Advertising drives gambling

Chris Bond’s report on the increasing numbers of people with gambling problems is not very surprising (Yorkshire Post, February 16).

The days of occasional football pools’ millionaires are long gone. Indeed, the idea of “no publicity” has disappeared too. Television in particular is crammed with tempting gambling adverts, and The National Lottery has just introduced another daily lottery to entice the gullible or desperate to find yet more ways to risk their pound coins.

A visit to any bookmaker’s shop will open unsuspecting or innocent eyes to the “chasers” – big money gamblers who win big, lose big, and never know when to stop. But these same bookies now house far more tempting fare than in the good old days of horse and greyhound racing only.

Fruit and roulette machines, virtual computerised horse and dog racing, the in-house daily lotteries of each bookmaker, foreign racing – all hit you full in the face as soon as you enter the shop. Smoky back-street gambling joints have become mini Las Vegas-style casinos. In addition, relentless TV advertising is promoting online gambling.

Betting, in the right hands, is a harmless bit of fun. Unlike drinking alcohol or smoking, a small and controlled daily or weekly habit offers the chance of a nice monetary return. In hard times, some people are willing to overreach, and the proliferation of betting opportunities increases the “thrill of the chase” followed by the penniless hangover.

Mounting unemployment and debt problems will tempt many more people to visit the bookmaker or lottery shop, rather than the pawnbroker or loan shark. Quick fixes are always sought first in what has become a lottery society.

Until gambling is acknowledged as a society-wide ingredient of serious addiction, and its overall promotion strictly limited, the resulting personal and family damage will continue to rise.

Television and advertising hold that responsibility firmly in their own money-making hands. Even then, a fool and his money are soon parted.

Dealing with empty shops

From: Dan Thompson, Empty Shops Network, Tower Road, Worthing, Sussex.

I READ Karl Battersby’s response to the Local Data Company’s report on Rotherhams’s empty shops with some amusement but no real surprise (Yorkshire Post, February 15).

I run the Empty Shops Network, an organisation which helps people reuse shops for community projects by providing free resources on the website www.artistsandmakers.com/emptyshops and mapping spaces on www.spareplace.com.

Across the country, we’re seeing exactly what the Local Data Company are reporting; empty, run-down shops and people getting fed up with the way their town centres are suffering. It’s more than just recession, with at least one-in-five of the shops now empty having no commercial future. The high street has lost the battle with out-of-town retail parks, supermarkets and online shopping and all the evidence shows we need to find new ways to use our town centres.

As Irena Bauman predicts, they can support small, high-quality independents, niche retail outlets and a range of leisure activity.

Across the country we’re also seeing the same reaction Karl Battersby has; local authority officers and town centre managers who don’t understand that the landscape of British town centres is undergoing a huge change. I look forward to local residents, in true Big Society style, using the Empty Shops Network to show their councils how town centres should be run.

Use it or lose it on the buses

From: JM McCloy, Parish Clerk, Burton Salmon Parish Council, Leeds.

ALEXANDRA Woodsworth’s article made a very persuasive case for the continuation of financial support for bus services (Yorkshire Post, February 19). In a previous life as a bus operator, the greatest competitor to the bus service was, and still is, the car. It is a convenient mode of transport when compared with the frequency and reliability of bus services, not to mention the unpleasantness of waiting in poor weather for that bus service, fearing it may not even arrive.

There is no reason to provide financial support for rural, or even urban bus services when there are no passengers using the service. This has been the case in many parts of the country in the evening or at weekends.

If, as she states, those without a car who live away from busy commercial routes should not have to be stuck at home every evening, weekend or bank holiday are unable to access leisure, tourism and healthy social activities, then where were they when the services were provided, subsidised or not?

This village has a half-decent service during the day, but evening services were curtailed some years ago because no-one was using the bus service to access those leisure, tourism and healthy social activities.

The adage of use it or lose it is very significant.

Practices that betray God

From: Philip Smith, New Walk, Beverley.

IN reply to Miss Gibbard’s assertion (Yorkshire Post, February 21 that there are no false traditions in the Catholic Church, here are just a few that have had no place in scripture or Christianity over the years

The inquisition that murdered hundreds of thousands of Protestants, rosary beads, the selling of indulgences, banning ordinary people from reading the scriptures in their own language, infant baptism, baptism by sprinkling, belief in a trinity, worship of the Virgin Mary and relics, the bestowing of sainthood, pilgrimages, belief in purgatory, transubstantiation, shrines to saints, praying to saints, paid clergy, the clergy in very expensive clothing, holy watery – need I go on.

God has been betrayed for centuries by such practices.