N.Z. PASTIMES

Wanganui Chronicle, 6 May 1947, Page 4

N.Z. PASTIMES

GAMBLING AND DRINKING WANGANUI REPLIES TO VISITOR’S CRITICISM “The football pools of England are the answer to him,” declared a V/anganui resident recently returned from England, in commenting on a statement. made in Wanganui yesterday by a former Lord Mayor of London (Sir Harry Twyford). Sir Harry had gone on record with a statement that New Zealand workers displayed insufficient interest in their employment and appeared to live solely for amusement. "Why, I believe here they teach children football when they are only six years of age,” Sir Harry said. However, lie did not altogether deciy the attention paid to sport because he liked sport, but mentioned that gambling on horse racing and the consumption of beer appeared among the chief interests of New Zealanders. Sir Harry had other more trenchant criticisms of the attitude of the New Zealander to work, but these were ’off the record.” The former Lord Mayor made it plain that while he condemned the general attitude to work within the Dominion, he thought New Zealand a fine country. "In England you don’t see the five o’clock to six o’clock drinking you do in this country,” the Wanganui man said, adding that in Britain the men went straight home from work, but went out later in the evening for more leisurely drinking than is possible in New Zealand. Another Wanganui serviceman, wiio spent some time in the British Isles, said drinking was no heavier* in this country than in England. One village he visited had 16 hotels to satisfy the wants of its 4000 inhabitants. Horse racing was not so popular in England, proportionate to population, but greyhound racing in the Old Country was on a scale almost beyond the imagination of the average New Zealander.