Today at 11:00 (GMT), a big announcement was made in London. The Casino Advisory Panel voted that Manchester should be the new home of the "Las Vegas style Super Casino", which is to be home to 1,250 unlimited-jackpot gaming machines.
The funny thing is that Manchester was not the bookmakers' favorite! Manchester was the 16-1 outsider! Hee hee...there were bets on what city would become the new home of gambling in Britian!
Wow.
This is a pretty good BBC article on it. And this morning the all-talk radio shows (and the "all-music" radio shows, as well!) were filled with callers and texters expressing their dismay about this decision.
The CAP also approved several smaller casinos to be built around England. They say that there won't be any more "super casinos" in Britain until they can conduct a "proper evaluation over time" of the social and economic impacts that the 17 casinos will make on their towns and cities.
They also said that these casinos will not be like Las Vegas because these casinos will be subject to new controls, the strictest in the world.
Many people in England feel very strongly against the casinos, and not just the Church (here's a BBC article from 2002 about one bishop's casino investigations...) (btw--they don't know how to spell Mississippi here! Can you find it in the article?) :o)
The argument, of course, is that casinos bring regeneration to the area. "Thousands of jobs", and millions of ££pounds££.
There is already gambling everywhere here. There are "fruit machines" (aka slot machines) in pubs and some restaurants (with no safeguard for anyone under a particular age to not partake). There are, of course, scratch cards and lottos here. There are myriad "bookmaker shops" in pretty much every village and town and city waiting to take your bet on horses, or cars, or football...or which city will win the bid for the big casino!
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