"FOOTBALL POOL PROBLEMS"
sm,—may I join with your correspondent of last week in thanking you for the courageous and forthright article on football pool problems? It has indeed focused the spotlight on a grievous national problem—one that must be faced and resolved if we are to retrieve the economic situa- tion at home or create the conviction abroad that we are in dead earnest about it. Never before have the yearly statistics published from this office been more revealing, and never before have they been set in a more menacing context. On the one hand is our national indebtedness and the need expressed in Sir Harold Mackintosh's recent appeal to the nation to raise £360,000,000 in national savings by the end of April. On the other hand is the amount spent on gambling in all its forms. In 1945, the last year for which we have the complete figures, the expenditure was £600,000,000. The figures now nearing completion for 1946 indicate another staggering increase. We already have the Totalisator figures, however, for the Greater London area, and they form a reliable pointer to the situation throughout the country, especially when compared with those of other years.
In 1938 the money spent
1n1944 33 • In 1945
In 1946 These figures speak for themselves, and represent but a fraction of the grand total spent on gambling. They are also a reminder of the statistical research both in money and manpower done year by year by the Churches' Committee on Gambling. It has been in the main the work of my pre- decessor, the late Rev. Allan Job, whose achievement, establishing as it has done the reputation of the committee as a statistical authority, should be put on record. Whilst, therefore, we shall welcome the results of the " survey " being undertaken by your correspondent, it will hardly "for the first time" place on record the statistics of commercialised gambling. We shall need all the facts and figures if the extent of this national gambling epidemic is to be brought home both to people and Parlia-
31
through the Tote was £22,593,525
„ ” 33 £33,443,243 31 33 3/ £69,452,094
£103,376,843 (Secretary, The Churches' Committee on Gambling). 215 Abbey House, S.W. 1.
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