Robin Oakley

Sympathy for the bookies

How attacks on betting terminals could hurt racing

(Photo: Alan Crowhurst/Getty)

We all have to adjust to reality, like the lady who entered a Barbados bar having already enjoyed several gin and Dubonnets. On her shoulder was perched a rare parrot and she announced, ‘The first person to guess what this bird is can go to bed with me tonight.’ A voice calls out: ‘A turkey.’ After a quick survey of the other bar stools she replied: ‘That’s near enough.’

Under the leadership of the British Horseracing Authority chief Paul Bittar, racing too has been adjusting to reality, most notably in working for a better relationship with the betting industry on whom it must continue to rely for funding. Bittar has been nearly as loud as the bookies in condemning the Chancellor’s Budget for raising the Machine Games Duty tax on fixed-odds betting terminals in betting shops by another 5 per cent only a year after introducing it at 20 per cent. The Association of British Bookmakers has warned that the shock duty rise has put at risk 3,000 betting offices and 15,000 jobs.

Few people love the bookies. Even those who like a bet tend to regard them, like airports and the smell of fish frying, as a regrettable necessity and the government has been under heavy media pressure to counter problem gambling. But not even the Chancellor dared claim that the new duty will help on that front. I guess he may have hoped that increasing the Machine Games Duty, while giving £40 million of relief to the nation’s bingo parlours, will help to de-toff the government’s image, although the thought of the Camerons and the Osbornes trooping down to the nearest converted cinema for an evening of ‘Number Ten — David’s Den’, ‘Forty-Four — Droopy Drawers’ and ‘Twenty Eight — In a State’ just doesn’t quite convince, does it? The Chancellor simply argued, ‘These machines are highly lucrative and therefore it is right we now raise the duty on them to 25 per cent.’

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