What will you do if the new puritans' attack on punting ends in disaster?

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the government’s hare-brained review of the gambling industry and the frankly alarming potential for random groups of opponents of my primary leisure pursuit to inflict substantial, perhaps fatal, damage on it.

There was a time when I would have dismissed it all as a bit of nonsense that would pass once the forces of common sense got their act together, but common sense has gone Awol in the past few years and now there’s no telling how far the nose-pokers and do-gooders will be allowed to go.

If even half of the prohibitionist measures that have been mooted actually come to fruition, it will make the current hand-wringing discussions about poor prize-money and small field sizes seem like a best-case scenario rather than an existential threat.

It’s made me wonder what I’ll do if the human waste really does hit the multi-bladed cooling device. How will I react to having to pay betting tax again – which will seem like going back to the stone age? To being forced to hand over information that I might justifiably regard as personal? To having betting companies metaphorically rooting around in my bins in the middle of the night – a time, incidentally, when I’d be unable to have a bet on their websites due to suggested curfews.

A while back, these would all have sounded like the stuff of a souvenir dystopian issue of the Racing Post, but as Dan Waugh, who advises on gambling regulation for Regulus Partners, pointed out this week they are gaining traction in the corridors of power where the only opinions sought seem to be those of people who wouldn’t know an each-way Yankee from a hole in the ground.

I remember a pal of mine objecting strongly to the opening of a new betting shop in a nearby small town – something I regarded as manna from heaven. I asked him why he was so ‘anti’ and he told me that they were horrible, grubby places that lowered the tone.

As we stood on a high street characterised by tatty, disused shops and a declining local economy, I asked him when the last time was that he’d been in one, and he told me that he’d never actually been in one but he thought that was probably what they were like and other people had told him so. I offered to take him in one, but he declined on grounds of taste. And he didn’t like the brightly coloured signs either, just in case his first argument was beginning to ship water.

That’s the kind of ignorance we’re up against, so I’m planning my next move, although I don’t yet know whether I’ll be digging a tunnel, going over the wall or complying meekly.

Will I migrate to illegal betting sites to sidestep this tidal wave of new puritanism? Probably not, because I’m essentially law-abiding and cowardly, but I’m well aware of people who already have and others who almost certainly would.

Will I comply with the new regulations, despite my deep-seated objections, just for an easy life? I’d like to think not, but the alternatives are being closed down one by one.

Goodwood: racing on Saturday – and writer Peter Thomas will be looking to have a betCredit: Edward Whitaker

Or will I simply stop betting, to appease the numbskulls who believe that making compulsive gamblers set limits on their accounts, giving them the opportunity to self-exclude or asking for their personal details will make a blind bit of difference to their behaviour, besides making them a little more resourceful.

What will you do? You’ve stumbled across this column in between reading the racecards and tipping columns, so you’re obviously a keen punter and have probably given this some thought. Does the future look bleak to you, or will everything soon settle down and go back to what passes for normal?

I really can’t imagine a life without gambling on horses. I’ve done it since I was eight, which means I’ve spent 52 years trying to improve my method, learn from my mistakes and maybe one day make a profit.

I can’t say I’ve achieved any of these goals with conspicuous success, but I’ve managed to keep my head above water, raise a family, pay a mortgage and cause very little collateral damage. I’ve had wonderful highs and consistent but not traumatic lows, and I don’t think it’s anybody’s business how much I bet, assuming I’m not robbing sub post offices or attacking old ladies in the street to fund my habit.

Am I addicted? No, like most punters I’m passionate, but I’m almost always in control, and even the times when I’m not can be fun.

My gambling is a bit like my drinking. I probably do it a little too much, but not to anything approaching true excess, because I’m a normal human being with self-preservation instincts. But I’m genuinely concerned that if the new puritans get their teeth properly into racing, I’ll soon have Majestic logging my monthly wine intake and demanding to see the results of my latest liver function test and making a unilateral decision as to whether I can buy another bottle of chardonnay.

After all, why not? They’re both fundamentally harmless habits that have the potential to get out of control, and the logic seems to be that if a tiny proportion of the population can’t control themselves, it’s easier to drag everybody into the regulatory mire than to identify the vulnerable and give them the clinical help they need.

Maybe this is an issue that will drive racing, punters and bookmakers together as overdue bedfellows and everything will be rosy in the garden at long last. What I know for sure is that when you leave the uninformed in charge of policy, you’re asking for trouble. I fear that’s the road we’re going down at the moment: the worldly and enthusiastic being badgered to extinction by the po-faced and misguided.

It’s Goodwood on Saturday, though, and I can’t imagine not scouring the Racing Post for a bet. I retain my faith that the government will (if only through naked self-interest) see the error of its ways and leave us alone to enjoy our sport with a little extra spice from gambling. Having said that, recent events make common sense a 9-2 shot in a two-horse race.

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