LOCAL AND GENERAL

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4536, 13 February 1942, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

i While doubtless not intended to be I so, a demand for income tax made by the Labour Government on the Waikato branch of the New Zealand National Party has about it an air of political irony. The amount involved is small, but not too small to be overi looked. “I- know a farmer who walks over or past half-a-dozen blooming ragwort plants between his house and milking shed twice every day, and I think our inspector of noxious weeds should prosecute that man,” commented a member at a meeting of the Raglan County Council at Ngaruawahia. How many farmers 'in the Te Awamutu district do the same thing ? At a sitting of the Magistrate’s Court at Otorohanga on Wednesday Mr W. H. Freeman, S.M., presided, and had associated with him on the Bench Mr W. I. Bowyer, J.P. F. C. Lake was charged with selling sausages containing more than the permissible amount of preservative, and was fined £5 and costs 10s 6d. A. G, Chiles and A. T. A. Begg were ordered to pay costs on charges of driving on the wrong side of the road, thereby causing accidents. The dollar- value of Canadian war production for 1941 exceeded that of the whole of the first Great War. That for 1942 is expected to be twice as great. About 175,000 mechanical transport vehicles made in Canada for the fighting services were shipped overseas. Bren gun production is now 300 a month. By the end of the year a production level of 4500 each month is expected. The entire output of one type of medium tank is going to Russia. One thousand Bren guns from Canada were among the first Allied war equipment made available to China. Reporting to yesterday’s meeting of the Waikato Hospital Board at Hamilton, the chairman (Mr F. Findlay) said that new regulations made the Board responsible for the Hamilton > West School. The Auckland Educa- . tion Board proposed to charge the Health Department £2O a week for the use of the new school, and expenses amounting to £59 12s Id. The Director-General of Health had declared that payment was the responsibility of the Hospital Board. Several members expressed surprise and asked for more details. It was decided to obtain a report on the subject from the House and Finance Committee. “We had a pretty quiet time until 27th November, when ‘Jerry’ made an attack on us in the morning with a strong force of tanks and the biggest field guns I have ever seen,” writes Lance-Bombardier Geoff East in a letter, dated 29th December, to his mother, Mrs C. East, of New Plymouth. The letter- says the guns were afterwards dscovered to be big 105 millimetres, and they looked as if they had been borrowed from a battleship. “ The engagement lasted only an hour, but in that time four of our guns were knocked out and most of the crews killed.” LanceBombardier East mentions a friend who was on a gun with Major A. N. Grigg. “ A Jerry shell landed right on top of them,” he writes. “ Altogether we had about sixty killed and sixty wounded in that scrap.” A matter which has occasioned considerable comment in Te Awamutu was mentioned in the House of Representatives before it adjourned last night. “ The Post and Telegraph Department cannot, as a general rule, undertake to deliver all letters to rural box-holders on application at post offices on non-mail days,” said the Postmaster-General, the Hon. P. C. Webb, when replying to a question asked by Mr F. W. Doidge (Opposition, Tauranga). The Minister said that if a rural delivery box-holder desired, however, for urgent reasons, to obtain a letter at a post office on a non-mail day, the Department was quite prepared to make a search among the unsorted letters awaiting delivery, and, as a special case, to deliver the letter. Mr Doidge„ in his question, said that in some districts where the rural mail delivery had been cut down to a thrice-weekly service, settlers were denied the right to collect their mail when they were able to call at the local post office. The Minister explained that a different method of sorting was required for. post office delivery from that used in rural delivery.