. Must look strange, too!

When Even Harrison Nods!

They grow some wonderful old men in England. There is Frederic Harrison, the philosopher and worker in literature. He is now in his S2nd year, and yet his utterances and writings are deemed worthy to this very day of being cabled away to this uttermost end of the earth. He wrote the other day urging his nation to concentrate its fleet, even to the letting go of her overseas possessions— as if England's greatest strength today wasn't her sons of the blood. And yesterday's cable news told us things Frederic Harrison had been saying before the English Positivist Society, of which he was President from 1880 to 1905. He is said to have declared that "national defence was England's most urgent duty, but compulsory service would cause civil war." What a foolish old man it is! That's what the objectors said in New Zealand twelve months ago—and yet we are at peace.

Making Them Pay For It

Two men were walking along one of Feilding's roads the other day when a motor car whizzed by raising the usual cloud of dust. "See the stones coming up " remarked one of the bystanders. "It's about time those vacuum road-cleaners were made to pay a special tax for repairing tho damage they do to our roads. They pull up all the top-dressing and play havoc with the lav of the road. The local bodies should make every motor car pay a tax of 5s per annum and bikes should pay 2s 6d." T The abovequoted complainant will be interested to learn that from the first day of this month motorists in Victoria have to pay the following annual taxation fees: Motor cycles. 5s each; motorcars, not exceeding 6* h.n £1 Is each;, cars from 6* h.p. to 12 h.p., £2 2s each; from 12 h.p. to 16 h.p., £3 3s each; from 16 h.p. to 26 h.p., £4 4s; 26 h.p. to 33 h.p., £5 ss; and exceeding 33 h.p., £6 6s each. Motor wagons are to be taxed at £3 3s each. It is estimated that the total amount that will accrue to the Victorian Road Board this year from these taxes will closely approach £20,000, a sum that will pay interest on the £400,000 which is to be spent anuually by the Victorian Board for the next five years. The new scale of Victorian taxes will amount to about three times that paid in 1912. The number of cars in Victoria is 4683, with 3127 motor cycles.

We Think We ara. but

New Zealand has been priding itself these years past that it was the Vanguard of Democracy, and was running a very successful Nursery of Experimental Legislation. We were not aware that there was a more highly cultivated bit of earth elsewhere, ana hadn't even associated Western Australia with being anything but—Westralia, with a trail. But it appear,; that the Golden Staters are living in the Golden Age. They are Blazing the Trail of Progress. It has a Labour Government, and its Minister »i Public Works, the Hon. W. D. Johnson (a New Zealander just no-ft revisiting this district) has bean saying so most interestingly to the Palmerston Standard. The Westralian Government has established three sawmills in the heart of a great karri forest, it has started a State steamship service to carry its own timber, which is used in the erection of workers' homes, and it successfully runs an agricultural bank to provide cheap money to settlers. Thus was the position summed up by Mr Johnson: "The first act of the Government was mainly an effort to reduce the high cost of living. It was considered that two contributing factors were the excessive cost of meat supplies and the high

standard of rents. The state of the meat market was held to be due to the operations of a meat ring, and in order to tackle the problem in a successful manner it was necessary to go in for a steamship service to bring stock from the north-west pastoral country. lam pleased to say that our efforts in this direction have - been highly satisfactory and the price of meat has been reduced. The high rent difficulty was similarly settled By the introduction of the workers' homes system."