The video that I'm about to show you, totally puts to shame the bookies spokespeople's claim of 'duty of care'.
Hats off to James Petherick , a compulsive gambler from Wiltshire who's been recording his struggle of gambling addiction on Youtube since October in his video diaries called 'Diary of a compulsive gambler'.
(Click here for his youtube channel - JamesPetherick )
In one of his latest video's titled 'SELF EXCLUSION EPIC FAIL- Diary of a compulsive gambler part 25' , James decides to see if self-excluding himself from betting shops has any real effect when going into betting shops.
James had self-excluded himself from a series of betting shops in 2011 after losing around £30k in the last year. James had been a regular in these betting shops since 2008.
One member of staff in a branch of William Hill would let James into the shop to gamble despite being aware of James's self-exclusion from the shop. James told the Neuroliberation campaign that there had been a couple of occasions where he was clearly intoxicated, but despite that and also having a self-exclusion from the betting shops, they let him continue to gamble whilst witnessing him losing much of his hard-earned cash.
In this video James records the evidence of how 'self exclusion' policies are simply not robust enough. It's suspiciously like the system was designed to be like this, as James managed to slip under the radar of four betting shops that he had been a regular in for years.
The video highlights how these so called 'hubs of the community' as the Bookmakers association PR spokespeople would have us believe, are nothing more than commercial machines, sucking our communities dry.
Does anybody out there really and truly love their job working in a betting shop? If you are someone that does then please do get in touch and send us an email and share your thoughts with us.
It seems that people are purely working there just to pay their bills , counting the hours until the day passes by. I'v never seen a 'super compassionate' betting shop worker stepping outside of the box and stopping a problem gambler losing their money.
The force of gambling addiction is such a strong one, that personally, I believe these places should be kitted out with their own counselling sections....some kind of mental health professionals on board to 'de-programme' your mind to how it was before you stepped inside the betting shops.
The video also points out how betting shop staff are trained to encourage gamblers to play highly-addictive roulette games to get their neuron's exited and taking the next step into playing roulette.
(If you'v never played roulette before that point , you'l most probably be ok, it's when you have a win that gambling alters your brain to use gambling as a means of survival.)
