LOCAL AND GENERAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 December 1940, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Frost in Masterton A frost of 1.2 degrees was registered in Masterton this morning.

Motor Camp Busy, i Good use of the Mawley Park motor camp is being made by visiting motorists and the camp presents a busy sight at present.

Hastings Contributions to Appeal,

Contributions to the £15,000 which is Hasting’s quota of the £1,000,000 appeal, have now reached £13,024, and with sums which are assured, it seems that the objective will easily be reached in the near future .

Payment for Wool. More than £640,000 will have been received by Wanganui farmers when they obtain payment for the second wool appraisal of the season tomorrow week. The second appraisal, held on December 15, was of 22,265 bales, and brought in £424,332, an average of £l9 Is. 2d. a bale and 12.492 d. a pound. For the first appraisal of the season on November 25 there were 11,925 bales, which brought in £217,841, an average of £lB ss. 4d. a bale.

Hutt Borough Area Increased. An increase in the acreage of the Lower Hutt Borough is recommended in the report of the Commission of Inquiry which recently heard evidence for and against the proposal to incorporate adjoining Hutt County land in the borough. Though the area to be brought within the boundaries is much less than was proposed by the borough council, the area of the borough lands to be city lands after February I—will1 —will be larger by about 50 per cent., being increased from 3706 to 5480 acres.

Crooning Condemned. Crooning was roundly condemned by Dr C. Edgar Ford when addressing the Rotary Club in Auckland. He described the practice as positively either vulgar or stupid, or both. “A crooner,” he said, “represents the lowest type of intellect outside a lunatic asylum. Some people, presumably, like crooning; otherwise it' would be discontinued. Of course, it is possible that some sentimental and benevolent old lady has endowed crooning on the ground that village idiots throughout the world have not been suitably catered for by the broadcasting corporations.”

Girl Attacked by Dog. The four-year-old daughter of Mr and Mrs V. Thomas, Railway Terrace, Temuka, suffered severe face wounds which required 11 stitches when she was attacked by a dog owned by her father at Temuka. The dog, which was about to be tied up, rushed past three bo’ys and attacked the child. She was knocked to the ground and bitten on the face. The clothes about her neck, were badly torn, and only for the prompt action of one of the boys, who kicked the dog off. the child might have suffered more severely. The girl also suffered shock. She is reported to be making satisfactory progress.

Boys for Farms, Ninety secondary school boys in the Wellington province enrolled under the Government Youth Centre scheme to provide farmers with additional labour during the school holidays, but up to Tuesday only 23 were placed. The boys were from Rongotai College, Wellington College, Wellington Technical College. Hutt Valley Memorial Technical College, Hutt Valley High School, and St. Patrick’s College (Wellington); in addition, there were one or two from Victoria College and some primary shcool boys. Up to Tuesday only 15 farmers had applied for boys. Two of these each took two boys. On Tuesday another application came in resulting in six more boys being placed, bringing the total to 23.

Noisy Bottle Parties. Frequent complaints are being made about the disturbance of the peace in Oriental Bay, Wellington, on fine nights. One resident said that because of the frequency of noisy drinking parties on the waterfront people preferred to sleep in the back rooms, instead of the front ones. At all hours of the nights, and sometimes in the early morning, they were disturbed from their sleep by people, more or less intoxicated, singing and shouting, and behaving generally in an unbecoming manner. On the little reserve on the western side of the bay, there were seats and lawns where the revellers gathered. On a morning last week one resident found two dozen “empties” in the tramway waiting shed in the reserve.

Cables for Soldiers, The Postmaster-General, Mr. Webb, stated on Tuesday that the response to the appeal for an early lodgment' of cablegrams for soldiers .overseas had been gratifying. Since Monday of last week the number of such messages lodged was approximately 60,000. Such a volume of traffic was unprecedented in the history of the cable station in Auckland, and because the Government and ordinary commercial traffic had been particularly heavy during the .last few weeks, the cable circuits owned and operated by Cable and Wireless Limited were heavily congested. Special arrangements were however, being made by the cable company to cope with the position, but with such a huge number of messages to transmit over circuits already heavily congested some delay must be expected in the disposal of the cheaprate messages.

Slovenly Hand Signalling. “Many outstanding instances have been noted lately of slovenly handsignalling by drivers, men as well as women. The necessity of a clearlygiven code of signals cannot be overemphasised,” says the latest road safety message of the Automobile Association (Wellington). “Curiously enough, though drivers are sufficiently thoughtful to give hand-signals of change of direction, a large percentage has a strange interpretation of the rules. Obviously, such drivers have never learned to give proper signals. “Drivers thrust an arm out, the fist, cosed; or they point with one finger to the roadway; they let a hand dangle over the window-ledge, or they let. an arm 101 l out of the window and wave about bke that of a marionette. Such signals are certainly some sort of a warning for the following or approaching driver, but they are not helpful, interpretative signals such as one driver expects of another.