Just browsing @ No 10

Lots of comings and goings last night and today; important looking men in uniform; important looking women with stern faces. So, I skedaddled out of the way and found a cosy corner in the library where the sun shone onto a soft velvet seat. Lucky old me, I thought. No politics today for me. Then my eye caught sight of the word 'Economic'. My! My! I must tell Arturo that one of Georgy's journals has found its way in here.

I decided to paw through the pages! Very interesting! Very, very interesting! This journal, called 'Economic Affairs', was all about 'Britain losing out through irrational gambling laws'. Irrational gambling laws! What's irrational about the Gambling Act?

So, my friends, I read on. I read:

In a study published in its termly journal Economic Affairs, the Institute of Economic Affairs shows how other countries are reaping the reward of liberalising their gambling laws, and how relaxing gambling regulation could be the factor which saves many of Britain’s struggling pubs. The study also contends that gambling is over-regulated in the UK because it is seen as purely harmful – the converse is true.

Blimey, I thought to myself, I must tell my cousin, Hi-Tail Tom, all about this. He got his name because he was always hi-tailing it out of the casino whose name I will not mention but you'll find it in Mayfair. He watched the 'suckers', as he called them, placing their chips on red or black or anything. They always lost, he said.

Then, the floor manager got to thinking that old Hi-Tail Tom was some sort of a jinx on the Club. First, they shooed him away. Then, they tried to poison him! But he wasn't called 'Hi-Tail' for nothing! He outwitted the lot of them.

He told me that, 'Gambling, Butch my son, is a mug's game. And you and me, we ain't no mugs'.

Yet, now I read:

Britain is losing out. The benefits being reaped by other countries are clear to see, yet the stigma and myths that surround gambling in this country prevent us from relaxing our laws to maximise economic gain.

“The amount of freedom afforded to gambling in the UK is nowhere near enough. We desperately need to encourage economic growth; liberalising our gambling laws would be a simple way to help achieve it.”

It sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. The only winners will be the bookies and casino owners! The losers will be the poor 'suckers' who are buying a dream!

I pushed the journal onto the floor and under a big gap under the skirting-board. We wouldn't want our Georgy, from next door, to see that, would we? Might give him ideas.