Is London really just Las Vegas with more rain and old stuff? Walking down the average neighborhood main street in London nowadays, you might be forgiven for thinking so. Average shopping streets in the city—and across the U.K. – have become so thick with gambling spots recently that it’s now much easier to put money on a horse than, say, buy a screwdriver. To give you an example of the scale of their spread, the London borough of Newham has no less than 80 betting shops (places where you can bet on horse or dog races or sports events), with 18 of them on one street alone. Not everyone is pleased that the U.K. is becoming that classic oxymoron: A gambler’s paradise. This week, North London locals are fighting to stop an old pub from being turned into yet another betting shop—a battle that precedent suggests they’re destined to lose. Still, the story of the creeping advance of gambling dens across British cities is not one of a national addiction per se. It’s really the consequence of a regeneration plan gone wrong.
Gambling isn’t new to Britain, of course. It’s always been a tolerated part of British culture, where prohibitionists of all stripes have never gained the purchase they have at times achieved in the U.S. The late queen mother was said to enjoy a flutter on the horses, and while that myth has been debunked, it shows the extent of gambling’s social acceptability. In Britain, you can bet on almost anything. If any major event is on the horizon—a sports championship, an election, the birth of a royal baby— you can be sure that someone will open a book on the result. Right now, the bookmaker company Paddy Power is taking bets on who murdered Lucy Beale (a character in the TV soap Eastenders), on who might win Ireland’s Rose of Tralee beauty contest, and on who will play Holden Caulfield in the movie adaptation of Catcher in the Rye.
