Promising noises coming from Scully

The best news last week came from Paul Scully, the UK minister responsible for gambling, who stated that he does not believe it is the role of the government oor the Gambling Commission to tell adults how much of their own money they can afford to punt.

Since these checks came into my life more than 12 months ago, I have sleepwalked into betting much less aggressively than I did during my record year of 2017.

People who aren’t punters will be baffled when I stress that you have to be able to lose significant amounts if you are to win long-term.

By their intolerably restrictive nature, affordability checks will not allow punters to do that. Rishi Sunak sounds like Will from The Inbetweeners. Punters can only pray that Sunak’s government has more common sense than Will and ends this farce once and for all.