No, not mine!! https://medium.com/@stopwatchracing/an-addiction-to-gambling-32909aed5cad Lots to ponder in that!
Very depressing, the two things that worried me were the fact that he’d sold selections in advance and that money was lost and then the way his family continued to bankroll him. Hopefully he gets sorted, spending that sort of money is scary. Much more to life than having to worry about losing thousands, especially thousands you are borrowing.
Shocking! It reminds me of some of these youngsters on Twitter, good tipsters to start with gain lots of followers and then the winners dry up and the abuse follows.
Guy had a very pampered upbringing, love his attempts to deny this , doubt he’ll be on the streets begging somehow ......hope he stays away from gambling .....
Online betting makes it so much easier to get into that type of hole .................... you can lose control very quickly. Much easier than walking into a betting shop and laying a few banknotes on the counter. I would actually encourage the government to look at legislation limiting online betting.
One way that just sprung to mind is that bets/deposits only accepted with debit cards and to check sufficient funds it multiplies the stake/deposit by 10 before checking. I suppose that doesn't stop people obtaining money from their credit cards/falsified loans and depositing it in their current account. It will be difficult as someone who rakes in a regular earning of 5+ grand a month can afford a lot more than someone on the dole. Of course, the bookies make their living from people losing money so it's not in their interests to restrict stakes
I've always thought it ridiculous that you can use a credit card to bet online. You can't buy a lottery ticket with a credit card in a shop so why can you gamble online with one.
So odd isn't it! Should be banned. The other thing all online bookmakers should do is force you to set a daily deposit limit. I've got very stringent ones which means that if I wanted a big bet, i'd have to either fund it well in advance, or go and hand over the cash in a bookmakers.
Ok, this is going to sound cruel but this young man has a very common problem amongst his generation that just manifests itself through the prism of gambling. The underlying problem is that we live in an era of cheap credit and nobody is taught personal financial responsibility. Parents mollycoddle their kids these days and give them everything to keep up with the Jones’s, so they never learn the value or cost of anything. We all see the kids every day of the week eyes down on their iPhone, white ear plugs in, oblivious to their surroundings. High speed broadband access is a human right. It is very easy for those of us from earlier generations who were quoted Hamlet by our parents – “Neither a borrower nor a lender be” – and got a paper-round to supplement our pocket money to pay for stuff, saved up for expensive purchases because loans were expensive; and only lent members of the family small amounts when they needed emergency money for repairs. I pay off my credit card bills in full every month, have no overdraft and have always lived within my means. What I would say about this guy’s specific sorry tale is that when his father and brother paid off his debts, they should have cut up his credit cards and had his bank withdraw his overdraft facility as conditions. Almost impossible to stop him gambling online as it is so ubiquitous but at least it could be limited to actual funds: when he loses it all he is skint. Glad to see at the end that he intended his brother, girlfriend and parents to read what he has written. Since they have continued to support him (albeit in a foolhardy fashion) perhaps they can push him in the right direction to get help. Clearly he considers himself to be indolent – got a law degree but could not be bothered to continue into practise – so a clip round the ear from his mother and some tough love might be the place to start. I was reading an article somewhere the other day (last year?) about how the online bookmakers got a huge proportion of their turnover (something over fifty per cent of it) from less than five per cent of their customers. Ok, so they may have a handful of big hitters putting on five figure bets regularly (footballers?) but the rest must be addicts chasing their losses.
Come April deposits from credit cards won’t be accepted. Granted it’s easily circumnavigated but it’s a start.
