Elephant in the Room

Anyone who has lived and worked in Glasgow could tell you that the alcohol abuse is a much greater, more damaging social problem than online gambling, yet for some reason Kevin McKenna ignores this 'elephant in the room' and instead names various forms of gambling as Scotland's Public Enemy Number 1.

Now I've placed the odd bet or two in my life - I always back a horse in the Grand National and Cheltenham Festival, sometimes a few bob on a football match, occasionally the National Lottery and even the gaming tables in Las Vegas, once upon a time.

But in no way would I describe my feelings towards gambling as "irresistible" and nor I am ever "mesmerised" by Ray Winstone because I know that the odds are stacked against me and that the whole thing is one big game.

The logic of Kevin's argument is that access to gambling should be restricted in some way, without ever saying how this would work, but I wonder if he would say the same thing in relation to alcohol which is, of course, a great blight on many people's lives and in so many different ways - from violence to child neglect to the impact on Scotland's health services. 

And as with so many of Kevin's opinion pieces for The Observer he runs out of steam towards the end and with no practical solutions or suggestions to offer, he turns his wrath on Tony Blair and the Labour Party. 

Now I don't carry any torches for the People's Party these days but even I would have to say that blaming Labour is more than a bit daft, especially when you consider that the National Lottery was set up in 1993 by John Major's government, i.e. the year before Tony Blair was elected Labour leader.       

TV gambling – irresistible and utterly pernicious

More than 350,000 in Britain are addicted already – and the numbers are growing

Kevin McKenna - The Observer


The lure of untold wealth lures people at their most vulnerable. Photograph: Hire Image Picture Library / Ala/Alamy

The name of the horse eludes me now, but for a few weeks in the middle of the 1990s it held me in its thrall as I followed its lunchtime progress in some of England's most hallowed greensward, including Chepstow, Haydock and Doncaster. A friend of a friend had a share of the beast and so, one afternoon, I backed it with a few notes. It was the first time I had ever placed a bet on a horse race.

A few minutes later, we were all standing in front of the telly in a Glasgow pub and even now I can tell you exactly who was there and what we were all drinking. Prior to this, television racing was merely something of which you were barely aware. I wouldn't have paid it any attention even if a lady was disrobing on the back of one of the horses. But then none of those races included a horse with my money riding on it. On this particular afternoon, as I watched my horse romp home, the scales fell from my eyes and I suddenly understood the magic of horse racing and gambling.

For those few anointed weeks, the nag won three races on the trot before gradually beginning to fade before the final furlong of its races and so also from my consciousness. I have only been occasionally to race meetings since then, usually corporate occasions when the racing is second to the hospitality and you bet gingerly on races following some advice from a professional tipster whose wisdom comes with the package.

It's not like the real thing though, for nothing can ever compare to visiting a high street turf accountant's for a few furtive minutes and then scurrying back to the pub to watch your investment perform before your eyes. And this is why I will never become puritanical about gambling: happy are those who can enjoy this activity without wrecking their finances; poor and pitiable are those who simply cannot. But despised must be those who exploit, manipulate and ultimately destroy the lives of those who have a problem with gambling or are hopelessly addicted to it.

Last year, in one of the less physically onerous assignments on which I've ever been engaged, I was asked one long Saturday to compare and contrast BT's £1bn live football package with Sky's sleek and proved 22-year-old Rolls-Royce. Before long, I found myself counting the number of different online betting products that bookended the advertising segments: I counted eight. This wasn't gambling though, this was a mass feeding frenzy of sharks as they gorged themselves on an easy prey: men watching live football, many working-class men among them, whose vulnerability had often been increased by alcohol.

Eight online and internet betting machines were spending millions on advertising to get at their victims by setting odds for every available occurrence in a 90-minute time frame. It is nothing other than state-sanctioned electronic exploitation of an entire strand of society. And they do it by manipulating the senses aided by all the tricks that a well-crafted television advert can conjure… and Ray Winstone, of course.

I am mesmerised by Ray Winstone's accent. It is the purest form of cockney I have ever heard. In full spate, it is a rich and textured growl where the vowels seem to outnumber the consonants. His wee "Don't mess with me" face appears at the end and the beginning of every advertising interlude in every major football match. On Champions League nights, his presence is more powerful than Jeff Stelling's as he announces the odds on the next player to score or on a 3-0 win for the home team. "It's oohllabaaat the in-play," he urges us and then, my favourite: "Ehhvve a beng on thet." Are trainee London cabbies given Ray Winstone tapes to learn by heart?

It's irresistible and utterly pernicious. How many of us, full of expectant euphoria because our boys are a goal up at half time against Manchester City or Chelsea, simply want to hit a button on an iPad or iPhone to back Rooney or van Persie or Adebayor to be the next to score at rather seductive odds? The sheer range of options and volume of operators, all spending hundreds of millions to reach their target demographic, makes Dodge City look like Cholmondeley Pageant. It appears devoid of any regulation and the government connives at it because it's a massive tax earner.

The human consequences of such unfettered profiteering are catastrophic for our society as well as for the individuals and their loved ones. Problem gambling is a silent and stealthy addiction that leaves no visible mark, but instead works from the inside, taking a person's soul and identity. The NHS reports that only around one in 20 problem gamblers seeks help for their addiction. Unlike many alcoholics and drug addicts, who know what they are doing to themselves, the gambling addict is only ever one big punt away from redemption.

More than 350,000 people in the UK suffer from a gambling addiction and there has been a steady increase evident over the last few years with the recession and sheer availability of online gambling outlets. For many others, it occupies an inappropriate level of priority in their lives. Gambling is available throughout the country 24 hours a day and every day of the year.

The national lottery is even more insidious. It's a stealth tax on the poor. First of all, pay people obscenely low wages, cut their benefits when they reject these jobs, penalise the disabled and punish them for having a little spare capacity in their property. Then point at the immigrants and blame it all on them.

Send in impostors such as Tony Blair and the rest to destroy the party that once helped these people and permit the banks to wreck the economy with no fear of retribution in a country that has kidnapped radicalism. Then, when they are at their most vulnerable, sell the poor a fantasy of riches beyond imagination and sit back and watch them pay for all your big capital projects. Welcome to the United Kingdom, August 2014.