Gamblers’ remorse…
“Crack cocaine” betting machines are making bookies £34 million every week.
‘Fixed-odds betting terminals’ seem designed to foster gambling dependency, and accept stakes of up to £100. Addicts can lose thousands in a few short hours.
The high-street menace even apparently contributed to the recent death of a 27-year-old carpenter by suicide.
While bookies make nearly a grand a day on each machine, vulnerable people face ruin. Bookies and payday loan sharks disfigure working class communities like mange.
Both Tory and Labour MPs have accepted gifts and hospitality from gambling lobbyists. Deregulation was the result. London’s Tory mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith and arch-Blairite Chuka Umunna have both taken bookies’ donations.
…remorseless gamblers
But it’s not just the bookkeepers who are minting it from gambling misery. Britain’s bankers continue to go unpunished for wrecking the economy.
The 2007 credit crunch which sparked the Great Recession came from decades of ‘speculation’ – legalised economic gambling. It wiped £666 billion off Britain’s economy in just two years. We still have not recovered to pre-crisis levels.
Workers gamble their wages and face penury for them and their families. Senior bankers gamble the world economy and face – bonuses!
Nationalise the banks and big business under the democratic control and management of workers and customers. Jobs and services – not bankers’ bonuses.
£34,000,000
Amount bookies pry from gamblers at “crack cocaine” fixed-odds betting terminals every week – nearly a grand a week per machine
£666 billion
Amount casino banksters wiped off Britain’s GDP in just two years when they caused the 2007-08 global financial crisis