POOL BETTING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23669, 29 November 1938, Page 10

POOL BETTING

CHURCHMEN DISAGREE <From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON, Nov. 7. By seeing '* no harm" in a man '• allowing himself a weekly flutter for a stake he can afford without detriment," the Bishop of Liverpool (Dr A. A. David) has drawn upon himself the condemnation of the Rural Dean of Salford (Canon Peter Green) Dr David, addressing Worcester Diocesan Conference, advocated that pools be licensed, and that a levy on stake money be used for the provision of playing fields and other social amenities. Canon Green said the church's attitude towards betting had been surrounded by a moral mist, but the words of the Bishop of Liverpool had changed it into a dense moral fog. " I cannot imagine anything more deplorable than that the opinion expressed by the Bishop of Liverpool should go out as the opinion of the church." He knew one youth who lost 37s in one week, and whose mother, a poor widow, had to pawn half the things in the house in consequence, In a post office he had seen a man out of work sending a postal order for 3s 6d to a pool, and a woman who always begged from him and whose children were permanently undernourished sending one for 3s. "The truth is, as any probation officer will tell you, that in many cases children are under-nourished and wives go short. In addition, the pools lead to continual attempts at fraud " Some years ago the Bishop ot Liverpool used the argument thai it would not be considered wrong, as many excellent people lid it without any sense of doing wrong I could have wept. It is a really dreadful thing that a man in the bishop's position should talk on moral questions and neglect the first element in moral teaching " Canon Green moved a resolution which condemned football pools as " mischievous both to the community and the individual," and he expressed the hope that the Government would take action against them by way of prohibition or restrictions. He called on church people to help to "rid the community of this menace." The resolution was carried.