GAMBLING IN BRITAIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27274, 28 December 1949, Page 7

GAMBLING IN BRITAIN

PHENOMENAL INCREASE ROYAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY A mixed team including intellectuals, trade unionists and sportsmen, dividing its time between hearing evidence at an elegant London West End mansion and visiting horse and dog race-tracks, is probing Britain’s gambling habits. From universities, boardrooms, trade union offices and the sporting world, the Government picked 11 men and two women last February to constitute a Royal Commission. Its task is to collect all available evidence on the growth in recent years of lotteries, betting and gaming and to recommend any changes in the betting laws, which it may consider desirable and P There has been a phenomenal increase in betting in this country since the war The national gambling turnover is estimated at somewhere near £1,000,000,000 a year. The money spent in betting on horses average two shillings a day for each household in the country. , , _ Politicians, religious leaders and overseas commentators have turned the spotlight on this gambling craze. Some have seen in it a sure sign of national decadence. Others believe it to be mass means of escape from the country's post-war difficulties and austerity. Suggestions have been made that the State should itself organise a national lottery. The idea would be to give the gambling public scope to satisfy its passion while at the same time giving the nation economic aid, but all lotteries are illegal here and the organised churches lead a body of thought which wish them to remain so. In most British homes, on one night in each week there is a “ pools session ” when members of the family get together to fill in their coupons. They forecast the results of a number of football matches to be played the following week-end, stake anything from one shilling upwards—and hope to wm prizes which have been as high as £60.000 to £70,000 in cash. One clergyman recently remarked that this “is about the only time when the old spirit of a family unity is achieved, these days.”—Reuter, London.