Local & General

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 67, 10 July 1950, Page 4

Local & General

New Members

Fifteen new members were elected by the committee of the Whakatane Citizens’ Association at a recent meeting. Partial Pass K. Gerrard, of the Whakatane District Hospital, was successful in gaining a partial pass in the State preliminary examination for nurses held in May.

Broadcast Talk

Fifteen-minute talk on the Whakatane Board Mills was broadcast from the Bay of Plenty station IYZ last night. It was a personal description of a visit to the mill by a Maketu resident.

More Male Nurses

The trend in mental hospitals is toward fewer nurses and more male attendants today. Because of the greater ease in obtaining male labour and its relative stability, it is understood that the policy of the Mental Hygiene Division is to appoint attendants to replace nurses wherever nurse recruits are difficult to obtain and the replacement is practicable.

A Quiet Sport Defending a hotel licensee, who pleaded not guilty in the Magistrate’s Court to a charge of permitting gambling on his premises, counsel described the system by which 12 divisions on a card were sold in a bar at 1/- each for a prize of six bottles of beer. He quoted legal authorities on the question of gambling and said there was no rowdyism about this type of gambling. “It is a quiet form of sport, not like cock fighting, for instance,” he added.

Rewards For Long Service A scheme of awards to farm workers who have completed long and meritorious periods of work on farms has been approved in principle by the Royal Agricultural Society of New Zealand. It was suggested at the society’s annual meeting that those eligible 'should be farm or station managers, agricultural workers, shepherds, musterers, and shearers, and that 35 years should be the minimum working period.

State House Interiors The State Housing Department is now' using pumice cement fibre board as a basis for wall, plaster in some Stale houses This was being ctone, said a departmental officer, only in areas where there were shortages of timber-—in Palmerston North, for instance. In most State houses weather boards and wire were still used for the stucco finish. The pumice cement process was not new, but the department’s method of applying plaster was new and was proving satisfactory.

New Niue Island Stamps Now on its way to Niue, the Maui Pomare is likely to be met by jubilant natives in outrigger canoes when she arrives this week to pick up a supply of first-day covers of the new Niue stamps. The firstday covers will fill orders made by both overseas and New Zealand philatelists. The stamps are to be placed on sale at post offices in New Zealand and at the tiny post office of Niue on Monday. They are not a commemorative issue, but purely a change of the normal stamps, the present issue of which has been in use for some time.