1951-04-06 — Page 4

THE CHINA MAIL, FRIDAY, APRIL, 6, 1951.

BRAATHENS THE GIANT PRINCESS

Experiments in the air-from a £1 trick to £9,000,000 showball COLD AIR IS

the SAFE

WAY

to Europe!

HONGKONG

OSLO via AMSTERDAM BOOKINGS ACCEPTED FOR ALL EUROPS

Braathens S.A.F.E. Airtransport A/5

FLIGHTS EVERY FRIDAY, 9 A.M. EVERY SECOND FRIDAY IN CONJUNCTION WITH CPA

Book Famages & Freight Through Your Travət Agent de

Agents:

WALLEM & COMPANY LIMITED. Hongkong & Shanghai Bank Bullding

Tel: 38041-5

wee

S. A

1. C.

ONLY SAC OPERATES TO PENANG

Leaving Hongkong

Every Tuesday

Every Wednesday

Overnight stop at Bangkok

Arriving Penang

General Agents:

SOUTH EAST ASIA TRADING CO.,” (SIAM) LTD. 69 Connaught Road, West. Tel: 24292 Peninsula Hotel, Kowloon.

Booking Agents:

Tel: 56416

AUW PIT SENG'S TRADING CO., LTD.

10. Pedder Street, Tel: 26733

CHIANG HUAT HONG

340 Queen's Road, West, Tel: 36204

LUNCIL, DINE & DANCE

at the

Cock & Pullet

70 Duddell St, off Queens Rd. Ct. -Phone: 28252

Dine and dance in air-conditioned comfort

Wines and Dears to suit all palates and pockets

European Chinese and a speciality) Russian, dishes

Dance Music nightly by Eddie Sauza and his quartet 8 p.m. 1o 12.30 a.m.

V. Narlind: Mankper

Less than

Life Membership !$200.

MAY NEVER FLY

By Air Reporter PAUL RICHEY

THE British Government, is thinking of scrapping the giant Princess flying- boat—a. £9,000,000 aircraft-building experiment which has snow-balled-in-cost

to be second only to the £12,000,000 Bristol Brabazon land monster.

A Ministry of Supply spokesman said that the case

of the Princess Saunders-Roc's S.R. 45-is "under

active consideration.”

The Princess shorter but heavier than the Braba- zon, which is being aban- doned

commercial

a8

aircraft-was designed to have a wing-opan of 220 ft., to weigh 140_tons, and to carry 100 passengers across the Atlantic at 360 miles an hour.

Three were ordered by the Ministry of Supply for : British Overseas Air- ways Corporation in 1946. Estimated cost

Was £2,800,000. Delivery date: 1951.

A year later the cost rose to £4,500,000-without en- gines.

the

Development of original engines had stop- #ped and work started

on new ones. And this Was said to have cut the Prin- cess'a range so that it could not cross the Atlantic.

T

One of thrig

At that time BOAC ad- vised the Ministry of Civil Aviation to cancel the whole project.

wirtsc

Cookin

The dream- on paper

Cinema

THE PRINCESS Designed for 100 pas sengers with cock- tall-bar, otnema lounge, dining saloom

came BOAC's worry again per aircraft-many senior because it absorbed BSAA. executives are worried that And early last year the Government is push- estimated costs rose to ing ап untried, un- £9,000,000 and delivery economical, and com-

to them.

WAGES GUIDE IN OIL TOWN

A

By KENNETH MACAULAY

$ the pinne drives swimming pools, libraries, -through ̈ ̈ ̈ ̈ ̈ ̈ sky schools, and ધ farm, all almost bleached of company-owned and run. its blue there is a glint far away of silver.

In a

few moments the glint spreads out and be comes a shimmering city, The traveller is arriving at Abadan.

Who Imports the English beer and cigarettes for the community's social contre, the Gymkhana Club? The company,

Who keeps the prices from soaring to 10s, a bot- Every part of the great tle or 7a. 6d. a packet?! oil refinery, with its farms The oil company.

of enormous steel storage They built the town's tanks, is painted in glis- two cinemas, outdoor for tening, unstained alumi- summer and indoor for nium to throw off the sun's winter, and import the heat.

films for them. There is a Here on this flat mud daily newspaper (fun by island created from the the company)... prehistoric silt of the Tigris and the Euphrates

is the oil capital of the world.

