AIBU - gambling is truly nasty and pernicious...

Billy Walker was my boss when I worked in his casino. He was very generous with our uniforms, lovely long dresses, very glam, not like now. It was very much like a gentlemen's club.

Well yes, but it is getting close in parts of the UK:

'Local councillors say the street in Newham, east London, has more bookmakers than any other in the country - 18 in total - and 80 in the borough as a whole.'

And from the Guardian last February:

Retail space equalling the size of the vast Westfield shopping centre in west London was converted to new uses last year, as the UK's high streets adapted to changing habits.

Traditional shop space in excess of 1.7m sq ft was lost in 2013 – an increase of more than 60% on 2012 – as betting shops, gyms, bars and restaurants moved into vacant retail premises, according to a report for the industry journal Estates Gazette.

Betting shops were the single most prolific type of new entrant, with 106 winning permission to open last year.

Amongst his many addictions my ex was a gambler. It was bad enough when he had to go to bookies or use machines but internet gambling made it a million times worse. One night when I was in bed he used a new credit card (he'd got it without my knowledge) and maxed it out.......£10K!!!!!

Petra, the job sounds rather glam.I love greyhounds as well,they are such gentle dogs, and are as wonderful to watch racing as horses.

I can never understand the mentality of pouring cash into a fruit machine in pubs and other places, what a waste of money.

No, that sounds bleak, and I have never put money into a pub fruit machine. But I did once put 5 dollars into a slot machine in Vegas and watch while it took over and played itself, with many bells and whistles, to 250 dollars, which I cashed in and spent on perfume on the plane home. Again, subject to the rule of never gambling what you can't afford to lose. Which sadly seems to be the missing link where compulsive gambling is concerned.

Petra, that brings back memories when you say your mum was a "bookies runner". My mother and stepfather used to bet on the horses long before betting shops were legalised, and we had a bookies runner, a little hunchbacked fella known as "Little Johnny", come to our back door a couple of times a week. I sometimes got the job of handing him the screwed up bit of paper with the bet written on it and the money wrapped up in it.

I suspect that gambling is not confined to a few. In the past there was a stigma to being seen going into a betting shop. With online gambling available at everyone's fingertips online and normalised by scratch cards I think the numbers that we hear about are the tip of a pernicious iceberg. Of course I'm biased having seen at close hand (FiL) the awful blight it can be on peoples lives. I don't want to give details as I still find it upsetting.

Sorry to hear that Jane.

@rosesarered - Agreed, pub machines are a complete waste of time and money, but I remember a gig on an American Air Force Base in Suffolk, where the band was generally broke, and I had a couple of quarters which I shoved into an old-fashioned one-armed bandit -- I ended up with enough to buy hot food for all six of us!

There is a theory that many gamblers, unknown to themselves, are playing to lose, almost as though seeking punishment in some way.

I haven't heard that before feetlebaum but I can believe it. It often seems to go hand in hand with other addictions, in people who are in self-destruct mode.

My dad was a compulsive gambler, it was mum who brought the money in, because we lived with grans, aunts and uncles who could look after me. He was also a bookmakers clerk, a bookies runner, and at boxing matches would be one of the people who held up the number of the round at the beginning of a round. I spent many a night watching him and a group of his pals sitting at our kitchen table playing whatever it was they were playing and the money passing from one to the other - he would sometimes gamble his winnings on the horses on cards in the train home - He sometimes travelled by car, and on several occasions he would come running in throw the bookies equipment in the cellar and sit exhausted - something had obviously gone wrong, and they had done a runner. I would see him arrive home with a roll of notes in his pocket, some of which he would give my mum, the next day he would be broke. At the age of 55 he stopped smoking, cut back on the gambling and got a job, just like that, no idea why. His last journey on this earth was a visit to the bookies at the end of the road, he came home and died in the armchair. He was a lovely dad, gentle as a lamb with me and his grand-daughter, but he told my husband on the day we got married that if ever he harmed me he would set the gang on him, yes he was on the edge of the underworld as it was then. I never had a serious discussion with him, but he was still my dad. Sorry that is going on a bit!