World’s largest dam opened

January 18: The Khartoum streets were beflagged and large crowds assembled to meet Lord and Lady Lloyd when the British High Commissioner in Egypt formally opened the Makwar Dam, the gigantic engineering feat designed to fertilise over 300,000 acres of desert between the Blue Nile and the White Nile.

The dam is a few miles north of Sennaar, on the Blue Nile. It cost £10,000,000, and the new agriculture was expected to provide much work for the Sudanese in the Gezira area. The area would be used for extensive cotton growing and, it is hoped, would also enable the area to become the granary of the Sudan.

County, power board poles apart

An accusation of scant courtesy in its treatment of the Waihemo County Council was refuted at yesterday’s meeting of the Otago Electric Power Board. The Waihemo County Council forwarded a resolution protesting against the scant courtesy of treatment by the Power Board in not advising the council that no poles were to be erected on the roadline through Mr Sheat’s property from Bushey Bridge onwards. The council complained that it received information from an outside source instead of direct from the board.

Mr P. Briscoe: "Where does this ‘scant courtesy’ come in?"

Mr Jaspar Clark (chairman): "That is what I would like to know."

Mr Briscoe: "They have received information from an outside source." 

 "The man in the street?" interjected the chairman.

Mr Briscoe continued that he failed to see in what manner the board had been guilty of scant courtesy in its treatment of the Waihemo Council. Mr A.P. Aldridge (managing engineer) said that he personally, objected to the suggestion of discourtesy. In previous letters regarding the erection of poles, the County Council had not made any definite complaint, and information only had been asked for. The council had mistaken the Post and Telegraph Department’s poles for those of the board. The council had barked up the wrong tree.

Mr Briscoe: "We should have told them that."

Kings of the road

Completed returns of the number of motor vehicles registered in New Zealand up to December 31 have now been supplied to the Minister of Internal Affairs and they show that there are 123,396 vehicles. This figure is comprised of:

North Island:  Cars - 49,815; Trucks, etc - 11,356; Cycles - 14,125. Total North Island vehicles = 75,296.

South Island:  Cars - 31,847; Trucks, etc - 5,039; Cycles - 11,214. Total South Island vehicles = 48,100.

Holiday budget revealed

A type-written document picked up in Oamaru contained an interesting summary of the investments made by one of the holiday trippers on Saturday (says the North Otago Times). "Fare (rail) 5s, six beers 3s, tram fare 3d, admittance 1s, lunch (pie, two sandwiches, and tea) 1s, scenic railway 1s, two side-shows 1s, tram fare 3d, admission 1s, two side-shows 1s, tram fare 3d, four beers 2s; total, £1." 

It is quite evident that this traveller was not a teetotaller, as he appears to have consumed 10 beers during the few hours he was in Dunedin.

Carded

ln America pedestrians who are reckless in crossing busy streets are known as "jay-walkers." In New York they are presented by the police with cards bearing the ominous figures of deaths due to motor vehicles.

Car heaters predicted

London, December 4: Sir Alan Burgoyne, MP, in a paper read before the Royal Society of Arts on the future of the motor car said that British cars must be developed on American lines and sold at competitive American prices. He held out hopes for even cheaper cars in the future and said that he knew of two firms with designs ready for a small four-cylinder car to sell in the region of £100. The car of the future, he said, would have interior heating and cooling and unsplinterable glass.

— by ODT London correspondent.

— ODT, 20.1.1926