Air-cooled

nre,

of course,

but

of

SOCIAL distinctions there The soil is Persian, but every **stick and stone they are out of this world But Air Vice-Marshal date was put back to 1953. paratively slow aircraft on there, every nut, bolt, and of Mayfair and Suburbia. Donald Bennett, chief of

pipe, is the property of the It is not a matter British South American One plane is now more

British-owned Anglo-Iranian high-powered. flashy Airways, offered to take than half finished, the And the future of Oil Company.

American cars, for the the aircraft over if seven second is started, but flying-bonts is doubtful.

Two thousand Europeans company owns, almost all were bullt and the there is nothing to show

and their families live in the cars in Abadan, large, Ministry

paid for any for the third.

this town of wide asphalt and small, maintains them operating losses.

Although the cost to

ed roads, good houses or and supplies petrol So work went on. But BOAC has been pegged

bungalow flats with every chauffeurs too. Anyone can amenity that the paterna- tish) at almost any time have' a car (they are Bri- in 1948 the Princess be- at £2,100,000— £700,000

lism of the oil company can provide.

.

All big world airlines have abandoned them. Most de-

signers think they are not as good as land planes.

(London Express Service)

MORRISON'S MUDLARK

of

has

HE sea

which nearly A pounds to

for the Festival

TODAY

by SIDNEY RODIN

&

ON

MAY 3?

and

by ringing up the trans-

For the oil company is port pool.

Abadan. Almost every soul There is never any oč-

here, Persian or European, casion for mink and is in the company's

vice.

Life bearable

spent

THE management

some

ser-

dia- mond tiaras, and the com-

pany would not stand for the snobbery, of private swimming pools.

So in a town where everyone has has servants and nanny, i the only" social

necessary, of its distinction left is air-condition- millions trying to make

ing. The ell man's, wife who life bearable for the people can boast she gets so many it has recruited to supply temperature every 24 hours has

tons of air cooled to such refine, sell, and ship oil and got somewhere In Abadan's its products from this blis- social hierarchy. tered place.

Outside Abadan. there is nothing, nowhere to go, nothing to see.

Lesser folk have to put up with fewer tons of conditioned cooled living room and

air-a

bedroom perhaps

The lowest stratum of social

From the guard on the life-the "frst contract man" refinery gate who makes who is almost invariably single

sure that the visitor gives the company has to do the best and serving his first term with

up his matches or lighter he can with an electric fan in a.

to the top executive, chief bungalow flat.

engineer or chemist, every

man-jack finds that every

Coveted

of

facet of his life becomes TIGHT, compact and organised inevitably the concern of

is the community the company and in

Abadan, where the penalty for some moral or gross professional de- degree under its control. linquency is a ticket on the first His house is company- plane back to the United King- owned, Only the company domn.,

This is the city the Persians. could get grass to grow on covet as much as the oil that his lawns and afford to flows silently into it from the keep it watered for 24 hours a day in the hot weather.

for mainly an Arcadian para-

dise that perhaps Mr Mor- All laid on rison wants to perpetuate in real. life.

mud more night gangs, trade months of pleasure added union agreements to work Londoners. million longer overtime, and the bill good response by the men

Not far away they have

the ABADAN is only Gardens for a final sustained spurt inserted the last stitches in

place in Persia where last con- that may net them up to the biggest tent in the

Listen to Mr James one dare drink the water £20 a week.

world-the rust and canary Gardner, the head designer, that comes out of the tap.

It is company's water. Once it flowed over 15

Laid on, like the water, Yet it is still depressing yellow 60ft. high "lamp interpreting the dream as takes shape around acres, covering half the to tour the site as I did in shade" to go atop of the it

are the house servants and open-air dance floor..

a laundry service, shops,

at Battersea is at quered.

Bite.

gum boots. It bogged down the dis-

They have been flounder-. pirited

army of 1,700 ing there since March last workmen for monthe. Not year, but the general Im- a building could be finish- pression persista of forests

ed.

Mr Morrison's hopes

and fun would arise. ·

that

drinking Irish labourers.

