George Osborne
The UK finance minister George Osborne is looking into taxing online poker so that off shore companies that earn from UK players have to pay some sort of tax as they squirrel money out of the country to places where they do not pay tax. This is sensible and is well over due. The online poker can claim that it will not be good for the websites and my response would be ‘so what, who gives a f*ck’?
Now what George Osborne should also do is create a special consumption tax on all those fixed odds betting terminals that are rinsing the poor and the gullible with astounding efficiency. My proposal would be a 50% tax rate on all profits generated from UK customers. The betting websites would hate it but since they are all based outside the UK again who gives a f*ck!
These evil machines are raping the betting community with their dodgy software and even dodgier marketing so whatever can be done to do them down the better. The betting offices that spring up like weeds in a unkempt garden are creating massive problems for households that are not on the best of footings. Normally I would not care to see if gamblers want to bet on whatever floats their boat, however, fixed odds betting terminals are not normal betting channels. They are aimed specifically at the weak willed and silly.
Call me a bleeding heart liberal if you want, I don’t care! These cartoon roulette and other such devices need to be restricted so that proper betting can take place like poker and football betting not these carousel of misery called virtual roulette. Not only do they suck money out of lackadaisical thinkers but they stop normal human interaction so the sooner George Osborne tackle these vampire bookies the better and nothing would work more than a 50% tax on all profits to be used in the NHS and other public services because trust me the illness these machines cause will need funding to cure.
If George Osborne feel that it is not the most right wing ideological thing to do, then he should understand that he is doing the country a favour by letting the public know that using tax policy as a bulwark for health policy is a very ‘conservative’ thing to do. After all in the Victorian age tax policy was used to improve the water supply and sewage system this helped run an empire. Therefore taxing fixed odds betting terminals may lead to another great empire in the future.