Sunday, January 21, 2007

Singing from the Same Hymn Sheet (Not)

"[If the Gambling Act] gave rise to an increase in problem gambling it would be bad legislation."
Tessa Jowell, Culture Secretary

Interviewer: Could the Act give rise to a rise in problem gambling?
Richard Caborn: Absolutely. If there were increases, we could arrest that.

Richard Caborn is Jowell's junior Minister at the DCMS. it seems you don't even get joined up Government within the same government department nowadays.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

The sweet comedy of joined-up government.
Splitting up the home office is going to work wonders then, isn't it?!

Anonymous said...

We all know that the new gambling laws are going to increase the levels of addiction. In Australia they have had serious problems and there aren't even many "super" casinos...

Anonymous said...

Maybe they just don't WANT to talk to each other anymore?

Anonymous said...

This bill was signed, sealed and delivered by Labour at their most confident. It was a transparent sop to vested interests and must go down as a low point in this discredited regime.

Anonymous said...

Jowell or else friends/relations of hers absolutely must be making money out of this somehow - nothing else can explain her fervent support for this stinker of a policy. The net result of this expansion will be more organised crime, more debt crises, more problem families and big increases in casual urban violence. Well done New Labour, one and all! Hope the money was worth it. If any police detectives are reading this, would you consider investigating the background to this? Start with Prescott's visits for talks with Casino bosses.

Anonymous said...

As Clive Anderson said on R2 this morning, the Government tried their hand at gambling by introducing the National Lottery, and now they're hooked...

Anonymous said...

Erm Anonymous@5:27pm it wasn't this government that introduced the National Lottery...

Anonymous said...

Not necessarily contradictory. Caborn says (a) technically possible (b) if happens will tweak legislation. Game over. You lost. Natch. Please make sure you don't gamble more than you can afford in pursuit of buzz and riches.

The ITV etc interactive TV games are far more of a scandal than this paint-dryingly interesting subject.

Callers can use and lose around £20 per hour every hour for a quarter of the 24 hours and for c 3 months if they are quarterly billed phone users. They can do this without any line of credit. They will get warned every now and then - "you have spent a hell of a lot you idiot" etc - but they are not stopped.

The profits are immense. Campaign against that instead of big casinos that lots of the Tory party support anyway.

Anonymous said...

£10,800 in one billing cycle that is btw.

Anonymous said...

I remember a study in the US that found that, when a casino went in it cost $1.60 in social services for every dollar that it brought into the community. So casinos are great for social workers and cops. I guess it all depends on what you consider to be a "problem".

Anonymous said...

Glad to see you waking up to the dangers of gambling addicition now it looks like the super casino is going to be on your doorstep. Those of us oop north have had this threat for half a decade now with very little concern from the chattering classes