It didn’t take long for Gordon Brown to start sawing the legs off Tony Blair’s legacy.
And the first one on the rubbish heap is the ludicrous idea that you can regenerate an area of abject poverty by sticking a great big casino in the middle of it.
It was the ideal target for our new Prime Minister: the famously prudent Iron Chancellor is the son of a Church of Scotland minister and was never going to be a big fan of gambling.
A super casino could just about be understood in Blackpool, with its traditions of seaside holidays and bingo. But to stick it in Manchester, with its inner city crime, was just asking for trouble.
Good sense appears to have prevailed, and all bets are now off as far as that plan are concerned.
We have yet to find out how Mr Brown’s distaste for gambling will effect the other, smaller, casinos that were part of the overall scheme.
Certainly, strong arguments can be put up for siting a casino at Solihull, and in Wolverhampton the planned racecourse casino, or “racino”, forms part of a cohesive project including expansion of the existing hotel and conference centre.
It is one thing to build on existing projects. But to try and flag up gambling as some kind of cure for deprivation was always a distinctly dodgy bet.
For all the jobs created at gambling houses and hotels, a casino is a machine designed to part people from their money – all too often from those who can least afford to lose
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6 Comments
Los of money, dignity, employment,family etc. etc. haven’t this government acheived this already without the use of a casino?
super casino’s, not in my name.
super casino’s, not in my name, not with my tax money. i pay good money for beer and a lot of tax, i think we should spend it better.
I’ll have £5 on red.
i’ll have £5 on black.
If you look sensibly at the economics of a casino, it makes no financial sense at all. The money which is lost by the vast majority of the gamblers could have been spent on goods and services which would have employed a greater number of people. When taken to the extreme levels of losses which cause people to become bankrupt, it can be argued that casinos generate poverty for the really poor and wealth for the really rich (the casino owners).
Not a good idea all around. Government lotteries are also in the same mould, being a tax on the poor and mathematically challenged.
David