LOCAL AND GENERAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 September 1938, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Minister at Otaki. The Hon F. Jones gave an interesting address at Otaki last night to a large audience, dealing largely with defence, broadcasting and social security. Sound Financial Position. The Wairarapa Automobile Association commenced its financial year with a credit balance of £9O 18s 3d. with £3OO on deposit in the Post Office Savings Bank, and ended with £l7B 3s 6d at the Bank and £9OO in the Post Office. The amount received in subscriptions, £2919 2s 3d, is the highest in the history of the Association. Election Rolls. The enrolment of electors for the general election is proceeding apace and the million mark now appears to be in sight. The total number of names on the general rolls, which closed on June 30, and the supplementary rolls up to August 31, was 925,798. “It looks as though we may reach the million mark or at least go very close to it,” said the Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. G. G. Hodgkins, in announcing these figures yesterday. Membership Increase. The membership of the Wairarapa Automobile Association at the commencement of the financial year was 2635, and at the close, 3251, an increase of 616. The number of members transferred to other associations, deletions through death, and those who had been struck off for arrears, was 161. It is interesting to note that at June 30 last the Association headed the list of associations in the ’North Island in membership to car registrations, membership per cent to cars being 60.86. The Right Spirit. The annual report of the Old Boys’ Cricket Club states: “Despite the fact that the team did not win a place in the senior competition it was gratifying to record the way in which the players themselves kept together and played the game for the game’s sake. It is this spirit and not always the winning of matches that will keep cricket alive in this district. Altogether your team had a most enjoyable season and the prospects for the coming season appeal’ extremely bright.” Fortunes of Commercial Travellers. “Before the war it was easy to get orders and to make profits,” said Mr H. H. Wauchop, speaking at the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Canterbury Commercial Travellers’ and Warehousemen’s Association. “During the war and in the period that followed we had the wood on the buyers,” he added; but he said that in recent years, with combined’’buying by chain stores and direct importation by retailors, the buyers “had the wood on” the travellers, and he felt sympathy with the younger members of the association who bad not experienced the good times of former years. No Jazz in Germany. “I take off my hat to Germany for one thing,” said Dr. W. M. Thomson, Hawera, at a South Taranaki School Committees’ Association meeting at Hawera. “She has cut out all jazz and all crooning from her radio programmes. There is enough good and enjoyablemusic in the world without the beastly stuff.” The meeting decided to support a remit to the annual conference at Christchurch that the attention of the Minister for Broadcasting and the Minister for Education be drawn to the allegedly undesirability of some commercial stations’ programmes, in relation to the morals of children, and that more material of educational value be broadcast from all stations. Destitution in Australia.

“After making allowances for the [greater population, there are noticeably more destitute people in Australia than in New Zealand,” said Dr. W. B. Sutch, Wellington, upon his arrival at Auckland by the Monterey from Sydney. He added that, apart from the numbers of men in Sydney and elsewhere who ostensibly sold bootlaces on the streets, he was asked by young men for the price of a meal. Dr. Sutch was a Wellington delegate to the British iCommonwealth Relations Conference in New South Wales. Delegates were taken for several drives and it was on one of these drives that he said he passed hundreds of shacks made ol sacking and kerosene tins. "To call them shacks is to politely describe them,” Dr. Sutch continued. “On the road between Sydney and Port Kembla on the sandhills north of the port, and in several other places, whole families live in those habitations. It was a very depressing sight.”