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If the government wants to introduce a tax on gambling they should target mobile games, gacha and other games which use ultra low odds mystery boxes to get kids to spend money on nonsense as well as partnerships with popular streamers who run tweaked versions of said games to make it seem as though the odds of pulling a top tier character/skin is substantially higher than the truth.

The level of fraud in that industry needs to be tackled and taxing them should be just a start.

I was unsurprised that the OSA did absolutely nothing to stop predatory games publishers targeting kids with gambling mechanics, it's almost as of the government doesn't know what it's doing and doesn't realise what is actually poisoning kids brains right now.

EA now only makes about 20% of it's revenue from the actual price of the game in shops. The rest comes from selling ultimate team packs for their sports games. Game publishers have ruthlessly exploited legal grey areas to get a generation of kids addicted to gambling mechanics and turn them into cash cows.

The loot boxes and ultimate team packs are bad, but those free to play mobile games which are implemented in a way that it is a) play to win and b) cut your play time unless you pay more "coins" are pure cancer.

I know somebody who works in that industry and the money for one of those games is predicated on a small number of people becoming so addicted they spend insane amounts of money like a gambling addict (but without any of the tools that gambling sites must have like time outs, deposit limits and affordability checks).

Anyway, enough of Brown. The Telegraph has discovered the gig economy exploiting illegal workers is David Cameron's fault, with a revolving door between Downing Street, Uber and Deliveroo.

How the gig economy conquered Britain and stoked the migration crisis
Uber and Deliveroo have transformed the UK, but concerns are growing that they attract illegal workers
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/10/how-the-gig-economy-conquered-britain-and-stoked-the-migrat/ (£££)

Or as someone else said,

This generation are #Uber-riding #Airbnb-ing #Deliveroo-eating #freedomfighters

Creating a pile of half under-the-counter jobs that pay poorly by British standards but not badly globally was probably a mistake.

Still, the other effect seems to have been to make some Venture Capitalists poorer, so swings and roundabouts.

Call Me Dave says not me guv:-

‘Ludicrous’ to blame gig economy for mass migration, insists Lord Cameron
The former PM denies that coalition policies created black market jobs that draw migrants to Britain
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/08/09/ludicrous-blame-gig-economy-mass-migration-david-cameron/ (£££)

The gambling industry is a licence to print money. Tax it properly – and turbocharge the fight against child poverty

[snip the 90 per cent about starving children]

Excluding the lottery, betting and gaming was an £11.5bn sector last year that incurred only £2.5bn in tax. As much as £3bn extra can be raised from taxing it properly. Remote gaming duty (effectively the tax on online slots games) is about 35% in the Netherlands, 40% in Austria, 50% in Pennsylvania and 57% in tax haven Delaware, two of the few US states where it is legal. Yet the same activity is taxed at just 21% in the UK, raising only £1bn. Applying a 50% levy – much less than the 80% tax on cigarettes and the 70% tax on whisky – would raise £1.6bn more. Raising the general betting duty on bookmakers’ profits from 15% to 25% could generate an additional £450m, after returning £100m as additional support to boost the horseracing industry.

To achieve parity with their online equivalents, machine game duty payable on the revenue from in-person slot machines should also increase from 25% to 50%. According to IPPR estimates, this would raise an additional £880m.

The government could then start to reduce child poverty. Unlike almost all other businesses, most gaming and betting is exempt from VAT. Its most addictive practices are responsible for social harm that costs the NHS and other public services more than £1bn a year.

Gambling levies aren’t the only source of revenue that could pay to alleviate child poverty. But this should be one straightforward budget choice. The government can fulfil today’s unmet needs by taxing an undertaxed sector. Gambling won’t build our country for the next generation, but children, freed from poverty, will.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/06/gambling-industry-profitable-tax-fight-child-poverty

At least Gordon Brown does seem to recognise not all gambling is the same.

The problem is that the wider debate has moved on. There is a lot more condemnation of gambling out there, and it may go the way of cigarettes if abolitionists win against the sin tax lobby.