Local & General

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 29, 16 May 1947, Page 5

Local & General

Theory Reconsidered On the death of a number of cats in the Kopeopeo area most residents arrived at the conclusion that last year’s dog poisoner had turned his attention to cats,. Examinations of some of the victims, however, showed that death was due to distemper. A cat which contracts this disease shows symptoms not unlike those resulting from poisoning and apparently this is where the error has crept in.

Origin of Lodge Movement “The birth of the Friendly Society movement has been lost in the mists of time, but records have been in existence since the year 1790,” said Bro. O. Jacobsen, president of the Dominion Council of Friendly Societies, at the annual conference recently. “In those days the Government had no confidence in men who met in secret and laid heavy hands upon them at times. Books were not kept particularly in the years following the French Revolution, and lists of members were not open.

Trees and Boundaries The Nelson executive of the Federated Farmers decided to support a remit from the Waimea County CoYmcil to the New Zealand Counties’ Association urging the introduction of legislation to prevent anyone planting trees within a chain of the boundary of a property. On the suggestion of Mr p. C. T. Raine, who introduced the subject, it t was decided to go further and urge that where trees were already planted beyond this limit the onus be put on the property owner if a fire got into the trees.

Classes For Boy Scouts The education of the New Zealand Boy Scouts’ contingent now on its way to the world jamboree in Paris, will not be neglected; The Education Department had previously called applications for three positions providing for the boys’ regular instruction to continue on ; the voyage for university entrance, school certificate, and other examinations later in the year. The Department offered to pay salaries and expenses, and made a proviso, that the teachers may be required to perform other duties while the jamboree is actually in progress.

Settlement and Land Sales Act

At a recent meeting of the local Chamber of Commerce the effect of the above Act on the purchase of residential was discussed and a request was forwarded to-the Associated Chambers of Commerce to make representations to the Minister to make all 'buildiiig sections for which the purchase price does not exceed £IOO exempt from the provisions of the Act. The Associated Chamber of Commerce reports that the matter was discussed by the New Zealand Executive which decided to make the representations as requested, but, in doing so, to make the aforementioned price £2OO instead of £IOO.

Raft Expedition Radio It is not thought that New Zealand short-wave radio enthusiasts will find it easy to get in touch with the Norwegian expedition which has left the shores of d?eru drifting on rafts in an effort to prove that the original Polynesian population was of Inca origin. It is thought by the leader of the expedition, Mr Thor Heyerson, that the Incas did reach Polynesia, drifting on rafts similar to those used at present by the expedition. So far, the only detail received in New Zealand of the expedition is that they will be transmitting on the 14 metre band, but the call sign is not known. The only method of getting' into touch with the rafts would be by the tedious method of tracing every signal in that wave band. No local operators have yet been able to do this. Prisons And Labour “One of the queerest and most mysterious aspects of Labour’s long term of administration is that the party. which abolished the . death sentence for murderers and which had annually, for a very long time, filled up pages of Hansard with its criticism of New Zealand prisons and prison methods, has done next to nothing in prison reform,” states an article in the New Zealand National Review, official journal of the New Zealand-. Manufacturers’ Federation. “In the main, the system is what is was twenty, thirty or more years ago. There are reformers in this country—what are sometimes called professional dogooders’—who despair of getting anything done by the Labour Government. They allege that in the treatment of criminals, as in all activities directed by State departments, the bureaucrats usually take over and become too strong for the Government of the day.”