Summer "Don'ts"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 500, 21 January 1949, Page 5

Summer "Don'ts"

the unpleasant duty of the Broadcasting Service to issue warnings against summer sins-driving too fast or too carelessly, lighting or leaving fires, indulging in acts of vandalism, strewing litter on beaches and picnic grounds, feeding and breeding flies." It is unpleasant because it makes the Service a kind of nagging parent without any of a parent’s resources in meeting complaints. But he is a bold listener who would say that it need not be done. The parent who refuses to nag may have a better technique; but the parent who does nothing at all gets the gratitude he deserves and the children he deserves. So does society. If we will behave like children we must be treated like children if that is the only way of checking our dangerous habits. There is certainly a limit beyond which nagging must not go-if nagging is permissible at all; but there is no present indication that it is safe to leave us to our own thoughtlessness. The alternative to verbal warnings is sharp, very sharp, penal visitations for every offence, and public opinion will perhaps come to that. But if we find it an affliction, as we so often do, to endure these wearisome "don'ts," the man who must listen to them is not nearly so tired of them as the men and women whose duty it is to repeat them. Nor is the limit beyond which they must not go so soon reached as the limit to human ingenuity in devising variations on them. It is easy enough to criticise the department, the station, the announcer whose "do this" and "don’t do that" bursts on us, or may burst on us, as often as we turn a knob; but it is not reasonable to complain of them unless we are aiding and abetting them when they are not talking at us. It is mere petulance to shoot the pianist if we demand music and have no substitute for him. And it is petulant to complain of the tedious repetition of fire warnings, driving warnings, and health warnings, unless we know of a better way of making the careless careful at this generally careless season of the year. If we must shoot, our target should not be the unfortunate announcer. summer it becomes