A person whose life has been ruined by gambling and we all know many.

Extremely nebulous, but let's roll with it. In that case, the only way to prevent someone from ruining their own lives because they can't control their betting is to have no betting (for material amounts). But then they could still go down the scratch card route, for example. Assuming gambling could be eliminated from society, which it can't be.

fwiw, this is a post on the front page of the mse forum. I just looked now, these situations are commonplace and those who make them public on mse will be the tip of the iceberg.

Back in debt and on DMP after battling addiction.

Here I am again... in a position I vowed never too be in again after climbing out of debt a number of years ago....

Over the past 6 months or so I have been battling addiction with drugs. I have put myself in so much financial trouble that I have spent all my savings and any money I've had feeding my terrible addiction.

I have no money too pay my rent coming up towards the end of the week or a few other upcoming bills either... I'm in such a bad way... just don't know what too do! I've tried to get a loan too cover me for this month until I next get paid (which I shouldn't do being on DMP either!), I'm getting rejected everywhere though. I have no other friends and family too turn too now... because I owe most of them money too.

The only positive I have is that I have managed too be clean of drugs for the past 3 days and start reattending Narcotics Anonymous meetings in an attempt too stay clear and clean of the substances that I have so selfishly and stupidly allowed too take a hold of me and pretty much ruin my life in the short term at least...



If you thought that taking drugs was banned and illegal, you would be spot on. Unfortunately, there still appears to be problem dug takers.

The liberalist dream of preventing people from making extremely poor life choices, 'tis but a dream.

The liberalist dream of preventing people from making extremely poor life choices, 'tis but a dream.

It is nothing to do with liberals - on any meaning of the word.

The liberalist ideology in my view is that for anything that happens to people in society that is negative, there is an intervention by the state that can fix it. And that the state has limited resources in trying to achieve it. It's not party politics per se, the current Tory party is stuffed with liberalists.

Are countries like KSA and Qatar "liberalist"?

Its left of centre ideology.(The opposite of laissez-faire)
As Ive said numerous times on here, any party can propose any ideological bill.
The Tories have implemented numerous left wing policies over the last number of years.

This whole issue came about due to a very odd mixture of emotion, truth and distortions of truth.

It is true that many people (mostly men) over the years have been destroyed, sometimes very literally, by gambling. And they sometimes tell very gut wrenching stories in print and in other media - I've read a few.

But though this is based in emotive truth, there is also a large layer of lies or truth distortion involved. The anti-gambling campaign spreads numerous half truths about what gambling actually is for many. As we know, it can be a perfectly fine activity to be involved in, even to a very serious level. But the lies are that it is all basically degenerate, will almost always put a person in great danger, has no skill involved etc etc etc.

To a casual or non-gambler, which is a massive majority - the latter story is 'true' and sadly there is little way to educate anyone about how this story is distorted. I am not even sure I could convince some of my own relatives about gambling, let alone a wider population.

Most of today's 'issues' can be traced back to state intervention. Intervening on aspects that they are actually clueless about, or have zero comprehension of the unintended consequences. Either that, or in the short term, they don't care.