OUR LONDON LETTER

Timaru Herald, Volume CXL, Issue 20282, 4 December 1935, Page 13

OUR LONDON LETTER

COAL STRIKE THREAT HEAVY ELECTION COSTS (From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON, October 31. The new Government, to be elected on November 14, seems fate! to find itself floundering in a sea of troubles from its first day of life. Quite apart from the international situation —which remains, of course, the most serious problem confronting Ministers —there is the threat of the first winter coal strike for many years. The miners, with skilful political strategy, have fixed the date of their ballot on the strike question for the three days preceding polling day. There is a good deal of sympathy among supporters of all parties for their case —a demand for an increase of 2s. per day on their admittedly very low wage, and for national negotiations with the coalowners. Government supporters see a real danger that distraction of the public attention from the bigger issues of the election on the eve of the poll may well cost them many votes. Every effort will be made to solve or shelve the problem before the ballot is due to take puace. A £1,000,000 Contest Many Parliamentary candidates will be having anxious interviews with their bank managers during the next few days. For the majority still find it necessory to meet the bulk of their expenses from their own pockets, and these expenses can be very heavy. Even the legal limit of 6d per voter, imposed to stop wholesale bribery practised a century ago, fails, in these days of universal suffrage, to reduce costs' appreciably. In the Romford division of Essex, for example, with its 150.000 electors, each candidate is entitled to spend up to £3750 on his campaign. While none is likely to spend as much as this, many will have to meet a bill running up to £ISOO. It has been estimated that the average for the whole country, including the 500 Socialist candidates, who spend much less than their Conservative colleagues, will be £750 per head, well over £1,000,000 in all. Flints for Abyssinia Some weeks ago I recorded how the Italo-Abyssinian crisis, by reducing Italy’s imports of pilchards, had led to unemployment in, the, little Cornish fishing village of Polperro. This week I have heard of an even stranger repercussion. By this time the crisis has increased employment. Three men in the Suffolk village of Brandon have been working overtime for weeks "knapping” (chipping) flints for Abyssinia. The flints are used for the ancient flintlock guns with which many of the Abyssinian troops are equipped. Mr Herbert Edwards is one of the few men left to carry oh this ancient industry. Normally he and his two assistants find just enough work to keep them busy in supplying flints for West Africa and Singapore, where they are used for tinder-boxes, flint-lock carbines and horse pistols. Now he is supplying nearly 40,000 a week for Abyssinia. He receives 9/6 per thousand —and a good knapper can turn out 300 flints an hour. Where Dick Turpin Hid Lovers of the Thames will be sorry to hear that the Olde Bells of Ouzeley at Old Windsor, one of the most ancient inns in Britain, is now in the hands of the housebreakers. It is to be replaced by a modern building. The inn was' built in the year 1300. It was then in the ehart of Windsor Forest and it supplied beer of its own brew to Windsor Castle, with which it was connected by an underground passage. Queen Elizabeth frequently stopped there for refreshments while travelling on the Thames —then the safest highway between London and Windsor —in the Royal barge, and it is recorded that Dick Turpin, the famous highwayman once hid for three days in a secret cellar there while his -wouldbe captors were seeking him in the house above. In the principal bar there is an earlyEnglish fireplace, over 600 years old, and among its m:.ny treasures the inn possesses a peal of five hand-bells made of old Bristol glass. Hand Looms in Spitalfields How many people would think of Spitalfields to-day as a home of hand weaving? Yet an exhibition held recently showed that there are still working there descendants of the famous Huguenot weavers who made this part, of London famous in the seventeenth cenutry. Five or six weavers are working in the original cottages and using the original looms of their ancestors. Fifteen more work in a hand-loom factory in Spitalfields, but the majority—totalling about fifty—have emigrated to Braintree, Essex. Here and in Spitalfields they produce beautiful brocades and velvets, at prices ranging up to £l7 per yard. Preparing for Gas Attacks People passing a court near Baker Street station the other day must have thought they had stumbled into some terrifying, world of the future, like a Wellsian nightmare. On. the ground lay a young man, seemingly unconscious. Around him strange figures in yellow overalls and rubber boots, their faces hidden in thick rubber masks, were fixing a mask on his face. It was a demonstration of the treatment of poison gas casualty by the special gas squad of the St. John Ambulance Brigade. The demonstration was part of the two-day course in anti-gas drill held under the auspices of the newly-formed Air Raids Precautions Department of the Home Office. Already 7000 officers and nurses of the Brigade have been trained in antigas drill, and the numbers are increasing weekly, at classes held all over the country. The training is very thorough, comprising instruction in the properties of all the known forms of poison gas, the methods of launching attacks, the treatment of casualties and the organisation and equipment of first -aid stations and gas shelters. Christmas Toys Already the London shops are preparing their big toy displays for Christmas. While mechanical toys, including aeroplanes, motor cars, the ever-popular train and telephones that really work are to the fore, it is interesting to note that the children of to-day have not lost interest in dolls and stuffed animals. But, while the fashion remains, the form has changed. The modem child demands his dolls and his animals as life-like as possible. The 1935 doll can scarcely be distinguished from its owner, it can be bathed, has hair that will brush and comb and even says a few simple words. Particularly popular this year, apparently are the models of film characters. There is a Shirley Temple, and most of the animals from the Mickey Mouse cartoons, some as big as the average child. Another favourite is Lilonga, the negro girl in “Sanders of the River,” modelled to the life. |