The Government never can do anything right. Having at last been hustled into creating a Ministry of Supply, it is denounced for putting Mr. Leslie Burgin in charge instead of bringing in some keen business man, and for limiting the supply to hat of the Army only. Mr. Burgin is said to be a learned lawyer and a good linguist: it will be remembered how he electrified the Japan Society by addressing them at this year's annual banquet in Japanese.
He has done nothing as Minister of Transport. But then nobody can, because there are only two transport problems—wider roads for which we haven't the money. and how to prevent motorists from killing each other, which everyone knows is impossible.
After all the alarums of the European crisis it is quite refreshing to find Parliament settling down to a piece of social legislation such as the Building Societies' Bill. Dry as it sounds, the question is one of immense interest to millions of people.
Building Societies are curiously named, for they are strictly for-hidden to do any building and it was commonly believed that they might only take for their security the house on which money was lent. The best societies, like the Halifax and Abbey Road, would not advance more than 70 per cent. of the price of a house: hey inspect it carefully and the fact that they would lend on it was regarded as an implicit guarantee of its quality.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.