31 JANUARY 1947, Page 15

THE MIS-USE OF MAN-POWER

SIR,—Mr. St. John Ervine is not the only reader of The Spectator to be perplexed at the lunatic aspects of our man-power shortage problem. In a recent B.B.C. broadcast it. was stated that 12,000 girls (my italics) were employed M checking football-pool coupons by one firm alone (again my italics). Altogether, I believe, an army of no fewer than 300,000 men and women are now employed in the betting business! The popular Press do their bit by publishing photographs of winners of vast sums. It would he superfluous, not to say ironic, to point the obvious moral. Mean- while, we, as a nation, are short of everything except universal frustration