The waiting for High Street Casinos goes on to discover what, if anything, the Government proposes to do next about the addictive, high-stakes roulette and gaming machines which have created several thousand mini-casinos on our high streets. The pushers, however – they used to be called “bookmakers” – appear to be trying to get their retaliation in first.
In addition to the sound of a virtual roulette ball dropping into a slot every 20 seconds, and the occasional disturbance caused by a player cursing or even attacking a machine after it has sucked in their last pound, betting shop customers have had to put up with another distraction. A petition organized by the Association of British Bookmakers appeared overnight in shops across the country, and many shop managers – no doubt suspecting that their area manager will be totting up numbers and reporting back to head office – have been actively encouraging their customers to sign.
The petition, headed “Enough’s Enough”, squeezes an impressive mixture of fantasy, paranoia and half-truth into its 205 words. For one thing, it does not actually mention Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. Instead, it includes a claim, without any detail on substance or timing, or evidence to back it up, that “recent Government announcements have put more than 10,000 jobs and 2,300 shops at immediate risk”.
There is mention too of a punter’s “right to have a bet”, though strangely this basic freedom does not seem to appear in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Which is a pity, because if it did, the right to have a decent bet accepted at the advertised price without restriction might be in there as well.
But the laager mentality which now grips the high-street gambling industry on the FOBT issue is perhaps best summed up by this sentence: “As long as our customers gamble responsibly,” the petition says, “we [the ABB] believe you should be free to enjoy your leisure time as you choose without being demonized.” This High Street Casinos story was originally published on the Guardian website.
