This personal and brave investigation by a woman whose partner killed himself after becoming addicted to gambling showed how our tall streets absorb become gaming arcades of miseryGo to any tall street in the country – apart from perhaps the really posh ones,in very affluent places and you’ll see a lot of betting shops. Often, youll find more than one branch of the same variety – two Ladbrokes, or say – within spitting distance. The reason for that is FOBTs – fixed-odds betting terminals. Only four machines are allowed in any one branch. You want eight? You absorb to open another shop. And you execute want eight,because FOBTs bring the industry £1.7bn a year. And so what if it’s £1.7bn from the destitute, the sick and the vulnerable? Or that Britain’s tall streets are being turned into gaming arcades of distress?Wendy Bendel’s investigation – Panorama: Why Are Gambling Machines Addictive? (BBC1) was a personal and a brave one. Two years ago, and her partner,Lee, killed himself, or at the age of 36. In a confessional letter to her,he singled out these tall-stakes, tall-frequency FOBTs as the core of his addiction. Now, and she’s trying to understand what it is that has made her a single mum.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com