Billionaire bookmaker Fred Done bemoans the state of the nation. “I would not want to be reborn in Britain,” he sobs, as he joins fellow billionaire Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe in referring to our green and pleasant land as “Broken Britain“. Unlike Big Jim, he does actually live in the UK and pays taxes but if Britain really is broken – and spoiler alert: it isn’t – it would have been down, at least in part, to people like Fred Done.
Done, who owns the BetFred gambling organisation, reckons that by 2030 there will be no more betting shops on the High Street. “Betting shops and jobs will go if the morality police strike again,” he whines. Well, boo hoo is all I can say, Fred. Because you give the game away in a Times article where you complained about the wage rises your employees earn, presumably because of the rise in the Minimum Wage. Fred, it seems, would like his own workers to enjoy the same levels of poverty as many of the people who have made him the billionaire he is today.
I have a bit of an old fashioned attitude to bookmakers, in that I have never yet met a poor one. One reason they are not poor is because of the vast income they attract from problem gamblers. I understand the difference between so called problem gamblers and those who have a regular “flutter” every week, but in many instances the latter group can spend what I would call large amounts of money betting “responsibly”, as the advertising blurb always tells us to do. Of course, what they really mean lose responsibility. Betting companies are not community projects. They exist to make money from all their customers. To claim otherwise would be a flat out lie.
Walking through Bristol’s decaying shopping centre just the other day, I passed a branch of BedFred, as I often do. It is not a coincidence that the vast majority of betting shops are in decaying and deprived areas. Leafy Clifton in Bristol has few, if any betting shops. I have to be careful how I phrase this, but clearly the betting companies have done their research and have worked out that there is little money to be paid from the affluent, well-educated residents of Bristol’s “posh” areas. Casting a casual glance through the bookie’s window in Broadmead, I saw the usual collection of, frankly, down-at-heel men, usually middle aged or older, piling money into slot machines or idly watching flickering screens showing the types of bets available and, inevitably, horse racing. I may have got the wrong end of the stick, but there was no joy to be seen in the dimly lit BetFred. Just a wide variety of opportunities to lose money.
Frankly, I do not know how the likes of Fred Done sleep at night. According to the Gambling Commission, there are 1.4 million problem gamblers in Britain, 2.7% of the population, who lose something like £11.5 billion a year. These, at least in part, are the people who ensure that Fred Done’s name can be preceded with “billionaire bookmaker“.
I would not lose any sleep if every bookmaking company, including both online and High Street, went to the wall. Doubtless, there would be a return to illegal betting operations, which ironically how Fred Done started out, but that could be left to the forces of law and order to deal with. That is not to say that I, as the UK’s Great Leader, would seek to shut down the industry – I wouldn’t: I’d regulate it to fuck – but quite how a business model that relies on customers losing their money and, in some instances, having their lives wrecked, can be regarded as ethical is beyond me.
It’s simple. When people like Fred Done wang on about Broken Britain, then some of the broken bits are 100% down to their greed and cynicism. Luckily for him, the option of being reborn is not an option for the 83 year-old billionaire anymore than it is for the rest of us so he won’t have to fret about that. But before he shuffles off his mortal coil he can at least feel satisfaction at having becoming stinking rich at the expense of fools, who are still happy to part with their money and addicts who have little choice. Sweet dreams, Fred. If there’s a hole where your heart should be, having sweet dreams should be easy enough.
