US gambling head lobbied No 10 before Bill change

[emad]

The Times
By Sam Coates


THE head of the world’s largest slot-machine company visited No 10 this year to lobby the Government to relax the gambling laws, The Times has learnt.

The meeting took place shortly before the Government announced major changes to the Gambling Bill to tilt the rules in favour of the giant US casino companies. The news of the meeting has caused uproar among opposition politicians and anti-gambling groups who say that they have not been given similar top-level access.

A spokesman for the Salvation Army, which is pressing for its own No 10 meeting, said that it was particularly aggrieved as the Department for Culture, Media and Sport told it yesterday that no such top-level meetings had taken place. Yesterday the Prime Minister, along with John Prescott, Tessa Jowell and Patricia Hewitt, were formally asked by one MP to disclose whom they had met from the US casino industry. Thomas Baker, chairman of International Game Technology (IGT), the world’s largest slot-machine manufacturer, visited Downing Street at the start of the year after the company announced plans for a massive expansion in the UK.

He met unnamed officials to discuss the Gambling Bill, published this week. After the visit he declared: “That’ll be a good market.” His company, which is based in Reno, Nevada, controls 70 per cent of the American market and is set to make hundreds of millions of pounds from British super- casinos.

More:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-1323096,00.html

THIS headline could have been appropriate for October 2001 if you consider Junior to be the world's biggest gambler taking on Clinton's deputy in a no-win contest............

[Guy_Montag]

1. To quote Bill Hicks

"Sucking Satan's Pecker"

I'm getting soo angry with Tony & his chums. I really am. :grr: