LOCAL GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20229, 13 April 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP.

ST iISSCCTIO.

Business men have been objecting to £he method whereby the City Council is elected, and not- without reason. For a fcusv man to have to scrutinise and then ! /park the fcalWt papers that will be issued pn polling day is altogether too much. |Whv, ha will very nearly need to take half the day off for the job. What is more, any attempt to send a junior clerk pp to do it by deputy would certainly bo 'discouraged by tho authorities. How. fever, the business men objected on general principles as well as personal grounds. Ose of them,said most people would know not mors than five out of the 50 candidates or more they would find listed. This certainly is not enough. Why even after they have ruled out the five for whom tfcev could nov possibly vote because they kr.ew them, there would still be 45 or more left. This fact perhaps explains hew councils do get elected. There are always enough candidates that nobody knows. Again, was said that the average vcter could not be expected to weigh the merits of about 50 candidates whose mrr.es conveyed nothing to him. Right acain. The average voter has no weighing apparatus capable of dealing with minute quantities. Altogether it can be readily agreed' that the method of electing a City Council is far from satisfactory. A local body existing and administering Ihe affairs of ratepayers net very far from Auckland had occasion during the week to resent tha terms in which a letter addressed to it was couched. J' Tha board at least is entitled tc irespect," said the member who took first action against the letter. The local body, though near, to Auckland, must be remote from Auckland affairs and feelings, or it would know all Auckland local bodies do not get what they are entitled to—in that respect. / A nice, lively, little controversy has arisen over the question, how much land a, man can plougn m a day. It is a good sgn when passions can be roused on a point so remote from the interests and experiences of modern mankind. If it had been ho-.v many runs \Y. G. Grace made in 1883,- or whether Mark Nicholis should have Oeen omitted from the first three test • teams, it would have seemed more natural somehow. But it isn't. And, apart from the interest to people who know about " horses pleughs and kye" as Burns put it, the argument has revealed 1 to the layman the fact, that there is a Avhole world of technique behind the apparently simple operation of turning over a paddock with a plough. Much, it seems, depends on the team, the kind of plough used, tha sort of furrow to be turned, and so forth. Possibly something depends, too, on whether any stumps are concealed in the /£oil, to stop the plough with a jar, and cause the Handles to catch the unwary ploughman in the midriff. Yes, there is more in this ploughing business than meets the untrained eye. It is well that the husbandman has not been entirely eclipsed bv the gladiator; perhaps if this latent interest in a very old occupation is properly fostered, ploughing matches may rival football matches in popular esteem. ' Perhaps, and yet again per- j Laps not. But it anyone wants to read the most dramatic thing ever written about a day's ploughing, let him read Tolstov's story, How much land does a man need!'' and draw the moral from it if ha cat-,. For vearsf and years people who had to travel through" the Lyttelton tunnel protested against the smoke and the smuts belched by the engines that drew the trains. Naturally the people who lived in Christ church and Lyttelton objected most because they most often had occasion to so through the tunnel. So they ag.tated and agitated, until in the fuliieSs of time they gained the day, the tunnel was, electrified and the smoky engines banished from it for all time. And are they happy now ? By no means. Soot, the accumulation of years, had gathered in the tunnel, filling all the the cracks and crannies, lining the entire structure with a. warm and comfortable coat. The smoke from the engines presented people from noticing this soot, the exhaust helped to keep it moist and ax its place. Now, with electric trains ruiminz, it refuses to keep its place any linger." / It has dried 'and powdered, fallen on the track and on the rails, so that when a train, be it ever so electrical, runs through the tunnel the soot rises and swirls and eddies through tb~ carriages. So it follows that a passenger who enters looking like a white hone r.yin emerge resembling the Ethiopian who changes not his spots, or his spats cr something. Now, Christchurch is not at all pleased about this, as can easily be understood. The only thing is, what can be done about it .' Another tunnel could be provided of course, but what would be done with the old one ? It has teen electrified at considerable expense, so it would bo rather wasteful to fill it in, or use it for growing mushrooms or do' anvthmc like that. Yet if there is a new, '-lean"tunnel, who will want to use the old one ? The only way out is to >. are the two, and set J'! all'non-Canter-bury people, especially Aucklanders, throach the one with the soot in it. That'll them to be Aucklanders. ! S. :;:c..h-re up toward Rotorna they have fount/ the 'i.odv of a voting pheasant which is sunnosti i to have decapitated it- j self i v flying into a wire fence. W hat- i ever t'"e ca'i ; e it lost its head, and there j is r.o a.t. ur.-iti * for the trifling mishap any' r/ji*,- way' For a pheasant to fly in'-"? a ".tie fence in a way causing it , ser.otio Lv.r'i .tv.-uea that it 'lost its head j he: .re strife";*);; tr-e wire, which seems to j complicate th-?. whole business more than i ever".-' Whether or ik>, whether it lost its i head i a use i" tV.v into the fence, or flew trtto the fence because it lost its head, it s<kn;s to have lost its head all | .right-, also its i:e. Which, all things j considered was a vtv unsporting thing to do so soon before the shooting season i opened. li 'Opotik' is i!-" speoddy linked up t;ie railway system )>y extension «.«f the lire from 'the present railhead at Taneatua it will n«-.» 'i,e for want of trying. The coed people down in that region of 'fertile I .VT flats seem to nave appropriated at hast two thirds of the j Jr.ot.to i-e!<.nsr;ng to somebody else, for *' Organise, agitate" lias undoubtedly become their battle mv. Well, all things cor.-id---; ed. their efforts can be wished Veil, for New Zealand has plenty of railcv lmes'embarked on with far less excuse than- there would be for one from Taneatua to Opotiki. Hut it is to lie hoped one statement in the strenuous case drawn up. m favour of the work is fully Jttfant.. Everv shilling saved in the cheaper freights which the line would ; make possible would b,e spent on the land for mereastne production." Let. it be so; for there i ; ground for more than a suspicion that in other places and other rircuiQs.tances every shilling saved by cheap railway freights has been spent fin motor-cars and petrol f"r same, in order to avoid travelling by train and thus helping the railway returns. Opotik■ promises to do better than this, and if Opotiki onlv keens its word it will be 'pivinr better "justification for railway extension thxn can generally be found.