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Taranaki Daily News, 22 July 1931, Page 6

“The greatest compliment I have yet heard for post-earthquake Napier was made by a traveller passing through this district the other day,” said Mr. W. E. Barnard, M.P.,, at a meeting on Saturday evening. “He told me that he had travelled through many New Zealand towns, but he found Napier to be the most cheerful of them all in spite of the recent disaster.”

) The first successful flight of the Hamilton Glider Club’s machine was made on Saturday by a member, Mr. M.‘ Andrews, who covered a distance of about 60 yards and rose to a height of 14ft. Four other flights of from 20 to _4O yards were made, and. on* each occasion the glider performed, well, answering the controls and landing perfectly. An elastic rope was used for launching the glider for the first time.

“An orator is a rare bird, even in New Zealand, which is the home pf rare and extinct birds,” said Mr. Justice McGregor, one of the judges of the annual Plunket Medal debating contest of Victoria University College, held in Wellington on Saturday evening. In his life, he said, he had. heard . many public speeches, including sermons, but he had- heard only two orators, Gladstone and Rosebery.

The extensive importation of butter boxes and cheese crates was referred to by the chairman, Mr. J. A. Nash, M.P., at a meeting of the Palmerston North Unemployment Committee. Ho said that if all the boxes and crates used by factories were made in New Zealand, of NSw Zealand timber, over 1800 mon would be employed, and thq amount of theii* wages would be saved to. the Consolidated Fund.

Tho winter in Central Otago is reported to be one of the coldest for some years, though the weather generally has been very fine. Streams and swamps are frozen hard, and there are many fine sheets, of ice available for skating which is being carried on with zest by tile' younger folk. Curling competitions are proceeding briskly at Naseby on ice that is in perfect order, no fewer than 64 competitors taking part. “It is hardly worth while witness going into the box to sa-y that he was approaching an intersection at 15 miles an hour. It is so common a thing that one can almost always presume that witnesses are going at anything from nothing to fifteen miles an hour,” said Mr. E. D. Mosley, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court at Christchurch. Later, when counsel in another traffic case stated that his client had not. been travelling at the usual 15 miles per hour, but at about twenty, Mr. Mosley remarked that that was much better.

The superiority of the motor-lorry over the horse dray even from the point of view of economy was claimed by the engineer of the Takapuna Borough Council, Mr. J. D. Bodie, when the question of reducing expenditure on cartage was under consideration. He said the motor vehicle’s greater speed and carrying capacity and the fact that it could be made available at a moment’s notice made it much mpre suitable that the dray for the typo of work required to be done in the borough. On the whole he considered it would also prove less expensive. It was decided to keep in commission one of the council’s two lorries for transport work and one of the three drays for minor road repairs and the removal of refuse. .

“The glaciers of Switzerland are disappointing to a New Zealander/’ said Professor A. H. Tocker in the course of an address at Christchurch, reports The Press. ‘They are not nearly so large, but the mountains are higher, being mostly very steep granite tops. There are good hotels for tourists at higlr levels, with funicular railways running above the glaciers, In one train I went up to a level of over 11,000 feet and looked down on the largest glacier in Europe without having to walk more than 200 yards altogether. If I had reached that/ level in New Zealand I should have regarded myself as qualified for a first-class mountaineering certificate.”

In the course of an address bn Saturday night to the Canterbury College Law Studehts’ Society, Mr. A. F. Wright, who has recently returned after appearing in an appeal case before the Privy Council, said that the New Zealand Licensing Act was the subject of much caustic comment at the hands of the law lords. They drew attention to the carelessness with which statutes were framed and the slip-shop method of adding incomprehensible, and numerous amendments. The law lords themselves had had considerable difficulty in understanding some of the sections, one of them going so far as to ask: “Can you imprison a man for life by the licensing law?” An Invercargill resident who has returned from the North Island, says the Southland News, casually met two artisans who, after a few years’ residence in New Zealand, had booked apssages for Ehglaid. Inquiry elicited that owing to the depression they had lost their billets, and they had decided that it was advisable, before their funds were exhausted, to get back to the Home Country, where, in spite of. lower wages, they considered their prospects were better owing to the lower cost of living. In respect to rent alone they pointed out that a house that would cost in Dominion cities £2 a week could be had for 7s 6d to 10s. Of course it would be. some distance out from the big centres, but the cost of transport was cheap, and it would possess the advantage of a piece of ground on which to grow the household vegetables. \