LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4643, 28 December 1923, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

There will be no publication of the “Gazette” on Monday and Wednesday of next week. . The total public debt of the Dominion was, according to a return maue at the end of the last financial year, £218,953,324. A large number of people left,Paeroa on Saturday and Monday to spend the holidays either at the Waihi Beach, Thames Coast, or Auckland. Constable McClinchy states, that the behaviour of the crowd during Christmas was exemplary, and it is pleasing to rpcdrd that up to the present there have been no accidents of any kind. The number of accidents at level railway crossings for the firs: half of 1923 was 46. In 1922 the total for the year was 57, and for 1921 and 1920, 44 and 32, respectively. The Ashburton County Council has passed a resolution refusing to appoint a delegate under the Highways Act, objecting to being grouped’with other counties. It expresses a willingness however, to spend the county's share of the allocations. The Dunedin wool sale realised about £540,000, an average of £3O a bale. Mbst of the Wool is going to the Continent— Germany, Italy, and France being extensive buyers. Russia takes a little, and English buyers a r air share. A case believed to be unique was heard at the Magistrate’s Court at Hawera when George Appleyard, William Corcoran, and Timothy Patrie Harris were charged with aiding a barman in the commission of an offence punishable on summary conviction, namely, with unlawfully supplying liquor after hours. The magistrate said-the evidence was to the effect that the barman did not want to supply the liquor, but they over--came hi,s scruples and persuaded him to break the law. The accused were convicted and were fined £3 and costs each.

In one business establishment in Oamaru three generations—father, son. and grandson—were a few days ago to be seen busily engaged in turning out Christmas orders (says the North Otago Times). It may be mentioned, also, that the grandson is a father.

“There were a fine lot of young fellows coming out on the Remuera, remarked Mr A. Rawson, who was a passenger to the Dominion by that boat, to a “Chronicle” reporter, recently. “Judging from them I should sav New Zealand was getting some of the cream of Britain’s young men. They were some of those who say to themselves that conditions at Home are not good enough, and get out of it, while the other .sort who have not their enterprise and courage stay at home and grumble at things as they are.”