Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 17 November 1938, Page 6

Timely Topics

“There are about a dozen Football Pools—excluding obscure little affairs,” writes Mr Aylmer Vallance in the “Evening BRITAIN'S NEWEST Standard.” GAMBLING CRAZE. “Their original capital invest-

ment was trifling. In the coming thirty-two weeks’ football season their gross takings from the public will be of the order of £45,000,000. Ox these receipts the first charge is the promoters’ rake-off—s per cent, say, £2,250,000. The next is the expenses of operation—circularising, advertising, sorting and checking coupons. On the generally accepted estimate of a 15 per cent ratio, this is unlikely to be less than £6,750,000, which leaves £36,000,000 to be distributed among prize-winners. On the economic effects of this redistribution of wealth I am not competent to pronounce. The winners of the more | substantial prizes may swell the demand for motor cars or houses. Cer- | tainly the many millions of losers cur- | tail to some extent their expenditure |on other forms of entertainment; and 1 1 suspect that retail traders are hit by \ diversion of working-class wages into ? this nation-wide lottery. What seems [to me to be plain common sense is [that 'a tiny ring of promoters should not be allowed to handle every year without public scrutiny, £45,000,000 of money subscribed by the public.”

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“France’s Prime Minister,” says the “Irish Times,” “pointed with telling effeect to the hours worked by the people of totaliPLAYING WHILE tarian States, and OTHERS WORK, he laid expressive emphasis on ti»e fact that even in those countries which had democratic or collective Governments there has been no desire to follow the lead given by France. When one’s next-door neighbours devote all their days, with energetic enthusiasm, to preparations for war, it is difficult to continue taking sun-baths in the garden. Yet that is precisely what France has been doing during the past two years. People in the houses of the European terrace are under conscript terms in peace-time, obeying the strictest military orders, tightening their belts so that food may be conserved and trade restricted. A single house in the terrace cannot continue indefinitely to retain its high standard of living and at the same time reduce its contribution to the national pool.”