Traffic Lights in Wellington.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 July 1939, Page 4

Traffic Lights in Wellington.

The automatic traffic lights equipment for the Wakefield Street-Jervois Quay junction has arrived in Auckland, and will be in Wellington this week. In connection with the erection of the lights at this, the busiest traffic junction in Wellington, it is proposed to build an “island” or safety zone in the centre of the wide space between the petrol station and the corner reserve. At this junction the roadway is more than 100 ft in width, and, with the traffic increasing, this point is considered one of the most dangerous in the city. The provision of a safety zone, as well as traffic lights, should improve the position.

Three Speeds on Wharves. “They have three speeds of work on the wharves today—they are like a modern car —go slow, go very slow, and stop,” said Mr S. G. Holland, M.P., for Christchurch North, in speaking at Rangiora of the political situation in New Zealand. After claiming that industry was being harassed by the goslow policy, Mr Holland said that where Australians were loading at the rate of 23 tons an hour. New Zealanders had slipped back to 11 tons an hour for the same goods and equipment. Further emphasising what he termed the waning efficiency through the country today, Mr Holland pointed out that there had been in various working sections 176 strikes in the last three years —“a record even a Communistic party would find it hard to beat.”

The Profit System. "Profits are just as soundly earned as anything else, and the profit system is designed, bettei’ than any other I know, to give the community what it wants,” said Professor A. H. Tocker, professor of economics at Canterbury University College, in an address in Christchurch. "The whole price and profit and loss system is designed to turn commodities where they are most wanted, and everyone with sixpence to spend has a vote in the way production is directed. I can't think of anything fairer. The thing has all sorts of leaks and lags and inequalities. But where it has been replaced by something else you usually have a lower standard of living.” In some ways, in Italy and Germany, the system was better, but on the whole, living standards were lower, and people had lost the liberty that made the old system worth while. Rabbits Die of Starvation. The novel experience of seeing rabbits actually dying of starvation because of their great numbers and the lack of feed was described by a well known Canterbury runholder. In 25 years' experience of Central Otago ho said that lie had never seen the country looking so bad. The shortage of feed after the dry season, together with the large number of rabbits swarming over the country, had reduced areas almost io the state of a desert. Those runholders who could do their own rabbiting were keeping the plague in check on their own places, but those who were forced to employ labour had completely lost control, the price of rabbitskins being so low that men could not earn a decent living and were thus not available for the work. The topmost branches of matagouri bushes he had seen completely stripped of bark, while practically every shrub in certain areas was chewed. It was a long time, he said, since such conditions had obtained in the South Island. - , -. ..