FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 154, 20 September 1927, Page 10

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN” THE ROAD HOG’S LAMENT You've noticed, perhaps , as the weather gets wetter, It's hard enough getting the auto to start; It has its effect on the old carburetter, It’s jolly well breaking the motorist s heart. And then if it goes. As everyone knows. To keep the thing jigging is often an art. Approaching the city in haste, it s annoying fud most inconvenient, having to s,op (In spite of the fact you’re on business — not joying) And give up your name and address to the “cop.” In manner emphatic He holds up the traffic. While talcing your number and going off “pop.” 1 find it is useless to plead it was twenty — Not forty —or say that the watches were wrong j The witnesses always are present in plenty To swear M was- more tho 9 I dawdled along. Tve often been rid Of a couple of “Quid” — Or a fiver and costs (a little too strong). But now it is worse than a fine of a fiver j The fat's in the fire and I'm “whipping the cat.” No longer I sit in the car as a driver And tear down the street at a terrible “bat.” I'm never to steer For another long year — The Magistrate's Court has attended to that. —B.C.H.

DISPLACEMENT OF MR. HARRIS That’s what comes of differing from the Government when you are a Government follower. Mr. Harris, M.P. for Waitemata, differed —and went hack repentant to the fold. But thdugh in the fold again, he is apparently not of it, for he has been displaced as chairman of the Industries and Commerce Committee of Parliament. Mr. Harris says it is “too contemptible for words”—and then he utters many words, both in sorrow and anger. He says he had the assurance of the Government that he would be reappointed. But there has arisen a Government which knows not any such assurance and knows not Mr. Harris; and Mr. Coates declines to comment. All of which prompts the question; “What financial recompense does the chairman of a Parliamentary committee receive, anyhow?” Also: “Are the qualifications for the office of chairman intellectual or political?” * » » AN AWFUE POSSIBILITY A woman was sent to gaol for a month yesterday for having stolen an engagement ring. She had been assisting a bride to pack her trousseau, and seized the opportunity surreptitously to seize the ring. It might have been even worse. Suppose she had stolen the wedding ring, and a happy honeymoon bride, removing her glove while her young hubby was booking the bridal apartment, became aware of a suspicious, stony, we-don’t-want-your-sort-stare on the part of the clerk in the hotel booking office? ’Tis too terrible to contemplate!

RESIDENTS AT £lO PER HEAD The North Shore is determined to have population. Let other suburbs crawl; those of the North Shore have cast off their swaddling clothes, put on pacts, and now fairly toddle along. Last night they decided to abandon toddling and to run, when a meeting representative of Devonport, Takapuna and Bayswater civic and business interests "formed a North Shore Development League, in order to “get busy” popularising the other side of the harbour as a residential area.

The North Shore claims advantages in transport, general outlook, beaches —and everything. That’s the spirit! And North Shore has ridded itself of that monstrosity, the steam tram, which used to puff and screech its way from Bayswater to Takapuna, filling the eyes of passengers with grit, their nostrils with sulphurous smoke, and their ears with a fearful din—and to frighten children into convulsions.

The North Shore, in fact, is such a desirable place in which to live, so inordinately attractive from every point of view, that the new league is proposing to entice people to live there, at; a cost to the league of £lO a head. Never mind. They are a live people over at the North Shore, and what they may lack in other things they make up in enterprise. If the new movement goes well and the population grows in accordance with dreams, North Shore will have its bridge in -lees than no time-,