Telegram Columnist: Gambling Act Stinks

by Mira Patel, News Staff Writer

September 12, 2007

Worldwide online casinos rejoiced at the news that Britain had finally passed the Gambling Act 2005. The Act came into effect on the first day on August, and by the time the weekend had passed, consumers were complaining about it. One of the voices decrying the online gambling law was Vicki Woods, of the London Telegraph newspaper. Woods opened her column with the tale of how, by the third or fourth day of the Act’s existence, her e-mail inbox had already been flooded with solicitations from shady-sounding internet casinos, none of which Woods had ever heard of. The Blair government might want to spin British gambling as a matter of freedom, declares Woods, but the only ones enjoying their liberty are the online casinos’ proprietors.

Woods complains that the Gambling Act was designed to encourage online casino groups to bring their lucrative businesses to British soil, where the government and citizens could reap some of online gambling’s massive profits. Unfortunately, the government didn’t think the matter through all the way to completion. Because England requires licensure of all internet casinos, and imposes a fifteen percent tax, these businesses aren’t exactly queuing up to relocate. After all, other locales tout tax rates of just three or four percent. Therefore, no-one is making money off the advent of legalized online gambling in England – other than the online casinos.

Nowadays, online casinos can, for the first time ever, show commercials boosting their sites, so long as all actors utilized in the spots are above twenty-five years of age, and the ads don’t link online gambling with sexual success. The government is showing off some pretty conflicted morals connected with internet casinos, says Woods, and they need to get their ideas in like before the Act can do anything but make a fool of the nation.
 

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