Plans to allow a supercasino to be built in Manchester are to be scrapped, Gordon Brown is set to announce today. Expect multiple pronouncements from the newspaper rent-a-moralist squad, praising the son of the manse for such Presbyterian rectitude in overturning the decision of his meretricious Romanist predecessor.
Then read the small print; even though the flagship project will be binned for the sake of a few favourable headlines, 16 smaller establishments – all at least four times larger than anything currently seen in the UK – are getting the nod.
And why not? There really are vices far, far worse than recreational gambling, which alone of all the viable alternatives does no damage whatsoever to your lungs, liver, nasal membrane or waistline.
By way of declaring an interest, I myself am a small stakes punter. I sometimes have a fiver or tenner on a horse, and show a modest profit most seasons. In addition, I have played poker and backgammon for pecuniary considerations.
I like the intellectual challenge of studying the form or calculating pot odds. I like the adrenalin rush of watching a race when I’ve got money on. I like the winnings when I am lucky enough to pocket any.
And when I lose? I’m paying for my chosen entertainment. You prefer to spend your disposable income visiting National Trust properties or the English National Opera rather than William Hill? Fine by me. Just no lectures either way, please.
All of this brings me to Polly Toynbee’s opinion piece in the Guardian today, which argues against the new casinos being built. She expresses all the familiar concerns about the addictive nature of casino betting, and the propensity of the less well off to gamble away the kids’ food money.
I don’t think her case stacks up. For a start, it not as if there are not plenty of opportunities to gamble already. Walk into any newsagent and you can often find someone charging an electricity key – a sure indicator of poverty – at the same time as purchasing multiple Lucky Dip selections on the National Lottery.
Perhaps we can all agree that this is not a good thing. But the simple libertarian logic that escapes far too many on the left indicates that - short of banning an activity in which a clear majority of British adults choose to participate - little can be done to prevent this happening.
Sorry to break it to you Polly, but it is most unlikely that the wasted cash would otherwise have gone on organic Tuscan sausages and fairtrade extra virgin olive oil, or even invested in a tax-free ISA.
What’s more, on mathematical consideration of the odds alone, impoverished gamblers should positively encouraged to place their stakes on the roulette wheel (odds: from 1.111 to 1 upwards) rather than the National Lottery (odds: 56 to 1 for £10, 13,983,816 to 1 for the jackpot).
There’s more. For Ms Toynbee and the paternalists to be logically consistent, they would have to demand immediate prohibition of alcohol. Booze is many times more addictive even then slots, and puts plenty of people on Skid Row, not to mention six foot under.
Gambling at any level above self-organised office sweepstakes on the Grand National is, of course, a thoroughly capitalist enterprise. The killjoy tendency on the left will make much of that.
But it is a legal industry that provides jobs and pays taxes, and no more or no less abhorrent to socialist principle than any other type of private business. If you really want to tackle casino capitalism, look to the City rather than actual casinos.
Help can and should be provided to problem gamblers, on the same principle that it is offered to problem drinkers. But adults must be treated as adults, free to have fun any which way they choose, provided only that is not demonstrably detrimental to others; if consequences range from a bad hangover to being skint until pay day, that is their lookout.
One other thing. Why the hell is it necessary to couch the casino question as one of ‘regeneration’, in much the same tones are used to justify the Olympics? If an area needs regeneration, spend the money to regenerate it. Any left-leaning economist will provide ample Keynesian justification for doing just that.
Because if there is just one thing that should never, ever be reduced to a game of chance, it is the future of working class communities.
Posted at 13:44, 26 February 2008
Comments (16)
the simple libertarian logic that escapes far too many on the left indicates that - short of banning an activity in which a clear majority of British adults choose to participate - little can be done to prevent this happening
We're not talking about some prohibitionist drive to ban gambling, just about choosing not to create more opportunities for more people to gamble - the same choice the Major government could have made when the National Lottery was introduced. Nothing you've said here makes a case for more gambling.
spot on. If people want to gamble than that's up to them.
The issue for me is that Manchester is supposedly a model for business-led city regeneration. And sure, the renovated bits look nice and modern, but outside the city centre, in the residential areas of the city, you've the most social unequal city in the country, with massive child poverty (60%+ in some council wards) and a woeful shortage of social housing (the emergency waiting list is up to a year or more, when the target for re-housing is supposed to 6 weeks). The part of the city targeted for the casino, East Manchester, already got a massive regeneration project - the Sportcity/Eastlands complex, along with its new Walmart style massive Asda (biggest in the country I think, but don't quote me) - which actually did the best it could in terms of providing for the local community in terms of jobs and partnership for services. It was a drop in the ocean and the area is still massively deprived and nothing short of direct investment in social services is going to change that.
here's one view
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ukcorrespondents/andrewmckie/feb2008/supercasinos.htm
David ~ Have you ever thought of writing for "The Mail"? Even as a temp? Really right up your street...there's nothing in the above that they could possibly object to...
"The Kill Joy tendancy on the left"
Mmmmm......Wow! Perfect! Ring Dacre now and collect the sub's cash prize.
"Because if there is just one thing that should never, ever be reduced to a game of chance, it is the future of working class communities."
OH...PLEEEEEZE...BLOODY GUT TURNING...JUST TAKE THE MONEY!
