FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 76, 21 June 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By the LOOK-OUT MAN. THOSE CHEAP OYSTERS It will have been noticed that the Minister of Marine emphasised when in Auckland recently that he was determined the public should get cheap oysters, seeing that they were in plentiful supply. The cheapness is glaringly apparent. Yesterday the LookOut Man purchased a small bottle In a Queen Street fishmonger's shop. They cost 3s. When he got home, he counted the oysters. There were 33 of them in the bottle. This worked out at over a penny an oyster. Distributed at the family table, the 3s bottle yielded just over five oysters for each diner. It will be seen from this that a decent oyster stew for a family could be obtained for about thirty shillings. THE SHORTEST DAY To-day the sun arose at 7.3, Auckland time (although no one saw it), and this evening he retires below the horizon at 4.42. To-day, therefore, is regarded as the “shortest day in the year," and in the course of a week or so there will be a noticeable difference in the hours of daylight, gradually lengthening until Spring lightly turns the young man’s fancy to thoughts of love, the elder man’s to thoughts of the domestic garden, and the fancies of women, young and old, to thoughts of the new season’s millinery and silk stockings, la, la! There are people who are always glad to see the shortest day in the year arrive, so that they may the earlier be rid of winter, and there be those who welcome the arrival of the longest day, so that they, are the nearer to singing “Good-bye Summer!” You can’t please some people. They get tired of winter and tired of summer —but they’re never tired of growling about the weather, which is always either too hot or too cold. HEW ZEALAND IN CANADA

Nearly all the people who come to New Zealand tell us what a fine people we are, and what a grand little country we have —and then they proceed to exploit our expanding hearts by straightway producing notebooks wherein to write our orders for goods made in their own countries. The latest to gratify our national vanity are two bankers from Canada, who declare that the Canadians think whole bags full of us and reckon our country to be the real flawless diamond of the Pacific. These gentlemen give us the tip, free, gratis and for love. They have a trade commissioner here —why don’t we have one there? Yes; we ought truly to have a polished and diplomatic New Zealander over there, 'to tell the Canadians what a fine people they are and what a fine country they have —and what wonderful tr ter, cheese and other products New Zealand can sell them and thus help Imperial reciprocity and Imperial preference and further knit the silken bonds of kinship, etc. Since the Government is too (temporarily it is to be hoped) hard up financially, what is wrong with the people here who have things to sell subscribing between them to establish and maintain a trade office in Canada? To the mere observer, it looks to be a feasible and a payable proposition. * * * A “TEN BOB ” TOTE The Auckland Racing Club is at last going to give patrons who pay the heavy admission charge to the lawn the privilege of passing through into the Leger to purchase ten-shilling totalisator tickets, instead of compelling them, as has been the custom, to either walk all the way to the hill (where there is no indicator, and a man bets in the dark) or speculating the full £l, where the desire might be to invest only half that amount. But the public need not consider this as a special concession for their needs. O dear no! The ten-shilling totalisator was established in the members’ stand at Ellerslie, simply for the'Convenience of members and their wives, and “their sisters and their cousins and their aunts.” That totalisator became so popular that it became a beastly nuisance, and members found it hard to pass in and out through the crowd. So now the club is going to give access to the Leger to those who want to make ten-shilling bets —but you can bet more than ten shillings that it is for the sake of members and their friends more than for that great betting ass, the public. A FLOURISHING INDUSTRY The effect of silencing the Press was made very apparent in England by the remarks of the Lord Chief Justice at a Mansion House banquet. The courts used to hear divorce cases by the score, said his Lordship. Now they hear them by the thousand. He added, with biting satire, that, nevertheless, a great many people in England were still undivorced. Of course, this bar to progress may disappear in time, and everybody will be either divorced or unmarried. The next logical step, since marriage w T ill no longer be a binding tie, is to dispense with it altogether as a mere formality not required by an enlightened age. This is the writing on the wall; yet there are in New Zealand quite a number of people who advocate that this country should follow the latest laws in England, whereby divorce is rendered a secret proceeding!