Polly Toynbee
Gambling
Reproduced from the
Britain does not feel like a nation of gamblers. Staid, suspicious of the
new, slow to change, we rarely think of ourselves as a devil-may-care people.
But we are. We are the second largest
gambling
nation in the world. Jackpot (Tuesday-Thursday BBC2) has been casting
a cold eye over the whole gambling scene, from those who make a handsome
living out of the business to those whose lives are all but destroyed by
it.
Billions and billions are gambled away
every year on horses, roulette, fruit machines and the football pools, even
before the Lottery bonanza
is thrown into the equation. Ninety per cent of people gamble at some time
in the year - and that's without considering the daily gambling on the
stock market at the posher extreme.
| Billions are gambled away on horses, roulette, fruit machines and the pools, even before the Lottery is included. |
So it's hardly surprising that Gamblers
Anonymous holds 200 meetings a week around the country for those who become
addicts.
Without doubt, the saddest of them all are the
fruit-machine
addicts. Down my south London high street there are a couple of horrible
emporiums with tacky china prizes in the window that no one ever wins or
would want to win. Through the darkened doorway you can glimpse the
desperate lives of a few people, young and old, as they sit shovelling
coins into machines with no expression on their faces. It's all over
so quickly. No studying the odds, picking the winner; laying the bet and
waiting for the result. In a flash the winking, bleeping monster has swallowed
the money and is beeping for more. It only takes one look to see those
vacant, destroyed lives.
The puzzle is how these places got planning
permission in ordinary shopping streets, where they become a way of life
to some addicts. There are now more than 250,000 gaming machines in Britain.
An incredible £78 billion is thrust down their greedy gullets every
year. To make matters worse, 23 per cent of them are now in pubs. How
did we ever let this happen?
Stephen, who features in one of this
week's programmes, is a fruit-machine addict who has wasted thousands. He
has stolen to get money. The camera sneaks up on him gambling secretly
in a pub, but he is so mesmerised and transfixed, stuffing the coins in one
after another, that he doesn't even notice. He tries to explain that each
machine is like a person with its own quirks. Sometimes, he says, he sees
other people playing a machine that is dying to give up its jackpot. At this
point you know he has lost it altogether.
Stephen went to Gamblers Anonymous but
drifted away. The real mystery is his far too long-suffering fiancee Natalie.
A lively, delightful staff nurse, what is she doing with this
deadbeat, who has stolen money from her bank account? We watch her
hiding cash and credit cards inside the hems of curtains and under corners
of carpets. He says he'll get a job, save money, marry her and take her on
a honeymoon. Guess where to? Las Vegas. Get out now, Natalie!
Then there is Tony Rome, crooner and
gambler, who cannot leave the Rainbow casino in Birmingham. He has a nice
wife who stands beside him night after night through thick and mostly pretty
thin: his friend, another singer/gambler at the Rainbow, has lost his
wife and children because of his addiction. Tony Rome can still sing
with a great big fruity voice, but the money he earns spins away at the tables.
Why is he addicted? He says he thinks if he'd become the really big star
he meant to be, then he wouldn't have had to seek consolation at roulette
night after night.
Considering the row about
the morality of the Lottery, it's surprising that
we have accepted all this other gambling mania with scarcely a murmur. It
seems to me the worst of all worlds to have allowed all those fruit machines
to take in billions of pounds. We should either have restricted them to a
few casinos and holiday outlets or else insisted that the state run them,
so at least there were some national benefits. I remember one radical economist
suggesting, only half-jokingly, that we might be able virtually to abolish
income tax if we put a fruit machine on every street comer.
The Lottery has been a great state benefit.
Just look at the wonderful buildings, community enterprises and new arts
venues springing up all over the country, an arts and community renaissance
in many places where often there was nothing before. One of the most dramatic
is the mighty new art gallery in Walsall, an unexpected spot, which has changed
the image of that grim Birmingham suburb beyond recognition to the world
outside, and more importantly given a new self-image and cause for pride
to its own citizens, breathing new life into a derelict canal basin.
All that was built on the gambling habits
of the nation but, given Britain's gigantic determination to gamble, it seems
entirely sensible to let the state benefit from its people's vices.
My comment : I
suspect some of the people wasting billions on gambling are the same hypocrites
that say we are wasting billions on scientific research,which ultimately
pays off dividends. Their innumeracy leads them to be quite selfish, and
self-serving.The sciences pay off dividends for everyone."Who wants to be
a millionaire?" and the Lottery pays off only for those for whom material
wealth is considered the height of importance and a status symbol.All quite
sad considering one can become addicted and lose one's whole life,and even
those that win wealth beyond the dreams of avarice,confess in some cases
that it's made them no happier,and in some cases actually miserable.
I confess to being appalled by Polly's idea that the state should benefit
from an addiction,but it's no worse than taxing alcohol or smoking.What I
find offensive is that this is a tax on the stupid,and to make matters worse,the
money goes to the arts.We're taking money mostly off working class people
who polls suggest can't or won't add up (they are pro imperial measure for
Pete's sake),much less calculate odds.These are the same people,don't forget
,who worry about cancer risks from cell
phones,because innumerate paper editors can't find anything worth printing.
The arts is exactly the area that fosters the kind of anti-science propaganda
of which
Brian
Appleyard is so enamoured,and for the most part the ill-educated public
who can't do sums, are also highly unlikely to educated or interested in
the arts. Go into any of these new emporiums and see how many of the people
who bought lottery tickets are looking at Turner or Constable paintings or
even Damien Hurst or the latest Turner Prize winner.[See if you can get funding
for a rock or pop concert]. They are not there.Plebeians have been duped
to pay for the delectations of the "educated" classes.Fools!
What those people stand to benefit from is the sciences that creates their
MRI scanners and their (none cancer causing) cell-phones and their wide screen
TV and medical drugs, that's where the money SHOULD be going.Look at the
disdain over the Millennium Dome,so much so that they're having to run a
publicity campaign with effectively the slogan "The Dome-not as bad as you
think it is",the premise being that it's all word of mouth,and no one actually
has seen what they're bad mouthing. Maybe so.
But the arts have been disproportionately funded,"high art" received
disproportionate sums compared with the numbers actually interested in it.Have
you checked out what the money from the Lottery is spent on and whose in
charge of its allocation? You might be surprised at who is holding the purse
strings-the same people you despise in public life,for getting back-handers
and doing shady deals.If the allocation was done by local communities I'm
quite sure the arts would be the last place it would go.Get the priorities
right. Hospitals and schools are decaying and we're buying pretty pictures
with lottery money!
I'm not against art,except when it pokes it's nose into things it doesn't
understand or preaches in that Brian Sewell "I know best" kind of way [I
hold a certain begrudging respect for Brian,he sees right through the Emperor's
New Clothes, and if he sees crap he calls it crap,but Rodin and Moore are
not to everyone's tastes and art is about personal taste]. Art should receive
funding,it's part of our culture,but it should be prioritised behind needs,and
behind investment in our social superstructure.I'm with
Steve Hawking,I've never bought a lottery ticket,and
never will,we pay taxes to fund the things we wish to invest in,and if we
wish to support it,we should be willing to pay for it.It's odd how people
are willing to pay £1 or more per week to the Lottery,but if a government
hikes taxes there's outrage.Imbeciles! Services cost money! If you want
services,pay for them,don't give your money to private companies to fund
the corporate director's new BMW! Pay for the scanner that the child needs
in the hospital! With your taxes YOU decide where it goes.With the lottery,the
gleeful greedy hand-rubbers decide where it goes,and where do they put it
- the arts. YES! Just where it's needed.When will this country wake up? -LB