London, Nov. 15.
The Air Ministry announces that the Royal Air Club has been officially informed that the altitude flight of Flight-Lieutenant M. J. Adam, of the Royal Air Force, in June last, in a Bristol 138 monoplane with a special Bristol Pegasus engine, has been homologated by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale as a world height record in Class C. The official figure is 16440 metres, or 53.937 fect.—Wireless through Reuter, sound, The accusation that they are insanitary is adequately disproved by the extremely healthy appearance of the inmates. If they don't win it will be a shame. If they do, one foresees Sir Kingsley Wood giving teas to deputations from all over England.
The trouble is that the Town Planning Act, like many other well-meaning legislation, is capable of the worst results. It puts in the hands of local authorities powers which they certainly needed, but allows too much scope for eccentricities to which local authorities are singularly prone. Much is being destroyed which might well be kept, and sometimes vice versa, and new buildings are thrust upon old surroundings with little regard for the congruity of their appearance. Part of the trouble is that local government in England generally looked down upon as a second-rate job which rarely attracts the best brains,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.