In response to the Boyle Sports application at the old Barclays Bank in Spalding;
Has craziness set in, in this small market place of ours?
I am an addicted gambler, I mix with addiction – opium, crack, pornography, heroin, other things.
My life changed in January this year when I found the triple A meeting that helped me, at the same time I found god.
After five months of being clean and following my faith in the lord, I have found a new lease and meaning to my life at the age of 70.
But having started out at the age of 15 as a office credit junior in Nottingham with Ladbrokes, I feel I’m qualified to talk about this application and why it’s just the same old word greed that just doesn’t touch us, it grabs hold of you.
By the time I was 21 I’d worked for five different bookmaking firms.
The last of five was where I ended up in court for stealing from them.
I was in court where the magistrate gave me 180 days suspended prison sentence for contempt, of which eventually I served 78 days in prison.
After 55 years of losing money suffered through my addiction, I’ve come out the other side, hopefully clean and with a new meaning having found faith in the lord.
If we open another betting shop, that’s five within 120 square yards – that’s crazy isn’t it? Plus two amusement arcades.
Do we have seven shoe shops, seven chemists, seven newsagents the list goes on, but seven establishments designed to take your money and send you away skint, that’s a different breed of animal.
Spalding doesn’t need this.
Patrick
Address supplied
