My husband loved football, I am a Manc and love Man City but he was an avid LCFC suporter. He went all over the place to watch them and started many of chants when he was watching the games. He would often come home with destroyed vocal chords. City was everything to him but he also had a soft spot for my team too
However, I recently lost my husband through a gambling addiction. He was a happy man but was sucked into a hole after being given 'free bets' which ultimately cost him his life. I have made a video that explains more here.
I have set up a petition asking the government to ban 'free bets'. This is where I am asking for your support. Could you sign and possibly share it.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/587806
Sorry for asking but I am trying to gain as much support for this as possible and as he put his all into being a huge footy supporter, I thought I would give this a go. Signing will take 1 minute and sharing will take even less time. Hope you do not mind me posting.
Done
Just to show what you are up against I sent the following email in 2017, I am still awaiting a reply, I wish you all the best and really feel for you.
mark hammond <
hammocity
To:
carolyn.harris.mp@parliament.uk
Tue, 31 Jan 2017 at 10:32
Hi Carolyn
I read on the BBC website this morning about your campaign to reduce the devastating effect FOB's have on families and individuals in economically deprived communities.
Well I can also tell you it's also a scourge amongst all communities. I worked in the Gambling Industry for almost 30 years and although we had some gambling addicts which was awful to see the majority of punters were balanced and had a bet just like other people have a pint, just a bit of fun and no addiction involved.
However these machines are in a different league, they attract people absolutely addicted to them. In the late 1970's there were around 10,000 betting shops, they steadily declined to around 8,500 by the mid eighties due to a host of reasons and many Independents sold out to the big boys or as in the case of Mining communities just closed because the business wasn't there anymore.
Due to Government legislation whereby the shops were limited to four machines per shop, the only way to get more machines was to open more shops, this has led to the current proliferation of betting shops on our High Street, its nothing to do with general demand, it's just purely to get more machines out there. William Hill at one stage said they were going to operate shop's with just one staff member, I don't know if they went ahead with this but you can walk into most shops in a morning and there will be a single member of staff and always punters gambling on the FOB's.
Bookmakers saying it could be the end for the High Street are just words, shops would close but they shouldn't be there in the first place, look how many are next to each other in City and Town Centres, it's overkill and a nuisance in our communities.
A more sinister side effect of these machines is the money laundering from Drug dealers, William Hill had/has a shop in Penrith where the local drug dealer was turning over £40k per week back in 2007. I know for a fact and this is replicated in Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester and I would imagine all over the country, the Bookmakers know this but they won't admit it. They also know money laundering goes on with their virtual betting which consists of cartoon, racing, greyhounds and several other platforms, The profit margins are so small it encourages money laundering mainly from the Drug dealers. Profit on FOB's is around 3.5% whereby on other sports its about 16%.
Seeing the Bookmakers crying they may have to close shops is a joke, the shops would not exist without the FOB's, they are indeed the crack cocaine of gambling. I would like to see them completely eliminated and not even reduced to £2 a spin.
I wish you all the best in your campaign, go for it and don't let anyone side-line you, this is for the greater good of our society.
FYI, I worked for William Hill (Bookmakers) from 1980 to 1989, SIS (Broadcaster to Betting Shops) from 1989 to 2000 and Alphameric (Epos, Data display systems into betting shops and Broadcaster)from 2000 to 2009.
Regards
Mark Hammond