From the South China Morning Post this week in 1959 The Salaries Commission said it was unable to formulate any principle to support equal pay for women and recommended that they should receive 75 per cent of the revised total pay for male grades. Among its other recommendations was the abolition of cost of living allowances except for labourers and artisans. Its overall recommendation was for government pay to go up by about 10 per cent, backdated to July 1. A New Zealand MP, Warren Freer, suggested that the commerce ministers of New Zealand, Australia and Canada should meet in Hong Kong to discuss establishing industries to give jobs to refugees from China. He said the three Commonwealth countries should take some of the burden for the refugees off Britain. The American government prohibited Hong Kong businessman Stanley Ho Hung-sun from handling any US exports following allegations that he illegally shipped American goods from West Germany to China. The US Commerce Department's order also applied to Mr Ho's Macau export-import firm, Agencia Comercial Progresso. It said Mr Ho purchased from Peter Meyns and Co. of Hamburg three lots of American gilsonite, and that Mr Meyns had shipped the gilsonite to China on Mr Ho's instructions. Flower growers in the US gave Hong Kong plastic flower manufacturers a scare when they began agitating for government action to limit imports from the colony. Hong Kong supplied about 10 per cent of all artificial flowers imported into the US. Japan supplied about 70 per cent. A housewife was jailed for three months for wounding her eight-year-old daughter by cutting off part of the child's right little finger. She said the girl had stolen $20 from her. She took the child to hospital for treatment and told the doctor the finger had been accidentally cut by an iron wheel. She was arrested when her husband reported to the authorities that she had cut off the tip of the child's finger as punishment for stealing. Another wife got even with her husband by burning his car, which had been bought with money he obtained by taking some of her gold ornaments. She was bound over for 12 months. A Macau woman's business of bringing children into Hong Kong by pretending they were her own came to an abrupt end when she was jailed for one day for the offence and for forging a Hong Kong re-entry permit. She was ordered to be sent back to Macau. The defendant admitted she had brought six children into the colony since June and was paid $5 or $10 a time. The border village of Shataukok was to get a modern dispensary with a six-bed maternity ward sometime towards the end of January. The new two-storey building was to replace the existing dispensary, which had been operating in a Nissen hut since the war. The US air force said a B-52G jet bomber had flown more than 20,920km nonstop over every state capital in continental US and Alaska - 49 in all. The eight-engine bomber left Edwards Air Force Base in California and completed the trip in 28 hours, with one mid-air refuelling. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union claimed a new speed record for its TU-104B aircraft. TASS news agency reported that one of the planes, carrying a 15-tonne payload, flew a 1,000km closed course from Moscow to Orsha in Belarus and back in 59 minutes at an average speed of 1,015.86km/h. An animal-lover was assured that his complaint about dirty water in the Mandarin Duck compound in a Lai Chi Kok garden would be promptly seen to. However, the correspondent added: 'It must be remembered that muddy water is not necessarily distasteful to 'Donald'.'
