BETTING PROFITS

NZ Truth, Issue 1062, 1 April 1926, Page 1

BETTING PROFITS

_ ♦ Bookmakers' Fortunes STARTLING FIGURES (From "Truth's" Special London Kep.) According to the latest statistics, there are at present m the United Kingdom over .16,000 bookmakers and 36,000 betting clerks, runners and touts. .' Care n Peter Green, of Manchester (who was once mentioned for an Australian Gishopric) is a doughty fighter on the anti-betting side. He has prepared for the. "Spectator" an investigatory article endeavoring to arrive by a process of deduction and elimination at a reasonably correct tabulation of the figures relating to betting m England. It is not necessary to go into the details he quotes, which are mostly from some authorized evidence before a commission or some "reliable departmental source. His conclusions, however, are interesting. The gross turnover of money , spert m betting is, he calculates, between £355,000.000 and £479,---000,000, and he "proves" this ; amazing total by checking it with the New Zealand figure for tote ",; betting, which, he has been told, amount to. 11 millions for a popu- . lation of I/4 millions. ; . On this turnover the total gross profits of bookmakers are put down at 240 million pounds and the net profits at about eight million pounds. Again he proves the total by using the results of his own experiments m betting — which were, of course, theoretical only and based on starting prices.. Those results showed him that the bookmakers' gross profits were to his gross turnover as 5 to 7, and this figure is again borne out by the evidence given before the betting commission m 1923. . The -methods of arriving at this i*esult were quite distinct, which makes it all the more striking. Therefore /Canon Green maintains that even taking the lowest totals quoted above, the bookmakers' turnover ' is round abo,ut £255.000,000, his gross profits £250-000,000 and his net. profits £9,000,000, with the well-founded assumption that m every one of the three cases the real figure is i very much higher.

which were rent-producing: and m a good state, of repair — it was thought necessary to erect an entrance way befitting the park improvements, and fit the same time perhaps commemorate the brilliant mental and .financial attainments of the City Council. ONLY COST £1200! Sir James ; Gunson, whose architectural abilities' are well known, took the difficult problem into his own versatile hands. .■.••.• > He submitted, several plans to ,i! the city engineer. The present archway must have been .the one considered most suitable, as it was selected by the engineer and iluly perpetrated. No- estimate of cost was prepared or furnished. :. With money to burn— public money at that — there was no necessity for such trivialities to be considered. The work went ahead, to be, m time — day labor — finally completed m all. its massive grandeur, its walls three/ feet eight inches thick. To discover the cost of this massive masterpiece was not easy, but it has at last been ascertained that it only cost the trivial sum of £1200.

I The location is good, the caretaker all that human nature can demand. But when it comes to the matter of the changing facilities they are more than scandalous. ■■ Cubicles are unwise and unnecessary; but that is no reason why the floors should not be of a decent composition; the walls and roof — corru#gated iron — urilined, reflect the heat, making- the. men's changing: shed nothing but a sweat-house, and even a shower nozzle absent three weeks ago was still absent last week. ■ This is mentioned by way of a comparison. On the one hand there is a wanton throwing away of public money on an entirely unnecessary and hideous structure, while on. the other hand there is a. money- making enterprise ciying out to have a bit of cash spent en it for long-needed improvements to which the Council ' are apparently "stone" blind. All that is needed to make the Gunson Arch a perpetual artistic" asset to the city it decorates is a tablet inscribed with the name and, title of Sin James Gunson, the designer, and commending to posterity those who sanctioned the g00.4, work. "WE THINK I IN ,STONE.'^ .