FINAL FLINGS

Southland Times, Issue 20772, 13 May 1929, Page 6

FINAL FLINGS

MAY FAIR PARLIAMENT THE CANDIDATES WOO VOTERS TO-DAY’S ELECTION To-day the electors of Invercargill are entrusted with the duty of choosing their representative in the May Fair Parliament. The polling booths are the Water Tower, the Clock Tower and the Fire Brigade Tower. Hours of polling are from sunrise to moonrise. Only those who are participating in May Fair are eligible to vote. Should the moon rise according to the time-table published in the Curio Bay Courier the results should be available at the pie-cart about midnight. If on account of a bad night the moon is a late riser the first announcement of results will appear in to-morrow’s Southland Times. On Saturday evening the three candidates, Messrs Spudd Shaw, I. Mac Piersoles and C. Saw, held their final meetings. A resume of their addresses follows: Mr Spudd Shaw, the -Whig-Whag candidate, addressed a very large gathering of women in the Commercial Travellers’ Club rooms. The chair was occupied by Miss Fitt.

“First of all,” said Mr Spudd Shaw, “I wish to give an emphatic denial to the statement reported to have been made by me that I would trample on women's rights. This is another glaring instance of misreporting. Fortunately we public men always have the right to blame the reporters, and it is a right w’hich we seldom fail to use. What I did say I don’t know, but I do’know what I didn’t say. Now that I have put this wrong right I can tell you what I will do for you if I am elected. I want your votes and I mean to get them. I don’t think women ever should have had a vote. They are illogical, inferior creatures. I know it has been said that if women had only been trained as men have for the last two or three thousand years, their brains would be just as well trained for the things they were trained for as they would have been now for the things women have been trained for and in that case wouldn’t have. But I don't think so. However, the fact remains that you have the votes and I want them all. Don’t vote for Mac Piersoles. The way the Scotch treat their women —well, they don’t treat them at all. Don’t vote for C. Saw. He’ll cut no ice in Parliament and his patronizing wife will cut you. I am the man to vote for. I believe in women being admitted to Rotary. It would do wives a world of good to see the way their husbands can behave. I see no reason why women should not masquerade as men. Plenty of men are old women, so why should not women be young men. I am a firm believer in women smoking. It keeps them quiet. I shall firmly advocate in Parliament that the police force of New Zealand be composed entirely of women. The members of the present force are too big-footed and too honest.” . At this stage the commercial travellers entered the hall, counted the women out, threw Mr Spudd Shaw out and pulled the bung out. A SCOTSMAN SCOTCHED. MR. MAC PIERSOLES AT AVENAL. With a skirl of bagpipes and a clanking of claymores, a solemn procession of St. Andrew’s Society members made its way to the palatial Avenal boatsheds on Saturday evening to hear Mr. I. Mac Picrsoles, Pin Pricker’s candidate for the May Fair Parliament, deliver his concluding address. It is estimated that 247 were present. In the advertisement for the meeting a typographical error occurred, making the notice read “All eats free,” instead of “All seats free.” Sea-faring interests were also represented, this section of the audience who had come down to lock up his flatty, being prevailed upon to remain for the meeting. When the audience was seated and nothing was heard but the querulous plaints of the haggises, Mr. I. Mac Piersoles, fashionably clad in a sporran and tam-o’-shan-ter, made his appearance. Mr. K. N. Pepper, a retired Indian Army colonel and a hard nut at that, who had been elected to the chair, called for three chairs to support the candidate. “Well, I’m pleased I’m here,” Mr. Mac Piersoles began again. “As you know I am representing the Pin Prickers’ Party in the May Fair Parliament and I hope to be able to give my political opinions to-night which I was not able to give on Friday evening owing to the talkativeness of the chairman, Mr. Merryditch. An unassuming man I might' say that every time I have taken anything up ” A voice: Someone’s been taken down. “As you all know 1 come from a good family,” declared the candidate waxing more enthusiastic. “My father was Colonel Brayzand Bit and my mother ” A voice: Brazen hussy.

"I will treat him with ignore,” declared the speaker in a dignified manner. “My father, who was a colonel in the artillery, was a big gun and was always going off about slackers, discharging quiie a number, so you see how I have inherited his ideas. My father saw service in a hotel, at Inkunan, at Balaclava and the Battle of the Moyhall Gardens.”

Colonel Pepper: Did I tell you how I saved the garrison at Allahabad? “Allah forbid,” said Mr. Mac Piersolre hurriedly. “As I was saying, I have a lot of time for the seamen. When the Taratahi was in danger of going on the rocks (I have often been in the same position) my heart went out to them and my stomach came up to see men in such dire straits. Upon the men who ply along the waterfront the Dominion’s prosperity rests and on their account I would advocate a fortnightly railway service between Invercargill and Bluff.” Colonel Pepper: Did I tell you how I saved

At this juncture a well-aimed coconut upset the candidate and hie calculations. “Are there any questions now before I get the chairman to declare the meeting closed?” asked Mr. Mac Piersoles, struggling to regain his breath and feet. As one man 247 Scotsmen rose and asked: “Aye, mon, where are the eats?” “I’m in a fix now,” whispered the candidate to the chairman, “They’re beginning to look ugly—l mean uglier.” The chairman was equal to the occasion. “Gentlemen,” he said, “the eats are to be provided after the election for Mr. Mac Piersole’s victorious supporters. . The town is to be decorated in his honour, too, and I see that in anticipation of his successful return at the poll, a start has already been made. Now who will move— —”

“We will,” shouted 247 Scotsmen and to the strains of the “Retreat” played upon bagpipes, filed slowly out. “Thank you, gentlemen, for your confidence in me,” said Mr. Mac Picrsoles, “and if elected, I will do my best for you.”

“And as I charged into the midst of them, peppering them right and left, the sepoys shouted, ‘Kamerad,’ ” continued Colonel Pepper, addressing the recumbent form of the sea faring section of the audience who had fallen sound asleep.