Responsible Gambling: Help & Guidance

Maybe instead of using credit cards to bet they should have to obtain a loan and undergo credit checks. That might stop a few

 

you undergo credit checks to get a credit card! thats the point im making!

 

This is true Gaz, but the banks are pretty keen on not tightening the restrictions too much. Credit cards are a massive earner for lenders. The Australian GDP is only half of the UKs, so I'd imagine our credit card interest debts for the year 2016 which stood at AU $5.6 billion, would pale alongside yours.

I've just read an article in The Guardian which stated: The regulator (Financial Conduct Authority) said more than 3 million UK credit card holders were in “persistent debt”, and typically handed over about £2.50 in interest and charges for every £1 they repaid of their borrowing. But it added that because these customers were “profitable,” card firms had few incentives to help them.

 

I stopped reading when you mentioned the guardian

 

Betting companies hit with fines of £19.6m over a year

Betting companies in the UK have paid out £19.6 million in penalties over the course of a year for failing to protect problem gamblers and stop money launderers.
The Gambling Commission said it had carried out more than 160 investigations in the 2018/2019 financial year and had imposed a variety of sanctions on operators, including the financial penalties.
Among the firms to be fined were online casino company Daub Alderney, which was ordered to pay £7.1 million, and Paddy Power Betfair – now known as Flutter Entertainment – which was fined £2.2 million.
The regulator’s second annual enforcement report said a number of companies had failed to detect customers at risk of becoming problem gamblers.
It also said it had found repeated examples of customers being allowed to gamble significant sums of money in short time frames, beyond their personal affordability, without any intervention from the operator.

Gambling Commission chief executive Neil McArthur said: ““I want gambling consumers in Britain to be able to enjoy the fairest and safest gambling in the world and I want gambling operators to work with us to put customer enjoyment and safety at the top of their corporate agenda.
“As the report shows, we will be tough when we find operators bending the rules or failing to meet our expectations, but we also want to try and minimise the need for such action by providing advice, a programme of support material and compliance activity to help operators get things right in the first place.”

The report said a “substantial number” of investigations had been carried out in the online gambling sector last year, and added that some operators were found to have anti-money laundering policies that were not fit for purpose.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that betting firms, health bodies and charities would unite for the first time under a three-year strategy to make “much faster” progress with cutting gambling-related harm.
The National Strategy to Reduce Gambling Harms will co-ordinate work to tackle the problems and achieve a lasting impact, the Gambling Commission said.
Under the strategy, Public Health England will release its first review of evidence on health harms relating to gambling in spring next year.



It still always amazes me as to how much money these bookies actually turn over, be it betted through terminals, shops phones etc and yet the people who suffer from it when it all goes wrong get nothing at all... Some big numbers indeed...

 

Was a thread about this about a month ago. It was a bit of a storm on Twitter at the time but then everyone did as asked!

 

Not everyone

 

Reeb's it was me who put the thread up as I had PadPower hounding me to update my information... As of yet I've done nothing, heard nowt, and am still betting...

 

It's a shame there are so many jobs connected to the gambling industry. As I would shed no tears if everyone of them went bust.

 

There's a great amount of lip service paid to this problem, but very little is being achieved at the coalface. The trickle down effect from the tighter margins at top means that jobs at the lower end are on the line. The article highlighted the plights of the big money losers, but for every one of those, there would probably be tens of thousands of addicted punters who bet in coins and small notes.

According to the Gambling Commission, there about half a million English people who are identified as problem gamblers. We all know that the great bulk of wealth lives with a small percentage of the population, so the vast bulk of those who are chronic punters are the poor. Everybody knows this, but bugger all is actually happening to address the problem.

I don't know what the Gross Gambling Yield is for England, but for the UK, it's somewhere around 14.5 billion pounds per year. No government is going to turn it's back on that sort of money. So it's business as usual.

 

I'm afraid the problem starts at home. Education is needed so that people appreciate from an early age the dangers of becoming addicted to gambling to ensure they don't start off down that path. Gambling to win money is an illness and bookies are making a fortune off these ill people. Youngsters need to be educated at an early stage how to budget. Then, if they can afford (say) 10% of their disposable income on luxuries, they have to decide which luxuries they want within that budget. If they can set aside £x a month then they can choose whether to spend all of that on a flutter on the horses (knowing they may get nothing in return) or spend it on fags (knowing the money goes up in smoke and their lungs get clogged up) or sporting activity, holidaying etc - or a portion towards any of those. They should be educated to know that if they spend any more than their budget then there will be insufficient left to pay for bills and essentials. If they grow up with this mentality engrained they should be OK. If they don't listen, t's their own bloody fault

If people become poor and homeless for any other reason, that could tempt them into gambling with a chance to win something. These people should not be allowed by Government to reach that level. When you think of the millions the Government wastes on so many things, it is criminal that something can't be done for those who are genuinely in need