Does Erdington have a gambling problem?
I write in response to Patrick Collinson’s report in the Guardian money supplement, 12 January 2008 on Peter Lorimer’s plight of five betting shops in his home town of the Green Lanes area of North London along a 300 yard walk to his local post office. I knew that my home suburb of Erdington in Birmingham was also rife with these establishments but to what extent I did not. Testing out a very similar length route from the centre of the high street where I live to the north end to purchase a new vacuum cleaner belt, I passed not five but eight places where I could gamble my hard earned cash: two William Hills, two Shipley’s, one Betfred, one Ladbrokes and two Goldmines Quicksilver’s. Although these were not all strictly what I would call a betting shop, four were gambling halls with slot machines and the like but even so I categorise the two types in the same ilk.
