Things get better — for betting

In a free society, people are at liberty to gamble, much as they are at liberty to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and engage in other practices which, if indulged to excess, can have terrible consequences. Gambling has wrecked lives and enlivened others. The morality of a casino is in the eye of the beholder: one man’s den of iniquity is another’s harmless pleasure-dome. A government’s responsibility is to provide a framework of regulation that meets Parliament’s approval, and then to stand well back.

On this reckoning, the proposed super-casino in Manchester is hardly a threat to western civilisation. The planned complex sounds truly ghastly: a site of 5,000 square metres packed with up to 1,250 fruit machines, a shrine to low-rent leisure pursuits. But it is revealing that the residents of Greenwich and Blackpool are so disappointed by their failure to win the contest to build the first such super-casino. They were evidently persuaded that jobs and an economic boost were at stake.