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Wodin's Diary

It is interesting to see that apparently Mr. Slacke, the Mayor of Upper Hutt. has got away with a cavalier disregard for popular pressure. Even the last minute personal interventions of the Governor-General and the Prime Minister failed to halt this petty tyrant. Minor bureaucrats have this unfortunate inability. usually, to appreciate beauty other than that of orderly sterile chrome. Recently our Citizens team stood on a platform of the "beautifying Council". Given a cow paddock like Anderson Park (formerly used by American soldiers and Circus elephants) they certainly succeeded in making a neat and attractive job. But there are many places round the city once graced with shaggy trees, or native scrub which now stand unhappily denuded. The latest slaughter is the chopping of all the macrocarpas and pines around the Salamanca Tennis Courts. Unfortunately citizens only get aroused when an historic monument is to be wiped: although with little success. It is time to stand up for our remaining trees of any type, and above all to prevent the rapid elimination of the town belt.

I quoted to a woman sympathetic to Christian Science our local organisation's narrow-minded constitution. Her reply wat: "What a pity—because really, you know, they've got something." These people don't realise the harm they do themselves by clouding their ideas with minor issues.

At Primary school we treated the sexes quite naturally as equal. Our House Captains were drawn indiscriminately from either sex. I remember that in my last year there were actually three girl captains and only one boy. Yet amongst the same people 10 years later such an arrangement would be unthinkable. For example, in the Students Association, a female President or Secretary is almost totally unknown, and a woman standing faces a great deal of prejudice. It was even the practice to consider the Woman's Vice-President as inferior in standing to the Men's Vice-President. Where does this inferiority complex creep, in? Is it something to do with our later education, and could the system of segregated schools encourage a suspicion of the weaker sex on one hand, and of being the weaker sex on the other? Obviously it is in our schools that the solution lies.

Bertrand Russell in his outstanding book "Power, a new social analysis" points out that the suspected criminal has the whole power of the state against him. He suggests that the answer is a Public Defender and a defending as well as a prosecuting police. Only thus surely, can we curb the constant tendency towards miscarriages of justice when the police as a matter of prestige may go to great, and often horrifying lengths, to obtain a conviction.

"Salient" Editorial Committee has appointed Mr. J. T. Steiner as Sports Editor. Mr. Steiner succeeds Mr. J. Martin, who resigned on his election to the Executive.

It is sixteen years since V.U.C. won Joynt Scroll—the national university debating prize. This year's team is G. N. Cruden and E. W. Thomas. With their amount of experience and ability, we ought to be able to regain our lost pre-eminence.