AIBU - gambling is truly nasty and pernicious...

I’m too mean to be a gambler because if I ever won I would take the money and run and certainly wouldn’t put it back. We have a lot of fruit machines here in most of the hotels and pubs and casinos in the state capitals. Then there’s tattslotto every week. It seems the poorer the person, the more they pour into stuff like that - desperation I suppose . I think fruit machines are 5he most boring things on earth and really don’t get how people play them for hours on end. I suppose the stock exchange is another form of gambling - we have quite a few friends who gamble on that with varying degrees of success.

I did place a bet once, it was £1 each way on a horse, it lost!

Haven't bothered since but I am a risk taker, it's just I like the odds stacked in my favor. Making money out of business investments is much better, although still not a sure thing.

Best bet is your own home, plenty of risk excitement there for most.

Butterandjam, fortunately, you and I do not have that addictive gambling personality. Of course a £10 flutter on a horse is not a problem, people spend money earnt as they choose. It's young vulnerable people who get drawn into gambling plus young professionals as a release from stress only to end up in a nightmare, they lose every thing and the bookies make it easy. Many commit suicide,when they lose homes and their families, they become unemployable. Their families are victims, eventually they have to cut off, the effect on other children in the family, , the lying, the stealing. Thank goodness various programmes and residential courses are available which helps many but by no means all. It's an addiction fuelled by high streets full of gambling shops, on line gambling, multiple lottery tickets and scratch cards at tills everywhere, we walk past them but they find it impossible. Ask the victims families what they think needs doing or could help because they live it.

MiniMouse

I suspect you're right Nelliem How much does it cost to sort out the lives of addicted gamblers - benefits, therapy, rehousing because they can't pay mortgage etc etc? It seems a tad counterintuitive

I'm inclined to agree with you MiniMouse unfortunately it's the size of the Tax Take that gets the headlines.
The life-repair stuff is far more difficult to quantify so can more easily be "kicked into the long grass" as they say.

@MOnica *the problem is the way gambling companies are allowed to advertise so much and also offer enticements to betters to keep going."

Is it any different from media advertising encouraging women/ men to put X on their face or wear Y , a mad gamble that will help them win love, admiration and sex?

I'd rather gamble £10 on a horse than hyaluronic acid.

I own Premium Bonds, I've been known to pick a horse in The Grand National, my retired racing greyhound won a lot of money for his previous owner and other people. Also I enjoy a glass of wine.

My level of gambling and alcohol consumption are the reasons pubs and betting shops exist; the proof that not all gambling /alcohol is addictive or pernicious and both can be harmless pleasure (providing a living to others) .

Old but relevant thread. I know of at least two NEETs who have turned to gambling because they cannot get a job. The situation is critical and tragic for young people.

About 20 plus years ago, l bumped into a woman l went to uni with during a bus ride. She was telling me about her recent interview with HM Customs and a few odd questions they asked. One question she was asked, stuck in my head. It was: what are your thoughts on the national lottery?
The new opium of the masses, perhaps?

10 year old thread 😲

Gambling companies are not interested in people just money, its the worst addiction to get, they live for that adrenaline rush just before the win then carry on and lose the lot. The gambler lies they become so good at it and would sell anything to fund the habit, it ruins families, bankrupts them. Your life is never the same if you have had a gambling addict in it, even if they get away from it, they are mentally scarred, you are too.

The problem is the way gambling companies are allowed to advertise so much and also offer enticements to betters to keep going.

I think all enticements should be banned. Betting compaanies should not be allowed to offer anyone any enticements to place a bet, or place a second bet after a first bet and the way they can advertise should be limited to displaying the company name and contact details. Similarly they should not be able to entice you to play different games on their website. They should offer a list of games available and nothing else.

Georgesgran

*REPORTED*. Old thread resurrected by Spammer.

Resurrected again it would seem!

I think spam posts are pretty nasty and pernicious too - reported

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

petra

Roses. Loved Walthamstow stadium. We had a few dogs racing there.

I never went inside but I used to love going past after dark to see the neon sign with the running greyhound.

Gambling addiction/ problem gambling , like drug and tobacco addiction or alcoholism can be serious, damaging, change lives.

But lets stay rational.

They are ONE end of a spectrum of behaviours . At the other end, the same behaviours, in moderation are harmless fun , life enhancing pleasures. A drink with dinner, a lottery ticket, a bet on the grand national.

Definitely ban all TV advertising. I took the point made well above, tho a long time ago that taxes raised on gambling are outdone by the money spent on family situations crushed by it.
There are strict regulations about what sort of adverts can appear tho

commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7428/#:~:text=Gambling%20operators%20selling%20into%20the,Advertising%20Standards%20Authority%20(ASA).

And apparently black market gambling is on the rise to subvert the guildlines (Uncontrolled social Media?)

petra

Georgesgran

REPORTED. Old thread resurrected by Spammer.

I knew from the posters name how old it is. They have had several since that one.

For a moment I thought Jura had gone full circle and returned, reverting to an early name ! 🤣🤣🤣

Some years ago when I was in my 30s I knew a man who worked on the roads as a road liner, he did all the yellow and white lines etc. etc., late 20s with a mrs and 3 young kids and he's go to the local cafe for breakfast before work and they had 3 or 4 gambling machines in there ... one-armed-bandits and so on and he'd drop in up to £70.00 a time and only win a few quid back or quite regularly nothing at all then he'd moan bitterly that his wife was threatening to divorce him but they were a low income family, she was on a low wage and they had various rents, bills.

When he won he'd shove the winnings straight back into the machine and spent the rest of his money on his own beers and fags. he was useless.

I hope his mrs did divorce him!

In Europe most people gamble at Casinos, they are far more common there than here.

I have only once been to a casino. It was the Royal Victoria Sporting Club near Marble Arch. I wnet to with a boy friend jsut to see what it was like - and it made me feel physically sick.

People were sat around the various games pushing plastic gaming tokens on numbers and when they lost their faces were absolutely impassiv. When they ran out of tokens they opened their wallets and dropped £20 notes on the table, several of them, this was around 1966, when they lost them their faces did not change. This is what made me feel sick. If they has shown some emotion, it might have been better.

The Casino was in the North Paddington constituency where the criminal landlord Peter Rachman rack rented flats and turfed tenants out at will. I was politically active in the constituency and I knew there were council flats less than 100 yards from the Casino, where a £20 note, would have been greeted as manna from heaven, enough to feed a family for a month.

Georgesgran

*REPORTED*. Old thread resurrected by Spammer.

I knew from the posters name how old it is. They have had several since that one.

REPORTED. Old thread resurrected by Spammer.

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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!

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.