GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 14741, 22 August 1921, Page 8

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Farmers and . grain merchants have their pleasantries as well as other men, but when oats are mentioned nowadays there is an abrupt end of joking, • states the Dunedin Star. The position as to this staple seems to be that the parties concerned are, in the phraselogy of the noble art, sparring for, an opening. ,The farmers know that their oats are wanted; the middlemen knosv 'that sooner or later the holders must sell; and both sides, are wary of the speculator, anxious that he shall not get in to their disadvantage. Meantime business is slack* and millers have to be content with an odd parcel picked up here and there

The Licensing Bill, which has been passed byHhe Hous*e of Lords, which applies to the whole of Britain, "provides that the earliest hour afc which liquor will be procurable, shall be 11 o'clock in the morning, and the latest 10 o'clock in the evening, except in the metropolis, whore the latest hour shall beJLI p.m. The hours of opening are limited to eight in the provinces and nine in London. Meals, with drinks can be ordered on weekdays in London between 11 o'clock and midnight in hotels and) restaurants, and between 11 and 11.30 in licensed houses and clubs. The Central Liquor Control Board is abolished and its property transferred to the Home Secretary and the Secretary for Scotland, who are empowered to continue the board's scheme of State management of the liquor traffic.

"If people would only walk a rea. sonable distance to their place of occupation they would save their health and their money," said Dr. H. J. McLean, in a lecture recently. "I am positive that street-cars are responsible for the lost art of walking, and that they are not altogether an unmixed blessing. We should all walk more and tram less, and-if we could prevail on each man to walk only one section more a day the result would be ah enormous gain in health, thought 'I don't know if lie would save any money in these days of concession tickets "

A striking-'example of rapid transformation of power furnaces from coal to oil consumption has been furnished at Messrs Cadbury's cocoa and chocola-.e works at Bourneville. At Whitsuntide the exhausion of coal stocks made it necessary for the firm, as a precautionary measure, to give notice to some of their 8000 employees that they might be unable to resume full-time employment after the bank holiday, while an emergency scheme of unemployment grants was drawn up. Meanwhile the firm's engineering department worked night and day at the.substitution of oil and other alternative fuels in the place of coal. So successful were their efforts, both at Bournville and at the subsidiary factories, that the amount of time it was feared would be lost was fortunately less than was anticipated.. Within one week production in the factories was again in full swing, and the threat of unemployment of thousands of employees was dispelled.