After all the sound and fury of the media onslaught led by the Daily Mail from Autumn 2004, it passed with hardly a ripple of attention from the national media in the end. After all the fuss, will it all turn out a bit of a damp squib? I fear so. The media circus has moved on. Of course, in most of the new locations there will continue to be local media and doubtless much campaigning by anti-gambling organisations, but in the greater scheme of things, the new casinos won't really amount to a hill of beans in the national consciousness, never mind the 'Sodom and Gomorrah' conjured up by the Editor of the Mail. With the economy in trouble now, and the pressure on "the leisure pound" more competitive as people tighten their belts, having to spend more on necessities like food and fuel and consequently having less left over for leisure spending on "luxuries" like gambling, I wonder how many of the 16 new venues will be built and opened on anything like the timescale originally envisaged? I'm sure most, if perhaps not all, will be built eventually, but, in the light of these new less happy economic circumstances, as the failures of earlier policy decisions start coming home to roost, "now may not be the best time". It may also, alas, be a case of "displacement". If one of the new venues opens with excellent new facilities and is highly attractive to punters, but is in an area not too far away from an existing casino, or more than one, for which there has not been the investment for upgrading and improvement to compete, will the old go to the wall and close? - I fear they will.
The best prospect will, I suspect, if the design is right, be for those new casinos which are in locations away from the old "permitted areas", and quite a distance therefore from any existing competition – I will certainly look forward to seeing those that provide "the best of the new", in new locations – I wish them well and hope they demonstrate that gambling is an entirely legitimate part of the leisure and entertainment industry, going forward into the future.

However, I still bewail the great missed opportunity. The original concept of the leisure destination resort casino, which would have brought in the massive investment to rejuvenate the run-down seaside resorts like Blackpool, where I was once MP, once a matter of wide cross-party and expert consensus after the Budd Report and the Greenway Committee, was first watered down by the Government after its backbenchers panicked in the wake of the 'Mail' onslaught, and then its last vestige, the one-remaining planned so-called "supercasino" was killed off altogether by the anti-Gambling Gordon Brown – yet another of the many errors he's made, so many of which are now coming to light!
Even if the Government (probably a different Government!) receives reports, as I'm sure they will, in some years time, that the new casinos have not caused problems, it will be very difficult ever again to create the head of steam there was for the benefits of resort casinos as a regeneration mechanism (as demonstrated in Atlantic City in the USA) which had been built up by 2003 and the early part of 2004. As resorts continue to struggle – and every week my trade press brings more reports of tough times for traders, especially the licensed trade, bingo and arcades, for all the well-understood reasons – I reflect how sad it is that the Government turned its back, for no rational reason, on the hope all the new investment would have brought. Amid all of the Blair/Brown "manifold sins and wickednesses", one small footnote, when the political history of 2004-2008 comes to be written might be called "the strange death of the British seaside resort, and how the Government rejected its chance of salvation". Ironic, really, how these concepts come to mind, when one thinks that one of the most vocal opponents of the new casinos are the Salvation Army.
Away from casinos, at the time of writing this, there also is continued confusion over what the Government will do with the Tote – but it seems very clear that the Government will break its oft-repeated past promise that all the benefits from the Tote will go to the benefit of racing. They will seek to hide behind EU law as a reason stopping them doing what they promised. I'd rather we stood up to the EU, in the country's and racing's interest – (they would in France…!) Also, at the time of writing, the current Gambling Minister is apparently expected to make an announcement which would help the sector within literally days – by the time you are reading this we'll know what it was. My bet is bringing forward the review of machine stakes and prizes, due in 2009, to start now – if so, a sop, but better than nothing at all – “never look a gift horse in the mouth…" Let's hope the name of the Derby winner is significant – after Comply or Die won the National, we do need a ‘New Approach’…

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