"NIGHT OUT" AT THAMES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19156, 23 October 1925, Page 13

"NIGHT OUT" AT THAMES

AN ELOQUENT CANDIDATE. WIDE RANGE OF TOPICS. " BIG BUGS " AND OTHER THINGS. [by telegraph.—own correspondent. ] THAMES. Thursday. An evening's amusement was afforded the 70 or CO residents who made their way to the Central Hall last night to hear Mr. A. J. Whiteside expound his |K)lic<y. He described himself as an "Independent Old Liberal," and spent most of the evening blaming the Reform Government for all sorts of imaginary ills and ailments which he said the country was suffering from. He became so engrossed in this that he entirely forgot to outline a policy. Mr. W. Bongard (deputy-Mayor) presided, and it. was not long before the candidate, with much waving of arms, was well into his stride with a denunciation of the Reform Government for encouraging profiteering. He described financiers as the "big bugs," and then he said "the big bugs hug the little bugs, that's when the trouble commences." (The audience enjoyed this.)

Mr. Whiteside then went on to compare the present with the past, apparently with a view to showing that the old Liberals were splendid people, but owing to the nature of his remarks and a curious trick of leaving a sentence half finished and cheerfully moving on to some other topic quite outside the. realm of politics his address was extremely difficult to follow. In fact the only way of describing his speech is to say that be talked solidly for an hour and a-half and said nothing. A Knowledge of Flax.

He did not, side altogether with Labour. The Liberal Party was the only party out to respect all parties. Mr. Rhodes did not know anything about flax and were they going to put a man in who didn't know anything about flax ? Now the candidate was a practical man on flax and could show the chairman a photograph of a farm he had started in Wairoa which commenced with four men and two assistants went on afterwards. This showed it was run on the right lines. Mr. Whiteside suited the. action to the word and the chairman politely looked at the photograph of the farm along with others produced at regular intervals. The candidate here got himself very much mixed with the cost of flour, Bihle-in-schools, and the Kings of Israel who were crowned over the Stone of Scone, and something about shale being the stuff benzine was made of. Benzine and Fusion.

Still going strong, the candidate had Mr. Thomas Wilford bringing out benzine one minute and wanting to fuse the people the next. Mr. Whiteside lost himself in a description of a lagoon, a coalfield, and a swamp, where when the road was made and a canal formed the fishermen would notcome back with empty hands but with a load of coal.

Afforestation was the next subject dealt with, but just as the speaker was working up to a sort of finale he lost the place in his notes and glanced off on to the land laws. Anybody who took on a farm under the. Government land laws, he intimated, "was just like a man who is going to be married. He is all anticipation. It is not the work that troubles him, it is the prospect that lies in, front of him." A call for questions went unanswered, but Mr. Whiteside was not troubled. "Well, look," he said, "I'll ask myself a question. That's the way. If no one asks any I'll ask myself one about flax." Here Mr. Whiteside explained that the Government once offered a. substantial bonus for a machine to do something that would be very good for the flax industry. He invented a machine and tried it out, but it had to be remade. Then just as everything was going along the Government withdrew the bonus, gave everyone a trip round and made a mess of the whole thing. There were no further questions and on a long silence following the chairman's intimation that, he would take a resolution, the meeting was declared closed. A NEW TERROR. THE SINGING CANDIDATE. "I am not a Bolshevik, nor a Socialist, but a Thinker," said a Southern Independent Liberal candidate to his audience the other evening. There was no chairman. There were no questions and the speaker remarked that a paper at Wyndham had declared that he had concluded his address in that township with a comic song. "There was nothing comical about 'Memories,' " quoth Mr. Howard, lifting his voice in song. The singing candidate sang the first verse of the touching ballad with ease, but in the second pitched his key too high and broke down. "Although I don't think I'll win," said the candidate, at the conclusion of his effort, "I think it will be a good advertisement for me." THE LABOUR VOTE. UNCONTESTED ELECTORATES. [BY TELEGRAPH. —PRESS ASSOCIATION.] WELLINGTON, Thursday.

In consequence of a report emanating from Patea, but not, as alleged, circulated by the Press Association, the Labour Party wishes it to bo known that where no Labour candidate is standing its supporters have a free hand to vote as they like, and have not been instructed in any way as to how their votes are to be cast.