An Aside on Gambling
As I delete all the spam comments on my blog I note that most of them are for links to gambling sites. Interesting in the context of the debate in Parliament at present about the Gambling Bill.
Those of us, like myself, who are nervous about opening up the country to mega-casino developers fear the unscrupulous nature of these businesses. They make as much money as they can by playing to people’s greed without caring too much about the social consequences, we think.
They argue back that, no, they are really highly responsible. Yet, they are using every trick in the book to break into the UK market spending a fortune on lobbying and this alone is enough to make me suspicious. In Sheffield, they are even flying in casino workers from the US to sell us the story that this is a great profession that we should welcome into our city.
They may also argue that we need them to avoid people going off to these offshore online betting sites. But I am afraid that I see them all as of a piece. The sort of behaviour that online betting sites display in hitting blog sites is just the sort of aggressive marketing that all sellers of addictive products use.
I understand that the Government may soon be stepping back from their heavily pro-casino stance. Let’s hope this is true.
Some thing I do find amusing and annoying at the same time, is that America does not allow uk gambling sites to target or offer services to Americans. You got to love their idea of free trade.
Hi Richard , I was given your URI by Sarah Teather with specific relevance to the EU Sofware Patents Directive , which I oppose , but can’t resist a comment about the Gambling Bill .
It has been reported that US lobbyists are unhappy with the current restiction that bets above �700 must be accompanied by picture ID . The lobbyists apparently want this raised to �10,000 as is the current practice in the US . This sounds disasterous , apart from being damned cheeky ; these restictions are designed to protect UK citizens and should not be rescinded at the behest of industry lobbyists no matter wherefrom they hail . Any comments ? Thanks , Conor C.
Hi there Richard,
Is there any point in gambling that there will be any answers to “Software Patents”.
Only way of contacting you, especially as Tom-Watson seems to have gone to sleep !!.
Rgds Gordon.
Great post Richard, thanks. I hope you keep on top of this issue and give us all plenty of advance notice so we can have enough time to object to anything that starts moving on this subject — and I too hope it is true that the Government may soon be stepping back from their heavily pro-casino stance and that they send signals back to the US barracudas, thugs, loan sharks, money launderers, low-lkife punks and gangsters to bug off and make it clear the UK can’t be bought off. Tell them to go to France. We don’t want their dirty low life business on our shores. Tessa Jowell could be in for a rocky ride if this starts gaining any kind of momentum – I just saw a letter in my local paper that is generally about the number of seagulls around here and lack of parking spaces — someone wrote in on behalf of all Quakers – very eloquently but strongly opposing the Gambling Bill (in four years I’ve not seen a national issue thing – we are many hours away from Blackpool – in the local postbag of the weekly newspaper. If you want to see more objections – check out Clive Soley’s post on Gambling.