Sideshows

him:-

"We are creating a pic- turesque city of beauty and gaiety which will make are people believe they are in are another State-not Britain,

any place they of.

can think

The 37,000 tulips of scaffolding, thousands of planted, and sparrowe And it almost drowned unopened drums of paint, already nesting in the certainly not Battersea, not

disconnected pipes, endless Britain's city of fantasy leading nowhere-and tea-

festoons of coiled-up wire ornamental trees.

A hundred of Britain's most expert showmen

"It will be are

A three- standing by with their 130 dimensional stage in which sideshows and rides, two ordinary people will walk tankers were kept going

imported on special licence and live. day and night defying the

hut from America, one from In the centre is a rain and sucking up lakes occupied by the committee Germany. of sludge.

of 65 shop stowords.

But now only two acres

5 cents a day of mud remain.. Road

will not be missed by many thousands of residents in this Colony,

'65 committee'

Please remember that the muccess of the Annual Appeal of Whole streets of blitzed Among them are those who

"One plazza, for instance, will be the market square

Every novelty is at of a fairy town. The boat- The Hongkong Society for the London houses were hurled have ordered the petty hand, even a flying saucer, ing pool will be like an old Protection of Children depends into the morass as five-foot strikes and restricted

to delight the fun-seeker- English harbour. the

every novelty, that is, ex- deep rubble.

cept a Fat Lady.

YOU taking a kindly Interest by sending $15 to

THE

Photo finish

amount of overtime.

It was the shop stewards who invited A party of Soviet women over the site Overtime rates HONORARY TREASURERS peated bonuses which have bouquet.

and re- and presented them with a

workmen's shot up the wages to an average of £10

H.K.S.P.C.

G.P,O. BOX 2502..

There le so much to be done

for so many mother and babies.

But Mr Morrison can for a Boven-day, week. take heart. Hundreds more people have prefabricated speeded the attack.

his dreamland in thousands

It has continued over of sections away from the

'Nell Gwynns'

Big Berta from Switzer- land, who weighs 42st. Bib.,. "One of the beer gardens offered to come over, but will be nostalgically Edwar Festival Gardens Ltd. said dian. There are avenues of "No. She wouldn't last.

shops shaped like an old our rations."

tea caddy.

In Arcadia

on

"There will be wander Ing minstrels, Nell Gwynns, selling oranges, pretty

Please

ase support this year's appeal and paths may be finished be clad overnight to form some of their money back Old Lavender

Easter so that all roads mud. Skeleton frames can Taxpayers "may got girls in periód dross crying

(Membership subscription. 115. per annua)

PALACE RUG

Specialist in manufacturing all kinds of rugs. delivery of orders: Wholesale & retall

itors always, welcom

Prompt lowest

Shai Trul District);

in timo.

gay towers and pinnacles at the candy-striped booths For only four weeks re- and palaces.

all the prizes must be "And at night the place "no will glow with the finest main before the opening on Out of his mudlark that copper watchon passed off coloured iluminations over

of "good 'design" 'and [May 8, and still not one

has rocketed in coat from as gold timepieces."

seen in this country. building is ready?

How the original £770,000 (08-print wh Festival' chiots may it timated loss 4100,000) to But the gardens will be P.S.:. All this fun, woa- will be a photo finish - 42,500,000 (estimated loss only one fifth amusement ther permitting.

en reasonable weather, E1,500,000) – will come six park they will in

wells 130 miles away,

Men have given a lifetime to making the mud flats of the oil capital habitable.

And no finer example of the British organising gentus is to be found

The

let the world.

who organis--

festo In every letter box in ed the appearance of their mani- Abadan a few months ago are waiting for their chance.

They want to take the world's oil capital over-and they reckon that everything would go on as smoothly as before.

~(London. Express. Service)

from No.17 CHATER ROAD

ANYWHERE!

to

NOW!

for your EXTRA convenience

Via...

| hrough our newly opened. "downtown" branch, booking office, at 17′′ Ckatap Road conveniently near the Des Vosur Road pedestrian crossing — you, qay make reservations by any of the many services wh- represent, to all parts of the world."

CHINA NAVIGATION CG AUSTRACJAT HORIENTAL UN

UNNE LINGE MI. AIPWAE

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