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British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
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Rock
or a Hard Place? by Barry Needoff and Neil Matthews This year's Mensa Annual Gathering takes place in Blackpool, one of the UK's oldest and best-known tourist destinations. We may not all have been there, but we know people who have, or we have seen the postcards, the photos or the film footage. Plans are afoot which - intentionally or otherwise - could change the face of the town forever. As a foretaste of this year's debate, BBC2's The Money Programme* recently took a trip to the seaside to examine the implications. The inevitable starting point was the long-term decline of the town from a peak of 17 million tourists a year at one point to its present level - a third down on that. The traditional attractions - the beach, the Tower, the shows - have not managed yet to find a way to reverse that decline. The man with a plan is Mark Etches, the MD of Leisure Parcs, owners of the Tower amongst other attractions. Mr Etches wants to take advantage of the proposed relaxation in gambling legislation to build a huge gambling hall, twice the size of a football pitch, to make £50 million per year within a decade. Under laws introduced in the 1960s, different types of gambling have to take place in different locations, and they are strictly regulated. A Government White Paper and subsequent Bill is expected to accept most of the recommendations of a Commission led by Sir Alan Budd, including special licensing to permit multiple types of gambling to go on in one location. The current UK limit on maximum winnings is £1,000 - but, if takings could be pooled between different types of gambling (e.g. slot machines and card games), this limit could be much higher, or there might not be a limit at all. As you might imagine, not everyone is optimistic about this brave new world. Since a giant all-inclusive casino reduces the need for visitors to go elsewhere, many small businesses in Blackpool fear that they will stay in the casino and spend all their money there. Leisure arcades, bars and restaurants share this concern. The programme also interviewed Professor Jim Orford of Birmingham University, who predicts an increase in the level of gambling addiction and associated problems - especially if the new laws lead to a large increase in the number of slot machines, which are especially popular with younger people. In many walks of life, the UK seems to follow a path already trodden in the USA and so it is the case here, too. The Money Programme examined the effects in Atlantic City, New Jersey, of a vote 25 years ago to relax gambling laws. The city now attracts 30 million visitors a year. Its Casinos Reinvestment Authority has ploughed money from the takings into housing. However, there is a flip side to this coin - the number of restaurants, coincidentally or not, has fallen from over 300 to under 100 in that time. The local branch of Gamblers' Anonymous estimates that 5% of the state's population has a gambling problem. Only the local pawnbrokers seem to be thriving... The evidence of Atlantic City doesn't seem to show that the casinos have attracted the family market that Mark Etches wants to bring back to Blackpool. There is little reason, on the face of it, why they should. Mark Etches claimed that the existing family attractions of Blackpool are superior to those in Atlantic City and that the giant "Pharaoh's Palace" he envisages will complement them. Revealingly, though, he would only say on tape that the "good businesses would survive", while the existence of "B&Bs with bathrooms down the hall" was a questionable proposition anyway. Mr Etches seemed more struck by the notion of "people seeing something they will talk about when they return home" and by the idea of establishing Blackpool as an international leisure destination. Curiously for one espousing market principles, he wants the Government to give him semi-monopoly status in and around Blackpool for a period of years in order to achieve this. There are many other companies waiting to cash in on the expected relaxation of the gaming laws, so this seems unlikely. It would be easy to question the style and character of the development - do the sphinxes and the bright blue skies in the artists' impressions really belong on the Fylde Coast? - but, aside from aesthetics, gambling is not new to Blackpool although the scale of this development certainly is. Since the Golden Mile came into being, 'penny arcades' have prospered, providing entertainment for many and a living for a few. Leisure Parcs' plans ramp this up to a new, post-industrial scale. The question of how this might benefit Blackpool is the key one, and it is not so very different from the question of how 'all-inclusive' holiday resorts benefit their host communities. Could developments like these offer secure, well-paid employment for local people, long-term trading opportunities for local businesses and re-investment in the local economy? Or could we see short-term, unskilled, low-status jobs in the informal economy, trucked-in catering and massive profits expatriated into the developer's coffers? Although
Blackpool cannot simply do nothing, it might be unleashing all kinds of
unintended consequences if it allows one man's hubristic vision to become
reality. * "Vegas
on Sea" (The Money Programme, 27 February, BBC2) A version of this article appeared in a special edition of VISA for British Mensa's 2002 Annual Gathering in Blackpool. It also appeared in Mensa Magazine in May 2002. |