This is such a great story on so many levels. We hate pokies - the are a drug for too many people on Struggle street.
So, in the far North in a little town of Horeke the local publican has biffed the pokie machines because they were sick of the way people were feeding them their weekly pay packets.
With the pokies here, people just thought this place was a bank. They'd get money out on their cards and put it straight into the machines."
By all accounts , its made the pub and undoubtedly the town a bit better place.
Regular Phil Campbell, however, said the punters who used to play the pokies most were the very ones who couldn't afford it.
"We had kids here going without breakfast and lunch."
This is no small step for a publican to take - Pokies are often a source of a large percentage of a pubs income. And this publican thought that maybe it was okay because the funds were going back to the community but that was not the case.
Problem Gambling Foundation chief executive Graeme Ramsey says only a small proportion of pokies spending returns to the community as grants.
Worse, the bulk of spending is in poor areas, such as Kaikohe, while much of the grant money goes to already well-off areas such as the Bay of Islands.
"They really are transferring money from poor to rich, from brown to white, from women to men," he says.
And it appears that the Far North , an area that regularly holds the title for being the worst in a raft of social statistics, is also the Home of Pokies
The Far North has one pokie machine for every 104 people aged 18 and over, well above the national average of one for every 156 people.
So good on Tunisia and Dawson Joyce. They have made a hard call but its one that simply makes them community heros.
Posts
4 comments:
There is no reason why people who want some fun gambling should be expected to subsidize anything at all in the community.
The payout percentages are pathetic on these machines (also on lotto, by the way why not stop that as well?) and that is a reason that people lose more money than they should.
A publican should view these machines as a way to get people into his premises and buying a drink, not as a huge profit maker by themselves. A modest profit to pay for running them would be fair enough and the returns to punters could be maximized.
Brunette, you are a wowser.
Wowser be buggered. You'd soon change your tune if it was your spouse that was stuffing the week's wages down the pokie's throat.
If you knew anything about programming, you'd know that it just one variable in one line of code in the whole program that sets the pokie to either, win every time, lose every time, or win just enough to keep the punter sucked in, and guess how they are set...
Pokies are designed to empty pockets, and they do their job very well.
They are a rort.
"The payout percentages are pathetic on these machines (also on lotto, by the way why not stop that as well?) and that is a reason that people lose more money than they should."
Bwahahahahha. What a dick. You failed maths right? If the payouts are less than one to one the money's all gonna go. It's just a matter of time. Moron.
I'd go so far to say Pokies are the instrument of Satan! Suffer the little children indeed. All pokies should be banned.
Post a Comment