Gambling News by House of Odds

One of the great unexplained mysteries of our age is New Labour's obsessive
love affair with gambling. First, ministers press ahead with supercasinos,
schmoozing up to some deeply unsavoury characters. Then they insist the UK
should become a 'world leader' in Internet betting. Now they are at it
again, lifting restrictions on playing pub poker for cash. Why? Don't we
have quite enough social problems, without adding to them? In defiance of
expert advice, ministers assure us that legalising small-stakes betting in
pubs will 'civilise' gambling. Oh yes? Isn't that almost exactly what they
told us about 24-hour alcohol licensing? Wasn't that supposed to put an end
to binge-drinking and foster a civilised 'continental cafe society'? Try
telling that, a year on, to the police and paramedics who pick up the pieces
on our vomit-spattered streets - as so graphically illustrated in this paper
today. Showing characteristic detachment from reality, ministers say they
will cap pub-goers' gambling losses at about £10 a night. Do they honestly
expect busy bar staff to keep tabs on their customers? No. There could be no
surer recipe than mixing gambling with alcohol for encouraging all-night
poker sessions, addiction, crippling debt and crime. As usual, of course, it
will be the poorest and most vulnerable in our society who suffer most.
Aren't these the very people whose interests the Labour Party was founded to
protect? For 300 years, the Union of England and Scotland has been a
relationship based not only on mutual advantage but on genuine affection and
a feeling of common purpose.

How bitterly sad, therefore, that Labour's inequitable and cynical
devolution settlement, reached to buy off Scottish Nationalist votes, is
breeding ill-feeling on both sides of the border.

According to a weekend poll, a hefty 68 per cent of English voters now want
their own separate parliament, while 52 per cent of Scots want full
independence.

England's growing resentment is hardly surprising at a time when Scotland
enjoys benefits worth an extra £1,050 per head every year, denied to the
English taxpayers who subsidise them: university tuition fees, nursing care
for the elderly, new drugs on the NHS to alleviate Alzheimer's and other
diseases.

Over the weekend, Scottish members of the Westminster Cabinet launched a
series of attacks on the separatists. Are they at last waking up to the
damage that they themselves have caused?

What a tragedy it will be for the English and Scots alike if Tony Blair's
most lasting legacy turns out to be the destruction of one of the most
successful international marriages in history.