Anti-gambling bodies make the most of TV program on FOBTs

The screening this week of the Channel 4 ‘Dispatches’ television program on the proliferation of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals in high street betting shops has been seized on by a number of religious publications to punt Gambling Watch UK.

Gambling Watch UK is an independent activist group formed to question the present policy of support for the expansion of gambling in the UK and to propose alternative policies. Its objectives include:

* Understand and challenge the arguments used by those individuals and organisations lobbying for gambling expansion.
* Keep a critical watch on gambling policy developments in the UK and elsewhere.
* Marshal support in opposition to gambling expansion.
* Support other organisations nationally and internationally whose aims are in line with those of Gambling Watch UK.

Reviews of the Dispatches program in several publications drew attention to its claims that the expansion of UK gambling has “…exposed poor communities in particular to businesses that take many thousands of pounds out of the local economy every day,” and the remorse expressed by Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman for her party’s gambling industry decisions whilst in power.

Some articles claim that organisations such as Quakers, Methodists, Salvation Army, secular addiction groups, Ekklesia and many others warned the Labour politicians, concluding: “But they weren’t listening. Nor is the Coalition government at the moment, it seems.”

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