LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Waipa Post, Volume XIX, Issue 1054, 12 February 1921, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Advice was received by the Wharepapa Road Board yesterday that the commission which is to report upon county boundaries will sit at the Magistrate’s Court, Hamilton, on 22nd February. The programme for the Thames Trotting Club’s second annual meeting is notified in our advertising columns. The fixture takes place on 10th March, nominations being due on '24th February. In Canterbury and North Otago the acreage of potatoes is 73 per cent, of that of last year (says the Waimate Advertiser). Waimate has 1900 acres, being by far the largest potato district in New. Zealand. It is seldom an employer in these days receives the spontaneous thanks of his employees (remarks the TimarU Post). Such was the experience of the Mackenzie Council recently, when it was reported that some of the men employed thanked the council very cordially for an extra bonus given without request.

Official notification has been received from the Minister ;of‘ Finance by the Lower Mangapiko Drainage Board that the application for the raising of a loan of £BOO by the Board for the special drainage area has been approved. Notification of this authority appeared in the Gazette last week.'

The public meeting convened by the Te Awamutu Chamber of Commerce for Tuesday afternoon next, to consider ways and means for the establishment of a maternity hospital at Te Awamutu, is welcomed by many people and there is every assurance of a large attendance. The project is very rightly regarded an essential one. A Press Association message from Invercargill states that a man armed with the blade of a bill-hook and part of a bicycle frame was running wild in the bush at Mokatua, causing alarm to the settlers there. Constables went out and found and disarmed the man, who was brought into town. Later he was committed to Seacliffe Mental Hospital. There was a large attendance at the Empire Theatre last night whefi >,he film “The Shadow of Lightning Ridge” was screened. The general expression of approval from the audience assures a still larger attendance next Monday, when the second picture of • the same series “Possum Paddock" is to be screened. There are about 14,000 acres in the Makerua Swamp, on the Manawatu line, and reaching towards Foxton. It is, or was, the largest flax-producing area in New Zealand; but more than half of the acreage is now affected with the flax blight, and the bushes thereon are rather less than half their usual height. No definitely agreedupon cause for the blight is given. For being found on licensed premises during the currency of a prohibition order, a native named Mapi Walker, against whom previous convictions had been recorded and who pleaded guilty when charged with the offence before Mr H. A. Young, S.M., at the Magistrate’s Court at Te Awamutu on Thursday last, was fined £5 and costs 7/. A visitor to Te Awamutu who was in the vicinity of the bandroom last Thursday, when practice was being held, expressed himself in very favourable terms of the local band’s playing. It may be mentioned that he is a competent critic, having had .a considerable experience, and he was certainly most congratulatory to the band who, he said, “showed a ‘finish’ which was not often found in provincial bands.” A Press Association message states that a meeting of creditors bf William Allan Hopkins, land agent, at Christchurch, it was decide to ask him to file a petition ip bankruptcy. In default of his doing so within seven days it was the wish of the meeting that creditors’ petitions be prosecuted against his estate. The claims definitely stated at the meeting amounted to £45,717. One of the trustees stated that the indebtedness was nearer £66,000.

The conference of local bodies tonight at which consideration is to ibe given the proposal to create a new Railway District to promote the building of a railway between the Main Trunk line and Kawhia is attracting a good deal of attention. The Kawhia delegates will include the representatives of the locabbodies from that locality and there will also be a big representation from the districts nearer to the existing railway. The importance of the project is very rightly recognised and it is more than probable that a definite movement will be inaugurated this evening. Discussing the borough sewerage scheme the other day, a citizen who should be competent to gauge the prospect of supplies roundly condemned the purchase of all the necessary earthenware pipes att he present time. “ They have,” he persisted, landed or ordered the whole of the pipes for the scheme, and it is not likely that half of them will be used in the next twelve months. This means that the pipes have been purchased at the top of the wave of high prices, and as likely as not. those pipes which remain in store for another twelve months will have a much lower value when actually used.” Time alone can prove the soundness of this argument. Firstly, _it is not certain what industrial conditions will obtain in New Zealand next year, or what the effect of deferred orders flooding the manufacturers will be. The Te Awamutu Borough Council has acted in the belief that it is wise to guard against shortage or interruption of supply instead of risking these thing*; for a market which is unsteady and when a fall in price is indeed problematical.