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Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3459, 13 April 1920, Page 3

In a gazette appear new regulations inc:-easing the scale of payments ‘ to witnesses in criminal cases. The‘ aznount is increased from 6/ to 10/ 2.! day, and witnesses at c,‘-0»:-oners’! inquests will be paid the same sum.i The fee for the coroner or justice, or} other stipendiary magistrate, holdingi an inquest, is raised from £1 1/ to £2 2/, and the mileage from 1/ to 1/6. The fees were reduced many years ago, during the time of the retrenchment, and are now restored to ithe maximum amount allowed by the Act. The Act, it is understood, does not permit of increases in fees to medical witnesses without further legislation. The new scale of payments will take effect from today.

There was quite a. little sensation caused among those forming a queue‘ outside the offices of the Westportl Coal Company at Wellington on. Tuesday: when one of the staff announced‘ that the people who were waiting had _ better look after their pockets, as two i customers had already reported hav-1 king had their pockets picked in the} queue. V One, it is tinder-stood, lost £2 ‘and another '£4—a.ll in notes. Those in the queue immediately lbegan to look at one another with suspicious eyes, whilst they filled their pockets with their fis-ts or clutched their bags (according to their sex). The fact ‘that lightsfingered gentry are becomlihg active in broad daylight should be a warning to everyone? _-

Prices in Auckland and elsewhere? in New Zealand are higher than those ruling in Austi-ali_a, says {1 Sydney visitor at present in Auckland. He was surprised to find such :1 difference, and to prove his .oontention, quoted prices fior various articles of wearing apparel. ,-‘mother thing that ‘annoys the visitor is the stringent [pas-spoi-t regulations. He says that if ‘the regulations» could be done away '\Villl, there would hav}e' been a much ‘greater influx of Australians into New

Zealand. It is bad enough to have to g.o«\to all the trouble and bother of interviewing endless policemen and other officials, when one ig taking 21 trip to the Old Colintry, out it is

doubly irritating when a, man is merely going to run across ‘to New Zealand on a. trip of pleasure.