By Sue Reid for The Mail on Sunday.

Bookmaker (gambling) - Wikipedia

Alan Wells has lost all he owns or holds dear. His house has gone, his job as a fork-lift truck driver too, and his wife and two children live apart from him.

They have all but given up on the incorrigible gambler who, for the past 10 years, has squandered every last penny playing casino games on the 69 high-stake slot machines at betting shops in Rochdale. At 48, he admits his life is in ruins and he is deeply in debt. Then one day I saw they had introduced machines and I tried one. Lots of people around here like me have become addicted to gambling on them before they knew it. But he is articulate and his words have a ring of truth.

Most worrying, it emerged this week that it is often gamblers living in the poorest parliamentary constituencies of Britain with devastating unemployment who are risking the most money on machines known as Fixed Odds Betting Terminals FOBTs.

They have a much higher payout rate than the old-fashioned slot machines and it is this that sucks in those who play them and are ultimately destined to lose more. It is often gamblers in Britain's poorest constituencies who are spending the most money on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals FOBTs. It is much the same story in jobless hotspots in London, such as West Ham, Bethnal Green, Hackney and Tottenham, as well as in Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester.

Lucy Powell, the Labour MP for Manchester Central — a few miles from Rochdale — has complained: The figures are stark: This total was four times more than that gambled by residents in the 50 parts of the country with the most people in work and, coincidentally, the fewest betting shops — prosperous Henley-on-Thames in the Home Counties, for example, has none.

And few will miss the ironic — if sad — point that the vast majority of the constituencies hardest hit by this craze are those of Labour MPs. As a result, the betting chains, which had been in decline, began to enjoy a recovery and the increase in business continued as customers were increasingly drawn to the newly-introduced terminals. Betting shops with turnovers of hundreds of pounds a week found they were taking thousands when they installed FOBTs.

Few people are better placed to understand why this is such a problem than Adrian Parkinson. Adrian has had a lengthy career in the gaming industry and helped to develop the machines. He grew so concerned about them that he has now changed sides and runs the problem betting. He told the Mail: You see people on the machines for hours on end. No matter how big the win or the loss, they keep coming back for more.

It is an addiction. In an area of high unemployment it is impossible not to conclude that a lot of the money going into these machines is coming from benefit payments.

People are losing far more than they can possibly afford. But the punters using the FOBTs have nothing like their skill or funds. I am a member of the Labour Party, but I believe that it is the Labour Party that started this crisis and now it is their own supporters in their heartlands who are suffering the most.

However, it is unclear from its own figures how much money is involved. But at the heart of this debate is whether the Government should intervene to rescue the High Street and protect gamblers from their own folly.

However, the Labour Opposition said this was wrong and sided with retail guru Mary Portas who, in a review of High Streets, called for betting shops to be subject to strict planning restrictions. One has only to listen to the tragic stories related by Adrian Parkinson to know that unless something is done — and soon — thousands more people from all walks of life will be blighted. He remembers a respected Yorkshire headmaster, in his 50s, who began using the machines in his home town one July during the school holidays.

He soon became addicted. Over a three-month spell he lost thousands and was deeply in debt. And by October he had lost the job he loved. Gambling in betting shops rose dramatically after reforms by former Chancellor Gordon Brown to abolish duty on individual bets in favour of a tax on bookmakers' gross profits in Only a year ago, an upright working-class mother from a council estate in Salford, Greater Manchester, broke down in tears when she brought her son into a shop for which Adrian was responsible.

The teenager of 19 with a job had lost all his money the same way. Now she was taking her son to every betting shop in a five-mile area and begging them not to allow him in. Then there is the case of Matt Zarb-Cousin.

He is now 22 and picking up the pieces of his life after becoming addicted as a grammar school boy in Southend, Essex. The son of a businessman from a middle-class home with a caring mother, he used to pop into the betting shop occasionally to put a bet on the football.

Matt Zarb-Cousin, a former gambling addict, is now a Labour party aide and campaigns on the issue. But one day, when he was just 16, he saw the machines and staked a few pounds on a roulette game and won. Matt recalled this week: From that day on, I played the FOBTs every single day for the next four years.

But I would always go to the bookies before, and sometimes after, I went to work. He was soon caught in a trap and betting to recoup his losses. Once there, Matt found there were plenty of betting shops with the terminals.

At rock bottom, he went to the top of his block of flats and sent a desperate text to his mother as he threatened to jump off.

The High Street misery machines: Betting shops make £1billion a year from picking the pockets of the poor | Daily Mail Online

She talked him down by phone and, finally, he stopped gambling. He last went to the betting shop in February at the age of 19 and has received therapy to wean him off his addiction. He has set up the campaign, High Streets First, to save town centres from their downward spiral.

I know two people of my age personally who have the same problems as I had and half-a-dozen more who are in danger of getting addicted to these machines. This week, in Rochdale, I found how easy it is to gamble away a fortune on the High Street.

How Bookmakers Make Money

Then I placed all the money on a bet on red on the roulette game. I had to simply touch the screen and press a button. It was that easy. As the roulette wheel spun, I hoped for the best.

But I lost my money when the ball dropped into the black 28 slot. It was all over in less than 20 seconds. Of course, no one knows better how easy it is to lose on these lethal machines than Alan Wells. Once he became so angry about them that he marched into a betting shop in Rochdale and smashed one up with a chair leg.

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