THE SPIEL By Ricki Chavez-Munoz
Along with many policies spawned by a so-called New Labour of Tony Blair’s right-wing backed Labour Party, the 2005 Gambling Law peddled and approved by his government is a mix of open market gambling products that have been detrimental to society.
Advocating free market reforms, politicians’ ignorance of gambling operators’ revenue-driven ventures pandered to the gambling lobbies, which swamped the UK high street with electronic slot machine games – Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs) – with gross irresponsibility, and lost the opportunity to create hospitality-based casino offerings in the country.
Following years of public outcry, after the dreaded FOBTs turned unsuspecting players into gambling addicts allowing maximum stakes at £100 per spin, this year the government reduced such limit to £2. Now, a Tory government that doesn’t know whether to stick or draw, with knee-jerk decisions on practically everything from Brexit to the COVID-19 pandemic, is taking on the UK gambling industry with an issue-distracting “reformer’s shopping list” of proposals to overhaul such flawed gambling laws.
The Gaming Act of 1968 had at its core the protection of society from dangers associated with gambling addition, with the exception of social responsibility which was first promoted in 1997 by sensible casino operators. Nearly 40 years later, The Blair government was convinced that Britain needed Las Vegas type casinos as part of the growing entertainment industry. What the country got instead was a lukewarm extension of gambling offerings where there was no provision for social responsibility and opened the market to unbridled remote gambling.
There has never been any attempt by the government to make meaningful provisions against gambling addiction and if such provisions are not in place, the dangers will persist and increase as operators make use of creative powers to market products.
Our position has always been that gambling and its risks is a matter for the educational authorities so that the mechanics of such risks are made available to children at school level. As betting is inherent in the human psyche, there is a need for the mechanics of such an exercise to be explained with a math basis at the core.
All the good intentions and plans of a “Reformers’ shopping list”, announced by the government, will just be another pointless exercise of witchdoctor medicine, invoking the spirits of third parties to drive down their own markets. Palliatives do not cure an illness, and neither will any type of shopping list with pills and potions for the infirm.
A public relations report from the Government states that “Multiple sources said officials at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which is leading the process, would take aim at almost every area of gambling law.” However, in view of what has come before, such an exercise has the mellifluence of the usual snake oil country-market offering to the poor unsuspecting masses. It is this same DCMS that has been in charge of the Gambling Law in the country, and which since 2004 has been meeting with the gambling industry to improve matters for society. As the politics of Blair are not too dissimilar from Boris Johnson’s, the current UK Prime Minister, with self-serving interest primarily, it is odds on that any shopping list will serve the politics of the day first and treat society like the great unwashed.
