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Otago Daily Times, Issue 21365, 19 June 1931, Page 8

The postal authorities advise that the steamer Wainui, which is due at Bluff on Monday from Melbourne, is bringing 21 bags of Australian mail and two parcel receptacles for Dunedin. The mail is expected to reach the local Post Office on Monday evening. New Zealand mails which were despatched by the Maunganui from Wellington on May 19 for the United Kingdom, via San Francisco, reached London on June 16. Speaking at the annual meeting of the Ayrshire Breeders’ Association at Palmerston North yesterday. Mr J. M'Linden. veterinary surgeon at Massey College, characterised as humbug and nonsense the opposition to the proposal to lift the embargo on the importation of live stock from Great Britain to New Zealand. A motion was passed supporting the raising of the embargo.

Richard Anstruther Burson, aged 25, has been missing since Tuesday evening, and (says a Press Association message from Gisborne) he is believed to have been drowned. His clothes and a hurrican lamp were found on a beach. He had been in the habit, when fishing, of stripping and going out into the surf with his line. It is feared that the heavy seas on Tuesday overwhelmed him. Burson came from Australia, and has no relatives in the Dominion.

In furtherance of the threat made by parents at Millerton that their children would not attend school unless a free meal was provided, the headmaster notified the Nelson Education Board yesterday (says a Press Association telegram) that only 65 pupils out of 200 were in attendance. Between 6 p.m. and 7.45 p.m. yesterday a Chrysler motor car, owned by Mr H. Turner, of 8 Driver street, Maori Hill, ■was stolen from Dowling street. The car, which is a 1931 model sedan, is painted dark maroon, and is equipped with wire wheels, the spare wheel being carried on the left front mudgard. The registered number is 163-232.

It was stated by the chairman (Mr J. Wallace) at the meeting of the Otago Education Board yesterday, that there was no probability of the intermediate school at Albany street being open before the beginning of 1933. The attendance officer (Mr J. E. Ryan) of the Otago Education Board submitted the following report to the meeting of the board yesterday:—“The various illnesses prevailing during the last month have now to some extent abated, and ’ the general attendance has accordingly improved. Unfortunately, however, I find that the present economic distress is affecting the attendance of the infant departments, many young children not having sufficiet warm clothing, boots, etc., to protect them from wintry weather. It is pleasing to report that the teachers of the various schools are doing their best to help the most necessitous cases by providing clothing, etc. On visiting several schools in both North and South Otago, I could see no evidence of distress,, the children on the whole being well provided for and their attendance in both districts at present is exceptionally good.” There are compensations in everything, and even salary reductions are not without some mitigating virtues. For the higher salaried men. the regularly recurring demands of the Income Tax Department constitute an annual financial problem, and the consolation that such men are able to derive from a salary cut is that the income tax account will be diminished. The average wage-earner pays income tax on that portion of his salary (less special exemption) that exceeds £3OO. The man who earns £9OO or over, however, does not enjoy the advantage of the £3OO exemption, but must pay on the full amount. The exemption begins to disappear once the salary exceeds £450, and from this figure to £750 the £3OO exemption disappears at the rate of £1 for every £2 by which the salary is over £450. Over £750 the exemption disappears at the rate of £1 for £l. A salary of £537 may be quoted as an example. The excess over £450 is £B7. The £3OO exemption is therefore reduced by half £B7 (or £43), leaving the exemption £257, The operation is the same throughout the scale until the point is reached where the exemption is wiped out.

“It may be doubtful whether a wife nowadays is under any duty to obey her husband. At any rate, a husband is very ill-advised to try to assert his authority in the way the defendant did. Nevertheless, the wife has duties still and ought to stand by her husband in times of stress and difficulty and not add to his anxieties and irritations.” These remarks were made by Mr W. H. Woodward, S.M., when giving judgment in the case in which Ruth Jorgensen applied for separation, maintenance, and guardianship orders against her husband, Oscar Albert Jorgensen. The complaint was based on the grounds of persistent cruelty,. failure to maintain, and habitual drunkenness; but the magistrate held that none of the allegations had been proved and refused to make any of the orders asked for.

A serious mishap occurred to the mixed train which left Whangarei for Auckland at 9 o’clock on Monday morning. The train consisted of 18 trucks, one passenger carriage, and a guard’s van when it left Whangarei. The accident took place at a point one mile north of Taipuha, and about seven miles from Waiotira. A truck containing coal, located in the middle of the train, became derailed shortly after passing through the Mareretu tunnel and as the train was negotiating a bend on a slight descent. After the derailment the truck ran over the sleepers for about 300 yards before the vehicles at the rear became derailed, those affected being the guard’s van, the passenger carriage, a freight van, and six trucks containing coal. Several trucks in front of the first derailed truck, including one containing cattle, remained on the rails and were taken on to Taipuha, There were three passengers in the carriage and they were fortunately not injured. Two trucks were completely overturned and considerable damage was done to the wheels and undergear. Very little damage was done to the remaining rolling stock. For a distance of about 100 yards the sleepers were broken, the rails twisted, and the track ploughed up. To fall from the north express at Bellfield, near Geraldine, on Tuesday and to remain in the open all night in a dazed condition, was the experience of Miss Margaret Renton, a Christchurch University student, whose parents live in Ashburton. Miss Renton joined the train at Dunedin on Tuesday, and although she was too dazed to explain how the accident occurred, it is probable that she fainted while standing on the carriage platform and fell from the train. She received an injury to a knee and was also suffering from shock when she wandered into the home of Mrs H. A. Brenton, at Bellfield on Wednesday morning.

The retention of a strong force of police in Blackball is having the effect (says the Greymouth correspondent of the Christchurch Times) of imposing order in that centre for the present, but the feeling is everywhere apparent that a “ flare up ” may occur at any time. The police are very watchful and anything tending towards lawlessness is nipped in the incipent stages. On Wednesday when a party of miners went to meet the tribute workers when the latter knocked off, the police took action and several men will be asked to explain their conduct in court. Wednesday’s demonstration was unorganised and it was quite a mild party of men who met the tribute workers at the mine and walked home with them. A little “ booing ” was indulged in, but apart from making it plain that they did not like the tribute workers, the demonstrators did little. The mine where the tribute workers are engaged recalls war memories, for several lines of fences have been elaborated till they resemble barbed wire entanglements. Rumours are current of an other mass demonstration in some other quarter, but the venue has not yet been revealed. In the meantime the police remain at Blackball, whence it is expected they will be hurriedly summoned shortly to witness a demonstration elsewhere. The mine manager at Blackball has presented an ultimatum to local storekeepers stating that, if they would not supply members of the party working for the Blackball mine, the company would open a store at Blackball.