NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 40020, 7 November 1929, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

Alice Barbara Plunkett, aged 30 a farm labourer’s daugher, who posed as the wealthy daughter of a lOC., was sentenced at Windsor Quarter Sessions to 12 months’ hard labour for obtaining money by false pretences.

Witli an impudence that almost surpasses his disregard for the law, an apparently youthful motor enthusiast abandoned a stolen machine in Gisborne on a recent even ■ ing after decorating the interior with messages to the owner. The machine was taken from a private car stand (says the Poverty Bay lierald), and when found was undamaged, but the owner’s eye caught chalked on the moquette upholstery inside three separate messages. “Please have a full tank of benzine the next time,” was the first; “Please see that there is food, etc.,” was the second; and “Please fix the-leak in (the radiator,” was the final piece of impudence. All sorts of reasons actuate defendants in Law Courts to .plead not guilty to the offences with which they are charged, hut seldom do they explain their motives so frankly as did one man who was tin' defendant in a by-law case in the Magistrate’s Court a't Wellington. Asked by Air. T. E. Maunsell, S.M., why he was pleading not guilty the defendant replied that he thought that if he put up some sort of an argument lie would / get off with a lighter fine. Laughingly Mr. Maunsell said, “You take my advice and you’ll find the cheapest course, is to plead guilty.” The defendant accepted 'the suggestion, and the Magistrate remarked, “Well in that jease I won’t impose the in axil mini penalty.”

“Mussolini has done wonders for Italy, so far as appearances go,” said Mi'- Justice Scholes, of Sydney, in a short interview on board the Rangitiki at Auckland on Friday. “I was there years ago, under the old regime, and the contrast when I visited the country lately was amazing. One sees no more dirt and squalor and idleness. The whole place has literally been cleaned up. Everybody seems to be industrious. I often noticed peasants ploughing beside the railway, generally with the oddest kind of a team, such as a horse, a donkey, and an old cow hitched together. The man behind seldom so much as glanced up as‘the train passed. Men, women, and children worked in the fields everywhere from dawn to dusk.” Ho visitor could fail to notice: the all-pervad-ing police, although whether this was of good or ill omen he was not prepared to say. _____