“We Don’t Need ‘Gambling Harm’ Campaigns — We Need a Mirror”

Victimhood is the New British Pastime

Once upon a time in Britain, losing your house because you spent your mortgage money on greyhounds and scratch cards was called being a plonker. These days, it's called a gambling harm incident, and there's probably a helpline, a podcast, and a specially commissioned Channel 4 documentary to go with it.

Because heaven forbid we say what everyone over the age of 45 with a functioning frontal lobe is already muttering into their pint: you lost your money because you made idiotic decisions, not because William Hill turned your brain into fondue.

We used to mock the foolish. Now, we hand them a tissue, a certificate of trauma, and a slot on Loose Women to tell us how society let them down.

“Addiction” – Now With Fewer Consequences!

Here’s the modern trick: take a vice, slap a clinical name on it, and boom – you’re no longer responsible. You’re afflicted. Compulsive spending? Shopping disorder. Constantly eating pizza and crying at Love Island? Emotional eating syndrome. Bet your child’s birthday money on a seven-horse accumulator in Doncaster? Gambling addiction.

It’s no longer “you’re behaving like a prat.” It’s “you’re suffering.” And the solution? Therapy. Awareness campaigns. Government-funded billboards with tearful actors saying, “I lost everything—then I got help.”

Here’s a radical idea: what if we brought back shame? Just a pinch. Not full-on stocks-in-the-town-square levels, but enough to make the average person think maybe—just maybe—blowing £300 on a roulette app at 3 a.m. while drunk on WKD isn’t the mark of a tragic victim, but of a chronically stupid decision-maker with the impulse control of a Jack Russell on meth.

Gambling Harm: Not a Spirit, Not a Virus, Not a Demon

Let’s get something absolutely clear before some tearful suit from the Gambling Harm Research Bureau bursts into the comments section: gambling harm is not some invisible gas cloud wafting through the streets, seeping into innocent nostrils and turning mild-mannered dads into debt-ridden degenerates.

It’s not floating around in the ether like passive smoking or the spirit of Margaret Thatcher.

It doesn’t pounce on you while you’re waiting for a bus. It’s the direct result of human beings making boneheaded, irrational choices over and over again with the enthusiasm of someone trying to lose a family court case on purpose.

And while the gambling industry is exploitative, its moral twin—the anti-gambling industry—is turning out to be just as much of a racket. Just with sadder fonts and better grant applications.

The Anti-Gambling Grift: A New Religion for the Morally Unfit

The anti-gambling crusade has become its own economy. A nice little corner of the modern grievance industry. Full of ex-addicts, moral consultants, and university departments you’ve never heard of churning out white papers nobody reads, all paid for by public funds or industry ‘levies’ that look suspiciously like legalised blackmail.

These aren’t dispassionate researchers. They’re clergy.
Their sermons? PowerPoint slides.
Their miracles? Getting £400k to tell us that “gambling adverts make people want to gamble.”

You don’t need a PhD to know that. You need eyeballs.

And their supposed compassion? It’s faux. It’s performative. It’s all “we care deeply about vulnerable people” while cashing cheques and demanding stricter laws that’ll do absolutely nothing except create a whole new class of box-ticking compliance officers.

They don’t want to help people. They want to administer them. Catalogue their misery, file it under "policy paper," and use it to beg for more funding at the next committee hearing.

Here’s a Mad Thought: Actually Teach People How to Gamble Sensibly

Instead of just wagging fingers and running support groups like it’s Alcoholics Anonymous with worse snacks, how about this:

Teach people how the bookies rinse them.
Show punters how margins work. How price manipulation occurs. Why boost odds are usually boosted in the same way a dead fish floats—it’s just surface fluff hiding something rotten underneath.

Where’s the education on bankroll management?
Where’s the lesson on not betting your entire Saturday accumulator budget on some Romanian second division match because you think you’ve "spotted value"?

The Bookies Want 10%? Tell Them to Piss Off

Let’s be clear: most modern sportsbooks are designed to extract a guaranteed 10% edge over time. That’s not a game—it’s a direct debit.

If your favourite bookmaker wants that kind of margin, then feck ‘em off. Seriously. Go outside. Get a hobby. Back a snail in your garden with more favourable terms. At least he’s not charging you vig on every move.

If you still must gamble, do it like someone who’s trying to survive, not someone trying to relive a Danny Dyer film. Set a budget. Track your bets. Know the actual probability of your selections. And never, ever think "it’s due." That’s how you end up living in your mum’s conservatory explaining to a psychologist why you bet on horse racing in Singapore at 4am.

The Infantilisation of Britain

We now live in a society where adults want to be treated like toddlers. “It wasn’t my fault. The button was so shiny.”

What used to be common sense has been rebranded as oppression. Saying “don’t bet what you can’t afford to lose” is now viewed with the same distaste as yelling “pull yourself together” at someone in a therapy session. But personal responsibility isn’t outdated—it’s just unfashionable.

We’ve gone from “man up” to “man, that’s tough” in less than a generation. We used to be a country of bulldogs. Now we’re a nation of Labradoodles with gluten intolerance and trauma apps.

Here's a Thought: Maybe Some People Are Just Idiots

Controversial, I know. But not everything needs a social justice campaign and a government initiative. Some people aren’t victims—they’re just thick. They make bad decisions, they ignore advice, and they think they’re going to beat the odds because they once got lucky on a fruit machine in Blackpool in 1997.

That doesn’t make them evil or unworthy of compassion. But it also doesn’t mean society owes them a cuddle and a bailout.

We’ve confused understanding with absolving. Yes, you can be unlucky. Yes, addiction exists. But sometimes—quite often—it’s just some bloke in Croydon putting £500 on a six-fold accumulator with teams he can’t spell. And we’re meant to treat him like a wounded war hero.

Final Bet: We Either Get Real, or We Get Worse

Keep removing consequences and watch what happens. If gambling isn’t the gambler’s fault, then neither is drinking, lying, cheating, texting your ex, or getting a tribal tattoo at 43. It’s all “harm” now. No one’s bad or foolish anymore—just “vulnerable.”

You want to stop gambling harm? Start by replacing fake compassion with real education. Not slogans. Not therapy dogs. Not app pop-ups that say “Are you sure you want to bet £200 on Real Sociedad?”

Teach people what the bookies don’t want them to know.
Tell punters how to protect themselves.
And for God’s sake, don’t let the anti-gambling grifters run the show. They’re just putting your tax money on a different roulette wheel—and this time, you’re the mug.