Britons gambled £50 billion last year - more than the government spent on defence and transport combined. That represents more than £800 for every man, woman and child in the country and is a seven-fold increase on the total gambled in 2001.
· 350,000 Britons admit to having a gambling problem
· Will rise to one million if proposed changes to gambling laws are introduced
· Over £930m was paid out in prizes in Bingo Clubs in 2000
· The Bingo industry made a pre-tax profit of £119m in the same year.
· There are 250,000 slot machines spread across the UK
· New machines with a £500 pay-out allow punters to stake up to £10 per go.
· Britons fed an estimated £10.43bn into slot machines in 2001/02
· That’s an average of £28m a day.
· There are 123 registered casinos in the UK 2nd highest in Europe.
· £3.5bn was exchanged for gambling chips last year in the UK
· The average amount a person spends during a casino trip in the UK is £44
· The amount retained by the casinos each day totalled £1.7m in 2000/01.
· Betting at the bookmakers also amounts to over £1bn.
· Internet gambling ia making it all easier and anonymous.
Railton on gambling:
“You ask me about betting. Betting is universally recognized as a bad and ruinous thing, though none of the silly Governments care to suppress it and the bookmakers, as they ought to do. Betting is money promised for no real equivalent. A bet won means necessarily a bet lost; that is, A takes money from B not for anything supplied to B, but only because a bet has been made. Then this money, not honestly earned, is generally taken away from some worthy object. Betting is, I fear, more widely and radically destructive than drink itself, and renders all who mix in it more and more callous to the losses and sufferings of others.”
“The compulsive gambler dreaming of his yacht…. They need you, they need me, they need Christ…”
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3 comments:
We're fighting this in one of our corps here in Latvia. Whilst it took the threat of a "one arm bandit" arcade opening in the same building as our corps hall to kick start the campaign, there has been a realisation that the town already has too many arcades and the already poor are suffering the most!
Unfortunately the world of betting is a trully world-wide problem. Here in the US we have dog tracks, horse tracks, Off-track betting parlors, Indian Casinos all over the country and of course the big 3 of Atlantic City, Reno, and Las Vegas. Oh yeah, did I mention the bingo and casino nights that the catholic churches put on?
Thanks for the post. Keep up the fight!
In His Grip,
Dave
Casino nights at church that's crazy God taught us to give not take and gambling is clearly trying to take.
I come from Hong Kong a part of China that is currently tax free, that's right business men earn millions here because there is no tax, the reason Hong Kong gets it's money from House payments (with a severe lack of living space houses can cost 1millionHKD) and gambling. Society has gotten to a stage here that the tax of gamboling (HK$12.405 billion)is enough to run the whole city!! and what’s worse is the fact that all of the profits go to Charity making the gambling justified.
1billion HKD are donated each year to charities around Hong Kong some of that is sadly taken by the Salvation Army HK. How are we to make a change when we benefit from the sin it self.
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