LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7913, 2 August 1917, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The Railway Department announce some slight alterations in the timetable. In the New South Wales Assembly the censure motion was defeated by 46 to 25. A war bonus to civil servants on the same lines as last year is proposed, and Parliament is to be asked to vote £400,000 for the purpose. The •average cost of raising the last three loans in London prior to the war was 3i per cent., and the average cost of raising the two loans in New Zealand during the war was three-eighths of one pound per cent. —Extract from the Budget. Mr W. H. Rathbone supplies the following details of the rainfall for July:—Rain fell on 14 days, as follows: 7th ,05in., 10th .10in., 11th .04in., 12th .Olin., 16th .09in., 19th .llin., 20th .10in., 21st .74in., 23rd .09in., 24th .23in., 28th .15in., 29th .02in., 30th .40in., 31st .39in.; total, 2.52in.; total for 1917, 27.72in. An amusement tax is to be imposed. The duty will commence at Id where the price of admission, exclusive of the duty, does not exceed 6d, proceeding in graduations until it reaches a duty of Is on admissions of 12s 6d, with an additional Is for every 10s or fraction of 10s over 12s 6d in the price of admission. The estimated amount of revenue that will be obtained from this source is £BO,OOO, and it will be devoted to paying the war bonus to old age and military pensioners and widows and to miners suffering from pneumoconosis.

Members of the Waipawa branch of the Second Division League, and intending members, are advised that a meeting will be held in the Borough Council Chambers on Saturday even-* ing after the public meeting in the theatre, to receive the report of the delegate to the recent confer?nce in Wellington.

“It has been determined to make provision for granting additional allowances to dependents of soldiers, and the House will be asked to amend the war pensions legislation this session,” stated the Minister of Finance in his Budget speech. 11 The necessary expenditure, the amount of which I am not in a position to state at present, will be provided for in the supplementary estimates. Some relief on account of the extra cost of living should be given to old age and the military pensioners ’ widows and miners, and to enable this to be done I propose t< provide £120,000.” There was a very large attendance at the Municipal Theatre yesterday afternoon, when Mr Reid, on behalf of Williams and Kettle, Ltd., offered for sale a portion of Mr P. A. McHardy’s estate, some 2300 acres, divided into six blocks. The public were not, however, there to buy apparently, for the several blocks wer- 1 passed in. ‘Bidding for No. 3, with the option of taking hio. 4, started at £l** per acre and ran to £l3 10s, at which figure it was passed in. No. 1 ran to £l2, and was passed at that figure. No offers were made for any of the other sections. The general opinion appeared to be that the unexpectedly high prices obtained for the Pourerere and Te Manuiri blocks acted as a check on the bidding. The land is now open for private treaty. Writing to his mother from “Somewhere in France,” under date June Bth, Private Sam Grant, of Waipawa, mentions having met quite *a number of local boys, including Captain Collett, W. Carson, and Harman. F* l mentions that “Toby” Ferguson has got a good job as instructor in camp in England, and Dan Moriarty “is in England getting made into an officer.” Private Grant complains about the irregularity of the mail service; the night previous to writing he received a large batch, the first he had had for three months. He mentions that he has left the New Zealand Engineers and is now back in his old company. “We hope,” he says, “to be home for Christmas. The weather over here is glorious now, just like New Zealand.”

At a conference of local bodies in Napier on Tuesday it was resolved, after lengthy discussion:—“That the Government be asked to set up a Commission to apportion the amount of rating the different areas in the Hawke’s Bay Rivers District should be charged, and that the bill before the House be amended so as to give power to the Hawke’s Bay Rivers Board to strike a rate or take a contribution according to the findings of the Commission, and the question of representation be allowed to suit the new conditions. Further, that as since the finding of the Commission, Hawke’s Bay has been visited by a severe flood, this meeting is of opinion ’ that the bill should authorise the above Commission to take into consideration such evidence as to alterations in the district to be rated as may be submitted.”