I’ve been a lazy git. Having just flown back from Portugal – lovely, air temperature fairly cool but the sun warm and managed to come back with a bit of a tan, thanks for asking! – and having not bothered at an exhausted end of the previous week, I’ve not actually updated my betting figures. So, I can’t report back at this stage. Having said that, everything I backed before going away lost, and that’s probably all you need to know!
I promise I’ll be a bit more professional about it as soon as I’ve updated my records, which will be over the next day or two.
In the meantime, it really was nice to get away from the daily “grind” that betting can oh-so-easily become. Having not even taken my laptop with me, I had (deliberately) cut myself off from work, betting, and anything else I couldn’t be bothered with. I heartily recommend doing it from time to time. The benefits, not least of which relate to mental wellbeing, are tremendous. Gone are the days when I went on holiday and fretted about getting every bet on.
That doesn’t mean there wasn’t some thinking time, however.
One thing I did mull over was whether or not to look at the possibility of getting access to more online accounts. What puts me off is the state of disrepair the bookmaking industry is currently languishing within. When you see long Twitter threads written by reputable people telling stories of bookmakers either not paying out fairly, or making life for their customers ridiculously difficult in one way or another, it kinda makes you think you’re better off out of it. And yes, I know these troubles extend out to effect those customers using the shops and it’s not purely an online issue, but the impression I get – possibly wrongly – is that shop customers are less frequently burnt by so called reputable bookmakers as are their online colleagues.
The SBC Twitter account pointed out today that it is hardly any wonder that people are moving towards using black market bookmakers because so many are so poorly treated by the mainstream firms, so what have they got to worry about by doing so? Why would anyone fear not being paid out honestly by a black market bookie on a big win, when that appears to be such an issue for customers of the High Street firms?
The SBC and others are, to my mind, doing a great job in terms of raising awareness and applying what pressure they can to the Gambling Commission to act as any governing body ought, and ensure that transgressions made by bookmaking firms are properly punished. Alas, it seems that the GC is about as impervious to lobbying and criticism as the PGMOL is to complaints about refereeing standards (and blimey, how low are they!?!), but continuous haranguing and exposure of bad practices must continue. It comes to something when restrictions and account closures are actually the least of our worries!
Finally for today, a word to Tom Brownlee of Bookie Bashing. Tom has gone out to Syria to help with the aid effort following the earthquake that hit both that country and Turkey so badly. You can only imagine how people’s lives are so devastated, and so anyone who gets up off their arse to go and actually help, deserves every respect.