Richard Harris - I can't be bothered to search Mail online, but on this one from memory of headlines they were firmly against supercasinos. Anyway, I'm with Phil on this one. This isn't calling for high street bookies to be banned or ending regressive taxation in the form of the lottery. It's just not going ahead with another opportunity for which there was no great popular demand and precious little independent evidence that they would actually provide regeneration. Everything about it epitomised New Lab - vacuous business speak with completely implausible claims about their social benefit, openness to lobbying, refusal to engage with counter arguments and evidence. And then there's the little matter that in the US these ventures are all too often tied up with organised crime. Is the middle class do-gooder tone of Polly T really any worse than Tessa Jowell's soft soap when promoting this? Up here in Sheffield when we didn't get the go-ahead for a supercasino deadbeat MP Clive Betts hilariously blamed the Green Party; sorry, but I'm simplistic enough to think that anything which annoys the likes of Betts is likely to be welcome.
For residents of Lambeth or Southwark - there will be a public meeting held by the Lambeth & Southwark Labour Representation Committee (LRC) at 7.30pm on 27th March at the Vida Walsh Centre, 2b Saltoun Road, Brixton. Mark Serwotka, Marshajane Thompson & Ted Knight are amongst the speakers.
For further details please email nicktoms1@hotmail.com
While we're doing plugs, here's one for tonight. Hope you can make it, Dave.
Wednesday 27th February
Change Labour's course - launch meeting of the Hackney LRC. Don't want the Tories back? Sick of privatisation of public services at home, nuclear rearmament and war abroad? Come to the launch meeting of Hackney LRC!
Speakers include: John McDonnell MP (LRC Chair), Cllr Patrick Vernon, Cllr Barry Buitekant (Chair), Jane Holgate (Sec, Hackney TUC), Rayah Feldman (Hackney Refugee & Migrant Support Group)
8pm, Hackney Empire Hospitality Suite, Mare Street.
Naughty naughty, Kate and Jeff. I'm happy to plug events I'm in favour of, but email me and I'll give them more prominence then they would get in the comments box.
"precious little independent evidence that they would actually provide regeneration".
Yes,this is the point I would want to focus on. I don't have the ability to challenge the claims made, but I am suspicious of the fact that, for example, the number of jobs to be created was projects as c 20,000 at the time of the bid and has now mysteriously been lowered to c 3,000. I suspect both figures were simply pulled out of thin air. Another point is who would get these jobs - frankly I know the culture of east manchester pretty well and I can't see unemployed white working class people there being able to adapt to doing meet and greet jobs, certainly as they would doubtless be earning little more than they get on benefits. I suspect most jobs created would go to immigrants, which is fine - but the only regeneration that would take place would be in Poland or Lithuania through foreign remittances, and I don't think east Manchester would change that much.
OK ... I've seen the future (of the Metro "left") and its a (VERY) SUPER Casino on top of... Dowlais Top (Merthyr...the arse end of the world so THEY really deserve it)...
Hey, doesn't the "liberalista left" on this bored (sic) really chime with these fun loving de-reg neo-lib times?
Gwyn Alf Williams ("When was Wales") ~ spin in YOUR grave!
Gwyn Alf was a well know liar and fly by night, by the way. Much of his history doesn't stand up to examination.
There'd be worse places than Dowlais Top - handy for the heads of the valleys road too
I think you're looking through the telescope from the wrong end, Dave.
This isn't anything to do with either freedom to flutter or urban regeneration - it's about massive US gambling outfits wanting to get a toe-hold in Europe, and, surprise surprise, the British govt was the most willing to bend over, relax the regulations and take it.
Has been covered widely in Private Eye for the past two years, not just the Dome/Anszhauser (?) end of things.
And from a couple of US documentaries I've seen about dowtown Detroit, which has several supercasinos, you can forget the minimum-wage Mcjobs and 'regeneration' they offer - it's a surefire way to fuck the neighbourhood.
I have to agree with those who think you've got it wrong. I'm not a killjoy in any sense - I just don't think there is much joy in gambling unless, of course, you happen to be running the casino.At the risk of sounding pious, I think as socialsts we do have a moral compass and backing supercasinos is not a road I would want to go down. I was pleased when Brown knocked it on the head and he should have done the same with the 16 others.
I wrote a long post on this a few days ago, pressed the wrong button and it disappeared into the ether. I was basically just pointing out that calling these slot machine arcades casinos dignifies them beyond what they are. The term casino conjures up images of bejewelled dowager duchesses at the poker table or handsome men at the roulette wheel, but they are not. They are slot machines, amusment arcades, 'catchpenny' as my father used to describe them. These days they are computerised and the computer is programmed to pay out every so often. A whole new raft of inspectors and regulatory busybodies would be summonsed into existence to ensure that payouts are being made 'fairly'. And, who would decide what percentage of profit should be paid out, and how often? Very New Labour. Take something that's supposedly fun and bore it into submisssion. All the while dressing it up with smug talk. (I'm particularly cross today because I've just read that teh Government has announced they are going to be using private job agencies to place teh unemployed in work, and yet, at the same time they are aiming for 20,000 redundancies in the Department of Work and Pensions, with some jobcentres closing. And they say that Mick Martin is corrupt!!!!
What's our socialist "morality" got to do with whether people go and bet or not? As socialists it's not our job to tell people how to live their lives in the sense of what they spend their money on. It's our job to support the emancipation of the working class to the point where it has that choice in the first place. Anything else is just patronising woolly liberalism at best, and authoritarian at worst.
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