I'm impressed Baboonery, are you aiming to misquote everyone on this forum before you are finished? You're hilarious!!
I am giving you gambling figures such as 'we lose nine-and-a-half billion pounds every year, a figure which has doubled in just four years', and 'most of Britain's bookies are concentrated in the poorest neighbourhoods, like inner-city Hackney which has 95 shops'.
You are coming back with 'the number of betting shops have nearly halved' - from an unspecified point in the past! Well done, you've sent me down in flames!!! And you aren't choosing spurious facts or statistics to support your argument?! HAHAahaHHAaHAHaHAhAhahaAHahahAAHAA!!!
Please get a grip. There is a reality of problem debt and gambling addiction, and bookmakers cash in on it. Most people are obviously not rampant gamblers, but I don't see the benefit to our area of more bookmaking establishments.
I'm not misquoting you, I'm satirising you, because your flimsy arguments are worthy of little else.
Are you claiming your three-in-four gamble every week stat is accurate? Because it isn't. Even the man you cited as an expert to back up that stat says it isn't. Would you like to withdraw it? Or are you going to do a King Canute act?
As I said, my gambling monkey friend, statistics indicate a trend, and the data can often be either inaccurate or tailored to suit either side of an argument. Surely you are aware of that, considering your adhesion to the '15,000 down to 8000' figure? The statistic wasn't mine, it came from a website, as you well know, much like the one's below which quote other stats on the same subject. The davehill website states that 'the Gambling Commission, the government's watchdog, recently reported almost no increase in either the percentage of people in Britain who gamble (about half of us, if you exclude the national lottery) or the numbers of problem gamblers (about 250,000) over the past ten years.'
From which you could take that the amount of gamblers hasn't increased recently, which is obviously a good thing. You could also take from it that around half of all people gamble, and that is if you do not even take into account the national lottery. Still a fairly high percentage then eh? P-E-D-A-N-T.
Have a read.
http://www.hackney.gov.uk/print/xc-news-...ookies.htm
http://davehill.typepad.com/bigbritain/2...egula.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7001329.stm
Are you claiming that there are now more bookies than ever before in your precious 'society'? Because there really, really aren't. There is one more in FH than there used to be. One. I bet (ha!) that at a point in the not-too-distant past that there were two or even more: some FH lifer might like to confirm. There are 95 bookies in Hackney. I'd be AMAZED if this is a historic high. Bookies have closed left, right and centre in the last 20 years as the industry has consolidated and as the lottery has slashed their receipts. It may be easier than ever before to open one on a regulatory level, but that doesn't mean the money's there to sustain it.
Again, I didn't make any such claims about 'more bookies than ever before in *my*precious 'society'. I also stated that my issue was with more opening in FH. As you are well aware, there was one bookmakers here. Within the last two years, we have another one. And with William Hill taking over the Blockbuster's site, there is the potential for a third. Can you count? Or do you want to be pedantic about that possibility? So sorry, but I think you'll find that some Forest Hill lifer has stepped in and NOT backed your insistence that they are decreasing rather than increasing in the local area. The website's above also seem to indicate that yes, 95 bookies in hackney is a historic high. I'll let you know if I find incontrovertible proof for you, but frankly I think I'm wasting my time on a moron who appears to have another agenda. What is it? Have you been banned from the other two already?
And if your grasp of common business sense is so tenuous that you can't spot a difference between a new company opening a site in the market and the same company opening a second one, then there's little hope for you, and you have no place lecturing those who choose of their own free will to spend their money in whatever way they choose, and calling them stupid.
I doubt very much that all of the bookmakers in Hackney are run by 95 different companies. When it comes to gambling, what difference does it make if the two establishments on either side of the road are run by the same people? As long as there are mugs out there to pour their money into the gambling abyss, it doesn't matter in which outlet they blow it. Being connected, it is quite possible that one will subsidise the newly opened one until both are covering their expenses and turning a profit - an issue I doubt either will have anyway. What do you need more bookies for? Why argue so vehemently for their expansion in FH? If you are so desperate to get rid of your cash, I can point you in the direction of a certain BI saleswoman with pimps to support!
By the way, most of the increase in gambling turnover in the last ten years has come from city traders engaging in spread betting. This is also the type of gambling engaged in most frequently by problem gamblers.
Bookies are subject to supply and demand just like anyone else. Too many chasing money and some will close, as has happened throughout the country in the last decade. The fact that one more opens up doesn't create demand.
Fair enough. It doesn't change the issue I am speaking about, which is more than adequately addressed in this quote, again from the davehill website (above):
The greatest concentration of problem gamblers is among the young, especially males, and the poorest. Gamblers from these groups are those most likely to make use of betting shops, and betting shops are where the most addictive and (for the punter) costly forms of gambling are provided. Perhaps the real problem is not the spread of betting shops as such but some of the newer gaming options they provide. Video roulette and the like were subjected to no restrictions under the Gambling Act (2005) which came into force last month.
Again, what does poverty breed? C-R-I-M-E-! 
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