A Faustian pact

Cynicism is a word that is so frequently over used these days that gradually, over time, it loses its strength, its meaning becomes diluted. It takes financially difficult times like the ones we live through, and will continue to live through for years to come, for mercenary individuals and businesses to raise predatory practices to new heights.

There is something unique, in economic terms, about a casino, it is the only business that offers neither a product, nor a service, it fails to create anything (other than perhaps the illusion that some kind of success or wealth is possible) and instead feeds upon our very human need to feel risk, reward and excitement. Unlike smoking, which was known to be addictive for decades - and until court action wrung the truth out of the tobacco companies was not public knowledge - gambling's addictive qualities have been an open secret for centuries.

At precisely the time that ever greater demands for financial prudence are being imposed on the poorest, at precisely the time that essential services are being pared back to the bone, the Coalition are giving online casinos and betting chains carte blanche to entice another generation into indebtedness, addiction and despair.

Take the case of Think Bingo, the current sponsors of the Jeremy Kyle show. The entire point of commercial broadcasting is to find an audience and capture it with entertainment, and then deliver that audience to an advertiser who is likely to be able to sell something.
In the case of the Jeremy Kyle Show, described by Judge Alan Berg as:"A morbid and depressing display of dysfunctional people whose lives are in turmoil", and that it was "a plain disgrace which goes under the guise of entertainment" and "Human Bear Baiting," gambling advertisers have chosen to ally their harmful and dysfunctional with a programme that seems to echo their values.

With a largely low income and often unemployed daytime audience, the show, once sponsored by Learn Direct, has forged a rather Faustian pact with Think Bingo to increase the indebtedness of its viewers.

Given the fact that the show claims to be a forum for good, a means by which contestants (if that is the correct term?) and audiences are helped, encouraging them to hand their hard earned money over to mercenary gambling magnates is quite a breath taking act of hypocrisy.

Given the fact that Jeremy Kyle himself deals with all manner of addicts on his show, creating an aggressive simulacrum of recovery for sick and desperate people, while in reality providing prurient viewers with an underclass Barnum and Bailey circus for them to gawp over - its association with gambling advertisers should open our eyes to its absence of any legitimacy.

Interestingly, Kyle himself said: "...Sometimes people need to be stripped bare before they can be helped."

By this he meant that his programme had some valuable role in deconstructing and deprogramming dysfunctional people, but perhaps it is time we exposed more than the private miseries of others in order to sell addictive and destructive 'entertainment'?
Soap opera Emmerdale is sponsored by Tombola Bingo, and whilst Emmerdale has higher production values and actually pays its actors instead of using a constant stream of damaged people, the fact remains that a much loved family drama is being used by big gambling businesses in much the same way that a fisherman uses a fly.
Cockney national treasure Barbara Windsor has been picked exclusively because of her demographic appeal to be the public face of Jackpot Joy, and it is no coincidence once more that the bulk of adverts featuring her are broadcast during the day. Bored, frustrated and despairing people, often unemployed, are the 'mark' in a multi billion pound sting.

We are told, repeatedly, that we are 'all in this together', that the current economic crisis is akin to the spirit of the Blitz, that national and social unity should prevail and that a pragmatic, stoic and typically British spirit of 'keep calm and carry on' should prevail.

Are any of these slogans in use in the head offices of large online gambling companies, or in the conversations had between their lobbyists and their friends in all three major parties?

It is doubtful. Because as we all try to muddle through together, to keep calm and carry on, there are powerful predatory forces encouraging harmful addictive behaviour, who see other people's poverty, desperation and sorrow, not as a tragedy, but as an opportunity.