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Otago Witness, Issue 4042, 1 September 1931, Page 43

In Parliament recently Mr W. D. Lysnar, member for Gisborne, complained that he had gone into three leading Gisborne drapers’ shops in search of a New Zealand-made woollen shirt, but none of them had been able to supply one. One of the principal drapers at once informed the Gisborne Times that he stocked full ranges of shirts made from their own material, both plain and striped, by three of the Dominion’s leading woollen companies. It was also found that at the time Mr Lysnar made his complaint a Gisborne weekly paper had its whole back page occupied by a local draper’s advertisement of New Zealand flannel shirts and pyjamas. A novel method of ensuring a perfectly fair result has been adopted by the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce in its ballot paper for the election of membeis to the council of the chamber. The paper has the names of the candidates arranged in a circle. Most ballot papers have the names Arranged in alphabetical order and the voter may be attracted to the man at the head of the list. The circular paper should eliminate this failing. The white swan in the Queen’s Gardens, Nelson, is in disgrace, and it narrowly escaped sentence of death at the hands of the City Council last Yveek. The allegations were that the bird had killed a fish and had also shown a taste for the irises which adorn the banks of the pond. One councillor suggested that the swan should be done away with, but no one was callous enough to support the proposition. Another suggestion that the bird should be fattened and disposed of to provide Christmas dinner was not taken seriously. The delinquent is to be given another chance to improve his ways.

The announcement that the Highways Board has agreed to raise the subsidy to local bodies from £2 for £1 to £3 for £1 was made by the Minister of Lands (Mr E. A. Ransom) at the official opening of the Manawatu Gorge bridge on Saturday. The Minister added that this would represent about £lOO,OOO extra relief for local bodies.

The presence in Dunedin of Mr W. Farquhar Young, the elocution judge at the Competitions Society’s festival, recalls days when amateur theatricals flourished in the city and when local performers were able to present such attractive offerings as Gilbert and Sullivan operas. In view of Mr Young’s visit and of the revival in interest in Dunedin in amateur performances, the folloYving extract from “ Gilbert, Sullivan, and D’Oyly Carte,” by Francois Cellier and Cunninghame Bridgeman, published four years ago, is of interest: —“ But by the way, I must not omit to mention the fact that the best amateur performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan piece I ever witnessed was that of ‘ The Mikado/ given by the Dunedin (New Zealand) Operatic Society. The staging may not have been in strict conformity Yvith the Savoy Prompt-book; still there was nothing so irreverent as would have vexed the mind of the author had he been present. The refined a'cting of the principals, their clear enunciation, and the grouping of the chorus showed that the company had been carefully drilled by one who had become acquainted with Gilbertian traditions. But it was chiefly as singers that the New Zealand amateurs shone. A better chorus I have never heard. Listening to them for the first time I was astounded by the volume of rich tone and the admirable phrasing; still Sullivan’s tdmpo was observed throughout more remarkable was it to note how nearly the performance. It may seem incredible that Gilbert and Sullivan should be so thoroughly understood and reverenced in that far-away Dominion; but New Zealand has been made well acquainted with the Savoy Operas by the periodical visits of the travelling companies controlled by the late J. C. Williamson, who leased the Australian and New Zealand rights of the pieces.”