Responsibility for our own actions

Like the bank in my example, the gambling sites won't block addicts because they make money out of them.

I know of somebody who works in a betting shop, and she was issued with instructions on how to make women feel more comfortable in the shop, which she felt was questionable, morally.
She was told to make them a cup of tea, and generally be as helpful as possible in explaining how bets work, and 'getting them started'.

As I implied earlier, I think there are degrees of personal responsibility - a balance to be established between throwing people to the wolves and giving them complete freedom of choice and the state being responsible for establishing checks and balances in what can be very unequal relationships. I wonder if those of you who believe you in complete personal responsibility think that there should never be a state pension and that we should all be responsible for making basic provision for our own old age? Then again, we could say the same about the provision of health care.

State pension and health care are not paid by the state. They are paid for by us, citizens of the state. The state oversees their provision because we, the voters, told them to via our elected politicians.

paid for

Have told the state to boss gambling businesses around?

Have we...

I didn't say paid for at all - the fact that money is taken from us without choice and given back to us as health care and pensions takes away from us the responsibility of saving up ourselves to provide for those needs. Is this being a nanny state? And if not, isn't it set up like that to protect us from ourselves as so many wouldn't save and make provision?

I heard the item on the Today programme. I understood that the big fine for one particular company was because many addicts who were trying to take control and had signed-up to a scheme whereby they would be barred from further gambling were then contacted by a different branch of the same business to continue gambling.

Along the lines of alcoholics/drug addicts being offered drink and drugs from a different supplier, but owned by the same business.

A well-deserved fine in my opinion.

That puts a different slant on it. Thank you, river.

Were the schemes for pensions and health care set up without our consent int the first place, maryeliza? I thought we had voted in people who would set these things up because we wanted them.

That's absolutely disgusting, riverwalk! They should have their licences revoked!

Technically, I suppose we could scrap them if we wanted to by voting in politicians who think everything should be provided by private business.

But if we want the discuss the concept of personal responsibility and the role of the state, its wider than betting and credit card limits isn't it? Could there really be an election in which the main issue was limiting bets? Our system doesn't work like that surely? What happens is that something becomes an issue, like excessive betting, and people lobby for changes. The government of the day then decides whether or not it will make changes. Underpinning that is attitudes towards personal responsibility and where we draw the line. Do people think it was wrong that banks were ordered to repay PPI or should people who were stupid enough to buy it without working out it was unnecessary lose the money they paid out? How about the Unfair Terms legislation that protects the stupid against the fine print they haven't read?

Interestingly, there is an NHS gambling addiction clinic - the only one nationally I believe. I hope income from fines are ploughed back into the treatment sector a vain hope.

Gambling as an example - would people say it is a relatively new problem?
Obviously I was a kid, so nobody would have told me, but I really can't remember anyone my parents knew having a problem with the bookies or fruit machines.

Well - obviously the online betting is relatively new. And the FTOB are also relatively new and take money which is grossly disproportionate to someone's weekly income and can do it in a few minutes. Also I believe the number of betting shops per head of population is denser than it used to be

It seems to be how the world is, nowadays. That sounds so 'elderly' to say, but its true, I think. Almost everything is available the minute it enters your mind.

I have just had an email from an organisation I support (for the moment) congratulating themselves on running a successful campaign against supermarkets using fake farm names for their products because some consumers believe that the products really come from the farm brand name on the product.

My jaw dropped. Food manufacturers have been branding food with farm names since time began. I can certainly remember it happening in my childhood, but it never occurred to me anyone could be daft enough to believe it was anything but a trade mark.

Now we have to be protected from being fools. The next thing is The Archers will have to be fronted by a statement saying that Ambridge is not a real place and the farms mentioned on it do not actually exist.

and what about all those jams and chutneys with names with brand names like 'Mrs Appleyard's'

Maryeliza54 I can't add to the topic as all I would have said you have done already in several posts.

I don't think gambling is a relatively new problem, one of our relatives would meet her husband outside his work every pay day and get money for food and rent, before he blew the lot gambling. That was in the 1920's and 30's.
I suspect like so many other addictions (drugs/alcohol/food/porngraphy) it's a growing problem. So many things are accessible via the internet, money, gambling, porn and even dial a drug delivery.

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/31/gambling-industry-third-party-companies-online-casinos

It's hardly a level playing field is it? Gambling industry vs gamblers? Maybe that's why a bit of state control/regulation is not entirely a bad thing

I had a neighbour who was 'living in the community' with a mental health difficulty. She was notified by a 'this is how it will be' directive that her allowances would change from a weekly pension cashed at the post office (which she was managing) to a monthly payment into a bank account. She had no capacity to be able to budget and got into a financial mess very quickly. The bank called her in to 'discuss the situation' and gave her an overdraft to pay off her outstanding debt. She promptly went out and bought presents for friends and family as the bank had 'given' her this money. She deteriorated rapidly with the worry caused by final demands etc and the last I heard of her she'd been placed in a secure unit a hundred miles away from family and friends. She cut herself off, even from her mother and sister, not wanting people to know what a mess she was in. Fingers could be pointed in several directions but it seemed that no-one was prepared to take responsibility for the situation they'd imposed on her.

Ambridge not a real place? Don't be silly Monica - it's in Borsetshire
On a serious note - I'm uncomfortable with the general increase in the use of the term "addiction" to cover all sorts of damaging compulsive behaviour such as overeating, shopping, gambling. Are these behaviours really an addiction?

Betting companies use psychological techniques to reinforce potentially addictive behaviour. My understanding is that the company failed to comply with a code of practice that is laid down to enable gambling addicts to indicate to a company that they wish to be denied future access to betting in order to try and beat their addiction.

Is it being said that all people with addictions are intrinsically mentally unstable/ill, as baggs seems to be suggesting, and therefore require mental health services? If so, I'm not sure I agree with that. The fact is, we are all to some degree vulnerable to psychological manipulation (the basis of virtually all modern advertising), and have an inbuilt propensity to respond to carefully structured positive reinforcements (as various experiments have shown). Everybody's brain is physiologically different - and some people are more vulnerable to addiction/risk.

If someone with a growing credit card debt is offered an increase in their credit limit, I would describe that as "irresponsible lending". The fact is this country is increasingly reliant on personal debt to keep it afloat, and people are encouraged to incur debt - and then blamed when they do so.