LOCAL AND GENERAL

Taranaki Daily News, 17 January 1931, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Two' coastal vessels have been barbound for some time at Palea. The Foxton has been at the port for 13 days, and the Kapuni for seven days. Injuries to the spine, with possibly internal injury, were suffered by Mr. S. Dobson, Kent Road, when a hay grab fell upon him while be was working in Mr. Parker’s ensilage paddock. He was taken to the New Plymouth hospital. This is the second accident of the kind in the district.

In a letter, received recently by Mr. D. Jones, M.P., from a correspondent in England, a humorous description of Mr. Forbes and Sir Thomas Sidey is quoted- “ Mr. Forbes looks as if wool was a shilling a pound,” runs the quotation, “and Sir Thomas looks as if it was a penny a pound.”

Advice received by Mr. D. Jones, M.P., chairman of the Meat Board, is to the effect that the Argentine is shipping earlier and heavier this year. Mr. Jones told a reporter, says the Christchurch Press, that the explanation probably was that Argentine shippers of meat were left last year, and have decided not to make the same error this yerir.

Gooseberry growers in the Grey town district are greatly disappointed with results , this season, the returns scarcely paying for the outlay. Currant crop returns are also unsatisfactory, the usual city and other markets being unable to absorb the production from Nelson, Wairarapa and other districts at prices satisfactory to growers.

The harvesting of grass seed by hand is at present in evidence in many parts of the Auckland district. The seed on

the stalk is now ripe, and on roadsides and vacant sections individuals and groups are to be seen cutting and bagging the seed heads preparatory to threshing. A good deal of the yield will no ejoubt be marketed, but in other cases, where the harvesting is being done by farmers, it will be retained for use in sowing new grass on their farms-

If there is financial depression in Taranaki at the present time it is not evident in the figures relative to the consumption of petrol during the Christmas and New Year holidays. “This is the best Christmas and New Year for petrol sales that I have ever had,” said one service station proprietor yesterday, and several others spoke in similar strain. The spraying of Kelvin Road with the waste product from tar distillation has had a markedly beneficial effect in allaying the dust nuisance which, owing to the heavy motor traffic, was a bugbear to residents and pedestrians using that thoroughfare. The oil and tar in the mixture, says the Southland News, have impregnated the surface, with the result that any disturbance of the light material is negligible.

As the date of the opening of the oyster season is this year one month earlier than has been the custom for the past few years, there is considerable activity among the units of the fleet, states the Bluff correspondent of the Southland News. Machinery and dredges have to be finally overhauled and all the details necessary to an eight months’ gleaning of the harvest of the sea have to be attended to.

Court costs which were forty-four times as much as the amount awarded to tfie plaintiff, were payable by the defendant in an undefended civil case heard before Mr. T. B. McNeil, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court at Lower Hutt. The costs were Ils. and the amount awarded 3d. The amount originally claimed by the plaintiff was much greater, but the defendant, in paying it into court in settlement, had omitted to pay 3d. and the costs. Hence the judgment.

Paddocks of oats may be seen in stook in a good many parts of South Canterbury. There is considerable variation in the cereal crops this year. Some earlysown oats were so ripe that they had to be cut to save the grain from being shaken out by the high winds, while some late-sown wheat is not yet in ear. Many . crops are maturing on a very short length of straw, and it is feared that some are ripening before the heads have properly filled. ■ AH available union and ijon-union watersiders were employed yesterday at the port of New Plymouth, where the two overseas vessels Pakeha and Northumberland were being loaded, and the coastal motor-vessel Hauturu was being unloaded. It was not possible to obtain more than 12 men from the port to work the Hauturu yesterday morning, and consequently four members of the ship’s crew joined the gang. “The plans have been worked out with meticulous precision of detail,” said Professor J. L. Wrigley in the course of a lecture to the Teachers’ Summer School at Christchurch, on the “Russian Five Year Plan.” “Goods and food are to be doled out to the workers each year according to plan. During the 1932-33 year the number of eggs per capita has been fixed at 72 for rural and 155 for urban workers. The annual allowance of leather footwear for the same period has been fixed at .74 pair. In the 1927-28 year it was .40 pair.”

The Russian, like the Oriental, did not have much sense of time, Professor J. L. Wrigley told his audience at the Summer School at Christchurch, says the Press, when speaking of the Five-Year Plan of the Soviet. Thus he rarely had much use for clocks, but now- he worked systematically in industry he had to be more precise. This had been well illustrated by a recent caption he had seen: “Ivan works in a factory; he needs a clock.” Consequently a firm has gone to Russia to turn out a million alarm clocks and watches a year. If conditions continued as they were much longer the banks would be glad to accept four per cent, interest on their money, instead of seven per cent., remarked Mr. W. C. Green in discussing the question of raising a loan at the meeting of ( the Opunake Power Board yesterday. Men were expected to work for 7s. and Bs. a day, and yet some people expected to get seven to eight per cent, and even nine and 10 per cent., on their investments. It was a scandalous thing. If men had to take lower rates of wages, investors must accept lower rates of interest.

The first shipment of wool from New Zealand this season reached London on Saturday by tVie Commonwealth and Dominion Line steamer Port Nicholson and the New Zealand Shipping Company’s liner Rangitane. The Port Nicholson’s cargo included 8000 bales and the Rangitane had 3000 bales. According to cabled advice the wool arrived in time for the January wool sales.. The arrival of these two vessels at their destination ended an unofficial ocean race. Both were dispatched from Auckland, the Port Nicholson on December 4, and the Rangitane on December 6. Heavy consignments of frozen meat from the Patea works for loading on the Northumberland and Pakeha, at present in port at New Plymouth, necessitated the running of a special train yesterday with freight equal to the full load of 26 waggons. Iri addition to this, meat was carried on all the ordinary trains. It is expected that the rush of freight carcases will ease off to-day owing to this clearance of fully frozen meat. With wet weather holding up work at the wharf, there should be more consignments fully frozen by Monday and ready for dispatch. Meat has also been railed from Waitara in large quantities. That the public is travelling less by rail than it did two years ago is borne out by the figures of the railway department covering the tickets issued from* the New Plymouth station during the holiday periods of 1928-29 and 1930-31. A decrease is shown this year of 181 excursion passengers and 975 ordinary passengers. As the 1028-29 period under survey was shorter than the December 15-January 15 period jus! the percentage decrease must be even greater than is indicated by the figures quoted. The decline in excursion traffic suggests that either people have restricted their holiday-making this year or else they have travelled by car instead of by rail. The fall in ordinary passenger traffic is a sign of the times, and is indicative of a general economy in travelling. Not only the aviator or the steeplejack has a calling which involves the hazards which are encountered through being suspended in mid-air, says the Otago Daily Times. There are others who take similar risks without any more fear of the consequences. The material which is used in the construction of the new dam at Waipori is carried from the high banks of the river by buckets which travel along a cable stretched between large structures on each side. Recently repairs became necessary, and a rigger who is employed on the works was let out in a bucket into the centre of the cable. From this he clambered up the wire ropes from which it was suspended, and thus reached the cable, where he carried out his task at least 130 feet above the river, apparently with less concern than would be felt by the average person in contemplating the climbing of a high ladder. The feat is made the more remarkable by the fact that the rigger is between 60 and 70 years of age.

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