Wrethman Writes


A Proper Job W


Jim Wrethman, international casino executive and author offers his personal view


hen I first took the opportunity to train as a dealer in a Glasgow casino, having ignored my mother’s advice to wait for a ‘proper


job’ in a local factory or shipyard, even I could not have imagined that more than 40 years later this ‘temporary arrangement’ would still be paying my bills. Neither could I have predicted that almost half a century later, when most of the world has had exposure to casinos and associated forms of gambling, that the public in general and many in authority would still speak of our industry even more disparagingly than my mother. To some extent this negative image stems from film and television’s dramatization of casino activity as being like Las Vegas during the its earlier period, when criminal elements played a part in its development.


But by far the main reason why our industry, which simply satisfies a well established public demand, is not bracketed with the other businesses that do the same, is the almost universally hypocritical approach of politicians to gambling.


In a period that has seen a catastrophic collapse of the world economy due to lack of control over institutional speculators, an escalation of terrorist activity that no Government seems able to control and climatic disasters on a grand scale that they don’t yet know, or agree, how to control - is it not comforting to know that leading politicians worldwide continue to assert that they are intent on protecting the vulnerable in society from the dangers associated with gambling. In Russia you can get drunk on cheap booze and drown in a lake outside town, if you don’t asphyxiate with the pollution first; but at least you will not be exposed, in city centres, to the hazards of roulette and blackjack.


In Ukraine after a fire broke out at one establishment casinos were forcibly closed. Unfortunately as a preventative measure it doesn’t seem to work as fires are raging all around Moscow


although all the casinos are long since closed. While, from the supposed most advanced country in the world USA, to developing countries such as South Africa, you may be at risk from financial misappropriation of your assets; oil spills; tsunami; HIV or increasing levels of crime, but at least for the moment the beleaguered and impoverished are restricted from cleaning out their accounts playing poker online on their laptops. In S.A. it has been said that those committing the heinous crime of providing access to internet gambling or processing payments for such barbaric activity could face a fine of millions and/or 10 years in prison.


But of course you can understand why politicians throughout the world want to protect the vulnerable, after all they created them. That’s why in the most developed countries when the numbers start to diminish they have to be replaced from other countries. However, the maintenance of this sector becomes expensive and that’s why governments, at times, have to hedge their bets and cosy-up temporarily to the bad boys of the gambling world. It’s then that initiatives are introduced to encourage investors to develop leisure centres to attract tourism and create jobs – or as some cynics would put it - open gambling businesses that will win punters’money, of which, the Government can take a large slice.


Operators must then ask the question – is it skill or chance? I speak not of poker, but of dealing with politicians You can invest large sums of money but you must be careful with the rate of return. At some point in the future it may well become politically expedient for the Authorities to be seen protecting the vulnerable again and that can be done without too much opposition. It’s not is we are bankers, arms-dealers, energy giants, or indeed politicians, everyone knows we don’t even have a ‘proper job’.


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