LOCAL GOSSIP

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21912, 22 September 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP

BY MERCUTIO

Something will have to bo done about a national flower for New Zealand. Thai. is to say, a number of very worthy people are insisting that a choice must be made. Therefore, a choice must be made —or not. In either event something will have been done about it, even though, paradoxically, that something should be nothing. If no flower is chosen, then the fern leaf will continue as the national vegetable emblem on boxes of butter, tho jerseys of footballers and in association with other typical products of tho land. The necessary characteristics of a national flower are not hard to define. It should, for preference, be a native, and exclusive, though whether that applies to tho ros,c of England, the lilies of France and other famous emblems is not too certain. Scotland's thistle may be native, but it is now far from the exclusive possession of that country, as anybody sitting down incautiously on grassy banks and other attractive places can speedily learn. It seems to have wandered as far as tho wandering Scot, which helps to make it appropriate. For New Zealand, the kowhai, manuka, crimson rata, clematis and the pohutukawa have all had their advocates. Nobody has yet recommended the poverty plant, which is strange. There is ample room for argument in this list, and argument is always enjoyable anyway. So let/them to it! Only one plea will bo made- here—not the pohutukawa. In itself it has .many worthy qualities, but the blossoming season is very brief, and some people will insist on calling it the portecover.

, It nay have been noticed that Par- ' liament, during the week, devoted a good deal of attention to beer, not so dry a topic as many of those it is forced to consider. Actually it was not beer itself, but beer duty that caused the argument. It is well to pause at this stag;e and be quite precise. There is no suggestion in the term beer duty that it is anybody's duty to drink beer. Possibly breweries employ someono to taste and pass judgment on each brew as i.fc is completed. If so, the fact is givc:u little publicity; which is just as well, because the waiting list, in case of a vacancy in the office, woxild tend to become unwieldy. No; b<?er duty means the excise that must bo paid, and it was a proposed reduction in its level that caused all the excitement. Many arguments were heard for and against the proposition, and it cannot in fairness be said they were any more frothy than those offered on many other subjects. '

The report of the Monetary Committe cannot bo said to have had an enthusiastic reception. This indicates base ingratitude in an unap/preciative public. After all, there was a main report, an explanatory memorandum of dissent and a minority report, so there should have been something to appeal to almost every taste. Possibly the hostile critics approving qf one of these three objected to its being sullied by association with the other two. The most substantial criticism has been on the score of expense. There is, in a way, something in this. If the committee had produced a report that would have settled this everlasting argument about the monetary system, it would have been cheap at almost any price; but it hasn't. As to the expense, there has been some comment about the printing of the evidence. This has resulted in the production of a document runnjhg to some 745 pages, lhe cost of its production—apart from preparation—is given by the Government printer as £790. It sounds expensive. But then it is a document of weight—literallv. Put on the scales it registered "41b.. 6oz. It might easily be used to settle an argument. Thrown at an opponent's head, with accurate aim, it should do that, and settle the opponent too. Yet its weight is, for one- reason, surprising, smco an examination of the contents shows that it includes a deal of froth and bubble.

Two delegates from the Auckland Power Board went to Wellington to a conference of the Electric Powor Boarc s and Local Authorities Supply Aviation. They returned and suggested that the whole business of having these conferences ever ,so often was a waste of time and money. As a summing p, the statement that their own conference " cost about £IOOO and got nowhere " y is a marvel of te £ se ?ondemnation. The fact that such things are said just exemplifies the tionary times in which we li eso long ago to breathe a word against the conference habit or the valneel sending dentations to ." W« ters in Wellington would have been worse than less majeste and a bad as blasphemy.

With her sheer hulk in the hands of the ship breakers, and her _j°2 about to be trampled on by the feet ot the careless, the Ngatiawa has come to tho end of her days. It seems a hard finish for a stout ship that Bpent ye trading round the coastal ports ot this province. But the march of time cannot be stayed for the sake, of steamers which find, with railways an trains, road 3 and motors plying to a tho coastal ports, their occupation is gone. To anyone with a sentimen a regard for things as they used to be, there must be regrets at the passing of the fleet which used to cany passengers, mails and cargo to dozens o ports between tho North Capo and e Bay of Plenty.

If you jvant to get ready assent to a proposition—selecting the company appropriately of course —suggest that the young people of to-day are not what young people were ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago-o-o! The theory, of course, is that the moderns are not the equals of their predecessors physically, mentally or morally, lhe answer to that, is that young people never are and never were the peers of their predecessors. It is strange how the human race survives considering its progressive decline, generation by generation. As it happens there is a little pictorial evidence allowing of a comparison The Weekly News has produced a group photograph of the hoys of the Auckland Grammar School in this year of grace and another of the . same kind that is nearly forty years old. Apart from the growth of the school, comparison of the photographs is interesting. It may be that the miscellaneous collection of sailor suits, Norfolk jackets, blouses and the like is too successful in concealing the physique of those lads of yester-year, who must now be in their fifties, whether or ns, the boys of the present, in their uniforms of shorts and shirts, compare more than favourably wi 1 thoso who figure in the old photograph. Thero must be a catch in it somewhere, surely, but viewing tho illustrations, qno cannot get from that impression.