NEWS AND NOTES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 May 1938, Page 9

NEWS AND NOTES

VARIOUS ITEMS OF INTEREST. Fiordland Praised. Cruising round the world with some 250 moneyed and leisured passengers, the 20,000-ton Cunard-White Star liner Franconia called at Wellington recently. Although they had visited, in the course of four months, beautiful West Indian islands, South America and Africa, Madagascar; India, and colourful Eastern ports, the majority of her tourists seemed agreed that their visit to George and Milford Sounds was so far the highlight of the cruise; nowhere else had they encountered such wild or magnificent scenery, they said. The liner put in to George Sound in clear and still weather. She proceeded well up toward the head of the sound, but did not stop, and in the afternoon visited Milford Sound, turning close off the Government Hostel, without, of course, allowing any of the tourists to go ashore. “We were astonished that such a big ship could go so close' to the shore; but she seemed quite, dwarfed by the magnitude of the scenery, which made one feel as insignificant as an insect,” said one woman.

Separate Legal Codes. Formerly Sheriff-Principal of Lanarkshire, Scotland, Mr John S. Mercer, K.C., who was a visitor to Wellington by the Franconia, drew attention to thq extraordinary anomaly whereby entirely different laws govern Scotland and England. “The conservative Scots at the time of the Union stipulated that they should be permitted to keep their own system of law,” he said. “It is a curious position. It is as if your North and South Islands had each a separate code of laws.” The two legal systems, he said, had remained entirely distinct. Although much of the commercial law and the statutory law was the same throughout England and Scotland, three-quarters of the Scots law which was not statutory was directly derived from the old Roman law. It had been imported into Scotland through Holland, long before the Union. In particular, the laws of heritable property and of family relationships were wholly different from anything in England. Home Building. “Home-seekers in Sydney have unprecedented opportunities to buy with a low deposit and on terms of easy repayment,” said Mr Edmund Anscombe, architect for the Centennial Exhibition, on his return from Sydney. “The greatest opportunity, of course, has been created by the Government’s cooperative building society scheme, but attractive terms are available also under various private builders’ schemes, through the Rural Bank, and under the home-purchase plans drawn up by several insurance companies. Under the Government scheme it is possible to start entirely without capital, and by making small weekly payments to be in a position within, say. four years to receive the cost of a home. In the meantime the weekly payments will have been accumulating compound interest at the rate of 5 per cent. “As an example, the Co-operative Building Advisory Committee points out that a young man of 19 may join a society, pay at the rate of 9s 6d a week and when he is 23 borrow enough to buy or build a home worth £825 without putting up any further cash deposit. He then pays off his home by instalments of about 25s a week, owning it outright when he is 40.”