page 11

Pettipoint

"Passengers are requested not to present the larger sized prams for conveyance on buses, owing to the limited facilities available." You're quite right—it is governmentese. Nzr actually. One can imagine a little grey man in a little grey office thinking, thinking, and lo! Setting his thoughts on paper, after sharpening his quill. Lovely, sonorous phrases to fool the masses. Does anyone know what it means?

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I Am Told that Mr. Holyoake states that there is one known Communist amongst New Zealand university students. Let him be hunted down! I cry, let him be found out and with all due ceremony horribly photographed. We can't have people like that in our midst — the public might think we are all that way inclined. It's only a matter of time before they draw their conclusions from the presence of the odd Moslem, anarchist, Jew, Roman Catholic, homosexual, lawyer, Christian, cynical columnist or biter of fingernails.

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I Think that rather a lot of fuss is made about 'tickets" in student elections. It seems to assume that those nominated or supported by the president will necessarily be swayed by his line of thinking all year. Quite ridiculous—not everyone wants to follow the vice-president.

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This Column is mildly amused at the cyclostyled publication circulating Vuw. Sulient or something—it seems to have certain resemblances to a pirate Newssheet last year. Although the wit is of rather lesser quality in my opinion, but who am I to Judge? I wish they wouldn't try to copy my style though, as they did in one recent paragraph. The English language is in enough trouble as it is.

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It's Rather a laugh, really, the way that They have not yet realised that the purpose of this column is to transmit information on relevant topics to the Security Intelligence. In code of course. Mind you, the said Service has as yet been unable to break the code. Between you and me it's called "English Language." Heh Heh—cunning, eh?

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Progressing down The Terrace, as is my apt, I chanced upon a parking building or two and ruminated thereupon. Have you them also adjudged of late? There is the one constructed by Private Enterprise (worship, worship, genuflect) and the other erected by Local Body Politics (sneer, sneer, spit). The former is a pile of lumps of grey concrete, big solid thick lumps, heavy, even, and regular. The latter is of slim, tapering platforms, edged in tubular steel, with a pleasing and reasonably imaginative entrance. We await with interest the completion of the Boulcott Street office block.

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I See that one can now obtain an Efficiency Decoration after so many years of good and loyal service to the Territorial Forces of our native land. But it can be withdrawn, I read, for "disgraceful conduct of an unnatural kind." Thinking?