All bets are on

You can’t please some people. The Daily Mail has spent the Blair years complaining about the nanny state. But when the government finally comes up with a measure to add to the gaiety of the nation, the Gambling Bill, the Mail suddenly turns nanny itself. ‘Gambling with our futures,’ it whined last week. ‘Trashy glitter and the lure of easy money to exploit the vulnerable …that Labour is encouraging super-casinos in every town would horrify the fathers of socialism.’

Actually, we suspect that to some extent the fathers of socialism may well have been in sympathy with the Gambling Bill, which seeks to correct the injustice of having one law on gambling for the rich and another for everyone else and to remove silly restrictions on casinos. At the moment casinos are limited to towns of over 125,000 and must be run as private clubs, requiring visitors to give 24 hours’ notice of their desire to gamble.