Rank is to close nine of its Mecca Bingo clubs with the loss of 230 jobs. The closures have been prompted by the smoking ban in England and Wales, which will come into force in July this year.
The cuts will be in Fulham, Islington, Kingston-upon-Hull, Liverpool, Reading, Sheffield, Swansea, Welling and Wolverhampton. Rank will then be left with 103 bingo clubs, making it the country's second-largest bingo operator.
Several bingo clubs were forced to close in Scotland after the smoking ban was introduced there. Pubs have been able to set aside outside areas where people can smoke, but this is not possible with a bingo hall because players cannot use the electronic terminals outside the hall.
While conceding that smoking is a dirty and harmful habit I believe it should be totally at the discretion of the owner of a venue to permit or ban smoking on his or her own premises, it should not be a matter for State intervention and the heavy handed dishing out of penalty notices. Clientele of bars, pubs and clubs would then have a choice of patronising those establishments which fit in with their own personal lifestyle. However there is no place for such commonsense personal choice in Nanny State Britain where the government seeks to coerce, bully and threaten its citizens.
Councils are already struggling to provide decent levels of service in conventional fields of operation, now they have to find funds for council employees to patrol licensed premises on their patch to catch and hand our penalty notices to someone who lights up.
As is typical of the hypocritical politicians of Britain’s Old Gang parties who believe they know what is best, there are establishments offering food and drink to their clients which will be exempt from the new smoking ban - the bars of the Houses of Parliament. So while your fat cat MP or a BBC political correspondent can chomp away on his cigar in Annie’s Bar the “ordinary” taxpaying smoker will be forced to stand aside in the wind and rain.
Anyway, all those Bingo Halls will make nice mosques when they go up for sale. Just like the 'Super Mosque' (Islamic Village) that's going to be built in Dudley, even after massive protests and lobbying against it. Still comforting to know, you can't have a fag whilst out at Bingo, but you can visit your local mosque, plan Jihad, condone Child Sex and plot your next catastrophe. I'm fed up saying wake up Britain because you are all comatosed.
