It's local derby day II. The mighty Blackpool are playing away at Preston North End, due to kick off in a couple of hours. We won at home earlier in the season and really need the points if we are to avoid one of three relegation slots waiting at the wrong end of the Championship table. To get demoted would be a disaster (obviously) and I'm hoping that April doesn't turn out to be the cruellest month (TS Eliot allusion #1) for the Seasiders.
Talking of shocks and social activities, I couldn't resist sharing this image, purporting to be of The Scratcher (alias Margaret Thatcher) doing an impromptu DJing slot for Easter bank holidaymakers on Margate Sands (her dirty fingernails, connecting nothing with nothing, blah blah blah - TS Eliot allusion #2). Whoever it was said she can never be dead enough spoke for me. Infamous woman.
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| Give us your money! |
We may stay up, we might go down. There are odds, apparently. I'm not a gambling man and consequently don't bet. I don't get the psychology of it. Therefore it concerns me that the betting industry has muscled into the world of football big time and got a grip on the pockets of football fans in the last few years, (Bet Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Bet123, 365, 24x7, 888, Bet Fred, Tom, Dick and Hurry etc).
Betting companies have bought the naming rights to football stadia, they are the shirt sponsors of many leading league clubs, and a combination of the internet and mobile phone technology have allowed matchday betting to become pervasive. I'm told it's possible to bet on pretty much anything related to a game: results, half-time and full-time scores, the timing and number of goals, the scorers and assists, number of corners, penalties, red and yellow cards and on and on. I'm sure it opens up the way to corruption, cheating and fixing as well as making it far too easy for people who can ill afford it to lose significant amounts of money. It's insidious and personally I'd ban it from the game. I'd hate for football to become a sport predicated on betting in the way horse-racing so patently is. It ruins lives. It all seems a far remove from that more innocent era of the original football pools.
Of course I realise it's not just a sport-related phenomenon. A lot of the adverts I see on TV these days are for betting 'games', online bingo and casino plays. When a mobile phone can act as a bingo card or worse, a slot machine, then the one-armed bandits can virtually hold the world to ransom. I guess I have a puritan streak, but I'm shocked that this form of gambling can be marketed as entertainment and even as a social activity.
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| Just when you thought it was safe... |
By the way, I'm not going in person to the match today. Last year I got hit in the side of the head by a coin thrown by Preston fans. Unacceptable behaviour. I'm planning to watch the game live on TV in Blackpool's Number 4 pub, hoping for the best while anticipating the worst. Come on you Pool. (I fear a 3-2 score line.)
To check out, here's my latest, an acid little poem:
Better Luck Next Time (Sucker)
Roll up! Roll up! So many plays to choose.
No punter is ever refused. So are you in?
Roll up! Roll up! What have you got to lose?
Your house, your job, your wife and kids,
your shirt, your soul, your life. You bet. We win.
Thanks for reading, S ;-)
25 comments:
Good luck!
Sorry for your loss. 😉
I saw the story in the news this week about the betting firm that allowed a new customer to spend £23,000 in 20 minutes without any checks whatsoever. I believe the firm has been hit with a massive fine.
One game closer to the drop, sorry to say. Your lot gambling on Big Mick was never likely to be a winner. As for Thatcher, is that real? The poem is good though, makes its point.
I love your healthy dose of cynicism...in many ways I share it
My warmth to all at the Dead Good Poets...
I have not forgotten you just work getting in the way and now a gammy leg
I know you lost but that is no excuse for putting that photo in. Not the slots.
Totally agree with all your thoughts on the gambling in football. Not the Pools though as I won £4.75 last year.
Please do not do anything to the poem. It is perfect as it is.
OMG! Is that really Thatcher? Scary that she looks almost likeable. 😱
That's a brilliant little poem.
I hope she's playing "Stand Down Margaret" by the Beat!
I remember you like the Small Faces so you're probably familiar with the Immediate Records slogan "Happy to be part of the industry of human happiness" (or something like that). Reading your justified rant in this blog it occurred to me that betting firms are happy to be part of the industry of human misery and I thought I'd just share that with you. Your poem is spot on.
A truely dreadful day at Deepdale. Can you tell Mcarthy to play our best players in their best positions please?
Good luck today Steve. Well done with the blog and the poem.
Blackpool MP lobbying on behalf of the betting industry? 😱
scott bent one!
It’s odd, isn’t it, how people often only show us a side to themselves that they want us to see.
I do like the occasional flutter but don't consider myself a gambler. My Dad was a betting man, always bet on the horses, lost more than he won. It can be a slippery slope.
I agree with your sentiment re betting in football, but weeding it out will be worse than getting a junkie off smack: too deeply embedded in all those sweet shirt sponsorship deals. And of course everyone gets terribly shocked when players have a bet. Of course, it is the smaller, humbler leagues that are REALLY at risk for fixing. Slipping a part-timer in the Finnish Second Division €1000 to take a red card between the 75th and 80th minute can win you a fair bit on the semi-legal Asian betting markets. To get a Premiership player to do the same would cost half a million
I agree whole-heartedly with your comments on the pernicious industry of gambling and how it is infiltrating our society. I expected a longer poem but it makes the point.
Enjoyed the Eliot allusions, though I'm sure Thatcher never had dirty fingernails (always got others to do the dastardly deeds). I agree with what you say about the betting industry (it's taken over from tobacco and alcohol as the prime sporting sponsor). More regulation needed.
Is that really Thatcher? Or another clever spoof? Totally agree about her beig an odious woman. Well done with the punchy poem.
The wife and I will have our customary annual wager on the Grand National. That's as far as my gambling goes.
I wonder which nag Scott Benton's wager will be on. Carefully Selected perhaps, or Lifetime Ambition or Back On The Lash? (Cook The Books doesn't appear to be running this year!)
This is topical! On the biggest betting day of the year I'm having my annual "housewives' flutter" (sorry about that) on Velvet Elvis. I didn't know about the extent that betting has pervaded football but now you mention it there are always betting adverts on tv sports programmes (except the BBC of course). I agree with the comment that said your poem is perfect.
I agree. All those tv adverts for bingo games make me cringe.
April was definitely the cruellest month for the 3 race horses that died at Aintree this week :(
Thatcher was always the Snatcher to me, started with taking our free school milk away. Awful woman, selfish politics. I never bet and have every sympathy with your tirade against betting firms in football and I'm sure what you describe in your pithy poem has happened to many unfortunate gamblers.
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