LOCAL AND GENERAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 January 1943, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Army Reserve Transport. Members of No. 13 Company, Line of Communications, are reminded of the bivouac to be held tomorrow and on Sunday. Personnel will assemble in their home towns tomorrow afternoon as follows: —Pahiatua,-1.15; Eketahuna, 1.45 o’clock, Masterton 2.45 o’clock, Featherston, Martinborough and Carterton, 2 o'clock. Production Statistics. The obligation, imposed on commercial market gardeners to furnish statistics of production in accordance with the Vegetable Production Statistics Notice, 1942, gazetted last month, was referred to last evening by the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Barclay. Every occupier of a commercial garden of half an acre or over, or the occupier of a glasshouse and open land which toless than 2500 square feet, or the occupier of a commercial garden comprising a glasshouse and open land whcih together aggregate an area of half an acre or more (the area under glass being computed at the rate of 5000 square feet an acre), is directed by the notice to furnish to the Primary Industries Controller particulars of the crops at present under' cultivation and those crops to be planted before July 31 next.' The returns should include all vegetable crops with the exception of potatoes, and are required to be completed and posted by growers not later than February 1. “The statistics are considered essential in order that the Government may be in a position to know that adequate supplies are available for the armed forces as well as the civilian population,” said Mr Barclay. Coupon System for Clothing. Concern at the evasion of the coupon system for clothing by itinerant traders has resulted in drapers and clothiers throughout the Dominion compiling records of door-to-door salesmen and sending them to the Rationing Controller with the suggestion that some checking system should be introduced, said the secretary of the New Zealand Drapers’ Federation, Mr G. L. Riley, at Wellington yesterday. This is one of the topics to be discussed at the annual meeting of the federation early in March. Coupon returns were made each month to the controller in Wellington, but there was no check whether sales corresponded with the returns, he explained. The federation did not consider it fair that while the majority carried out their obligations, a few evaded them. Reference to the value of the rationing system was recently made by an official of the federation who said that with shipping and import restrictions few firms would have been left in business if the coupon system had not operated. Rationing had not hindered business at Christmas when sales had been records. Seacliffe Asylum’Fire. The Seacliffe fire commissison resumed at Dunedin yesterday and after further evidence adjourned till February 22. John Henry Tonkin, who planned the original manual fire-alarm system 30 years ago, said experience showed that rats could eat away all the insulation on the wires for a distance of two feet, in which case the inflammable rubber and casing of the wires could be left by rats beside the wire. It would only need two wires to be brought together when an arc would result sufficient to cause a fire. Chief Detective Holmes, in summarising the police investigation, said that at no time did anything arise to suggest that the cause of the fire was malice or neglect on anyone’s part. Many cruel rumours started in such cases and all such in the present case had been investigated and disproved. The chairman, Mr Bundle, sitting as coroner, found that all the victims were burnt to death. He extended his sympathy to their relatives.