WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1928. NOTES OF THE DAY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18585, 10 October 1928, Page 8

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1928. NOTES OF THE DAY.

r T'HE PROLONGED NORWVESTERS, which axe giving Christchurch such an unseasonable spell of weather, have given the W T aimakariri every opportunity to produce the disastrous flood that the advocates of expensive protective works have been predicting for years past. Nothing like the present succession of nor’-westers has been recorded previously, and never before has the Government Meteorologist regarded it as necessary to warn Canterbury of floods, and yet the Waimakariri has behaved itself quite decently, falsifying all the predictions that were made so confidently that it would surpass all past records. It may now be taken for granted, we think, that there is no call for the very expensive protective works that the River Trust has been urged to erect. A very much simpler and cheaper programme would give all the protection that appears to be necessarv.

TV/TEN OVER FORTY, according to a Sydney doctor, arc the mainstay of the community, but not enough of them are healthy. He advises these impoi'tant people to imitate the cricketer and the golfer, and to live intelligently. That is just what an increasing Dumber of men are doing nowadays. Golf, cricket and tennis are being played into the seventies in Christchurch to-day, and moderately strenuous sports are no longer barred to the elderly man who can keep his weight down within reasonable limits. In fact, the man of the forties in tins generation looks younger and probably feels younger than his predecessor of the same age in any other generation. It is not sport alone that is responsible for the change. That has much to do with it, hut ever since somebody coined the phrase “ too old at forty ” men of that age have begun to take better care of themselves—to live more temperately both in the matter of eating and drinking. Sport merely completes the healthy cycle.

r I MIE BULK of the New Zealand Statute Book is made up of laws pushed through in the last few weeks of successive sessions without due consideration. The vice of the New Zealand Parliament is that it spends months in wasteful talk, and hours only in putting through the legislation by which virtually the whole of the lives of the people and the daily business of the country are governed. The system is utterly wrong, and.its development is largely responsible for the complete lack of public interest in the proceedings of Parliament. It is only when some blunder more gross Ilian the others touches the pockets or limits the freedom of a section of the public that is able to made its disapproval vocal, that any semblance of interest in current politics is stirred. Our Parliament does too much work of a kind, and does it very badly, and it would he a welcome change to have a Parliament that would refrain from speech-making and from the making of any new laws, and would devote itself wholly for three sessions to the task of reducing the laws of New Zealand to a reasonable compass, and eliminating their manifold faults, this last session is not one of which the expiring Parliament has reason to be proud.

r T'HE LATE Mr George Laurenson, M.P., was a strong believer in the desirableness of a new capital of New Zealand, situated somewhere in the Marlborough region, in u more protected position than Wellington occupies. Times have changed a good deal with the introduction of aeroplanes as an attacking weapon, and the protection of capital cities becomes a bigger problem than ever. Nevertheless, it is not desirable that cities should he aerial bases, and it is desirable that when an aerial base is established in New Zealand for defence purposes, it should not be 100 close to the capital city. For that reason, special value attaches to the views ol the co-leaders of the Southern Cross that Blenheim would be an ideal aerial base for the defence of Cook Strait and Wellington. “Of course this is none of my business ” says Ivingsford Smith, “ but the facts arc patent to everyone who knows anything at all about aerial defence.” Hi s remarks are extremely welcome, and it would be a pity if, holding such Strong views, he did not express them Blenheim seems to have escaped the gale that was raging south and north of it, and the climatic conditions as well as the landing conditions seem to be as near perfection as can be obtained away from the Canterbury Plains. The little town has certainly had a very good advertisement from its foresight in providing a landing ground. Indeed, if it had not been for the interest taken in aviation in Blenheim in the days of the Canterbury- Aviation Company, the Southern Cross and its crew would never have found their way there and its claims as an aerial base might easily have been overlooked.