London doesn't need Las Vegas-on-Thames

Published in the Evening Standard 25 May 2006

By rights we should be celebrating: we’ve just won two shots at the jackpot. The prize in question is the right to open Britain’s first super-casino – a huge gambling palace with no fewer than 1,250 slot machines offering an unlimited payout. On the final shortlist of eight, announced yesterday, London is represented twice. Now both Wembley stadium and the Millennium Dome will slug it out against rivals from Blackpool, Cardiff, Glasgow, Newcastle, Sheffield and Manchester. That gives us a one in four chance – or as the bookies would put it, 3 to 1.

After our triumph in the Olympics last year, we should be confident: we’re on a winning streak. Besides, London has a serious advantage. Industry sources tell me that casinos flourish when they’re close to a diverse population. Apparently, ethnic minorities – Chinese, Cypriots, Jews, Indians – are disproportionately keen on a night out at the blackjack tables. So much so that the white homogeneity of a town like Blackpool could count against it. As it did with the Olympics, our very variety could bring us success.

And surely Londoners should be crossing their fingers for this contest. What could be better than finding a clear, profitable use for the Dome – once doomed to be a white elephant, transformed instead into a Vegas-on-Thames? Alternatively, wouldn’t it be great if the beleaguered rebuilding of Wembley stadium could be redeemed by victory in the race to build the biggest casino in Europe?

Advocates say it won’t just be gamblers who will benefit. The whole, winning area will gain from the massive injection of cash. And this will be massive. An initial spend of £250m with much more to come, one bidder told me yesterday: “This will be a development on the scale of a Bluewater or Brent Cross.” It could, he enthuses, amount to the biggest inward investment into the UK since the arrival of the Japanese car companies.

If either Greenwich or Wembley win, they will be regenerated, as developers build not just a casino but an entertainment complex from shops to bowling alleys to cinemas, maybe even, Las Vegas style, a new hotel or two. That will mean fun for locals – and plenty of jobs.

So why am I not blowing on my lucky dice, muttering a mantra and praying for London to win? Why is this one competition I hope we lose?

Perhaps it’s a memory I have of a trip to New Orleans more than a decade ago, shortly after the US had liberalised its gambling laws, allowing the roulette wheels to spin not only in Vegas and Atlantic City but across the country. I remember the hoopla and glitz of the moored Mississippi paddle-steamers converted into floating casinos, as well as the big promises of urban regeneration that came with them.

The trouble is, I also remember the costs they exacted. The casinos certainly made their operators big bucks, but they hardly regenerated the surrounding areas: local restaurants and bars went to the wall, unable to compete with the bargain-priced (or free) drinks and meals
at the gaming palaces next door. Casinos can afford to offer free food, drink and entertainment to lure in the crowds – knowing they will recover their costs twice or three times over when the punters lose and lose again.

Perhaps the loss of a few small restaurants, shops and cinemas is no tragedy, hardly enough to stand in the way of what the government insists is “a diverse, vibrant and innovative industry and a popular leisure activity.” But there is a more severe human cost.

Charity groups estimate that Britain already has 370,000 problem gamblers and the evidence shows that the more prevalent and available gambling becomes, the more people become addicted. The advice group GamCare have just reported a stunning rise in the number of people seeking their help – a leap of 41.3% since 2004, an increase mainly attributed to the phenomenal rise of internet gambling.

Behind those cold numbers are families driven to poverty as a father or mother shoves every penny they have – and plenty they don’t - into a machine they believe will soon shower them with riches. Wayne Rooney can lose £700,000 and survive – but speak to the families who found their furniture pawned to feed a habit that could never be sated.

The rules on gambling were recently relaxed in New Zealand, allowing poker machines and the like in pubs. Now landlords speak of queues forming before 7am, made up of punters desperate for a fix. On Thursdays it’s even worse, as jobless men arrive to gamble away their dole money. I spoke to the daughter of a New Zealand publican yesterday; she described finding toddlers wandering alone in the pub, separated from parents too fixated on the one-armed bandits to notice them. What was once a pleasant diversion during a pint has become, she says, “hideous and predatory.”

The casinos insist they are a world apart from such grubby squalor. They’re helped by an image of James Bond glamour that persists in the public mind, all Martinis and white tuxedos (an image that will surely be refreshed by the release this year of Casino Royale). But US data show that one in three casino gamblers are addicts, and that 6% of the population in the immediate vicinity of a casino get hooked.

So I can understand why both Brent and Greenwich have bid for the supercasino licence: they see big winnings, either a share of the revenue or a promise from the developer to do some serious building in the area. All but starved by central government of the right to raise their own funds, they see gambling as a way to bring in some desperately needed cash.

But that need should not trump all others. Whoever wins this prize, they should promise to put the result to a referendum of local people: do we want this super-casino, yes or no? The councils can’t predict the result, but they should do it all the same. After all, isn’t that what gambling’s all about.

Posted on May 25, 2006 10:53 AM

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