UK Government: Gamble All You Like, But Don't Invest

You've got to wonder about priorities at the Department of Culture Media and Sport. They allowed UK bookmakers to harvest £46 billion through betting machines last year - not to mention the bingo and lotteries freely advertised on TV - while computer games companies complained they can't offer shares to fans who crowdfund games development. 

Consider this from today's Telegraph:

• Britons gambled £46 billion on betting terminals last year, an increase of almost 50% in four years.

• Gamblers lose up to £100 every 20 seconds on the fixed odds machines.

• 588,000 under-18s were stopped when they tried to enter a betting shop last year, six times as many as 2009, and 27,000 people were challenged once they had placed a bet.

• Bookmakers made profits of £1.55 billion from the terminals between April 2012 and March 2013.

Meanwhile, even though the FCA has said that ordinary folk will be able to invest to fund the development of a computer game, for example, they must first certify that they will not invest more than 10% of their 'net investible portfolio' and either seek financial advice or satisfy an "appropriateness test". That's because they say investing is risky for consumers... 

Compared to what?!

Image from RoehamptonStudent.com.