THE CHINA MAIL, JUNE 1, 1939
News Snack Bar
TEMPERS LOST BY HARD SEATS
Hard! That adjective is constantly in the minds
of London's telephone operators. {
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It does not describe their job, but the seats
they're given to sit on.
SCIENCE ARMY FOR DEFENCE
Vital now link in National -Ser- vico is an "Army of Scientists" which is now being enrolled.
Highly-skilled scientists and ex- pert technicians who have not al- ready been placed on the list of reserved occupations are being called up to join this new service to make Britain strong against foreign aggression,
Application forms have been sent to hundreds of scientists and techicians în universities and pro- fessional institutions.
These will be dealt with by a special scientific research com- mittee which has been appointed by the Ministry of Labour.
This committee will make lists of the men available and the tasks which they may be allotted in time of emergency.
BIG DROP IN METHS' ARRESTS
So telephonist Doris Curnow told Post Office workers in conference at Blackpool that an operator's short temper is probably the result of chair discomfort.
She even suggested that a panel of telephonists should be set up to try out and report on telephon- ists' chairs.
Another operator, Miss Wini- fred Greggains, complained that mechanisation had lowered rather than improved the standard of senior telephonists because it had lowered down promotion. "After all," she added, "twenty-five years is a long time in the same position, and you do hope to enjoy a little bit of jam before you are too old to ap- preciate it.'
HUNTED FLEA FOR 20 YEARS
Professor Anderson Hubbard, of Pacific University, Oregon, has just ended a twenty-year hunt for a flea. Jubilantly he pulled this flea-male, hairy and oval-bodied-from the back of a mountain beaver. In 1919 Substantial decline in the num- and was unable to find any classi- he found a female flea on a beaver, ber of arrests in Scotland for fication of its peculiar type. So he drunkenness believed to be due to started a "never-say-die” hunt for a methylated spirits has followed the male of the species. He threw a coming into operation of the Methy party to signal his success. lated Spirits Sale Act at the begin- ning of last year. From May October 31 last, 297 persons were
to
-accused of the offence, compared 'PLANE BUILT IN 38 DAYS
with 1,243 persons in the corres- ponding six months of 1937.
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