Get dole. Buy dope. Sell dope. Gamble. Lose. Borrow money. Buy dope
November 12, 2013 11:34 PM   Subscribe

"There are six bookmakers, one more is on its way, and five loan shops. Even if you are on JSA you can borrow money from Speedy Cash. It's the main business around here.Take dole, turn it into weed, sell them, take your profits and put them into the machines. If you win, you are quids in. If you lose, you get cash from the money shops to cover your losses. Back to dole and buying drugs. There's nothing else around here to do." -- How betting machines help small time drug dealers launder their profits and how this is about the only economic activity keeping the poorest local economies in Britain going.

The high speed gambling machines drug dealers use are of course mostly found in Britain's poorest communities:
The report reveals that in the 50 parliamentary constituencies with the highest numbers of unemployed people, punters visited 1,251 betting shops and put £5.6bn into 4,454 so-called fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs). By comparison, the 50 constituencies with the lowest levels of unemployment had only 287 betting shops and 1,045 terminals, and saw £1.4bn gambled last year.
But at least this has led to some actual trickledown from the financial sector, as the case study of dealer "James" reveals:
Hilariously, the surprisingly detailed accounting is because he worked in the back-office of an investment bank before quitting to pursue a more lucrative career, or conceivably to work his way back to respectability.
posted by MartinWisse (56 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Cheetham Hill the "Bronx of Britain"? It's not even the Bronx of north Manchester (welcome to Harpurhey).

Otherwise, a pretty saddening article.
posted by Thing at 12:04 AM on November 13, 2013


"Do you know that dyed notes from bank robberies can be submitted to the Bank of England and the company gets reimbursed?"

Wait, what?
posted by el io at 12:05 AM on November 13, 2013 [5 favorites]


I can see the tories looking at this, thinking 'we've got to clamp down on these unregulated machines!', spending tens of millions of pounds sorting out ways to implement the changes and completely ignoring the underlying problems ('there's nothing to do').
posted by bumcivilian at 12:27 AM on November 13, 2013 [3 favorites]


Why should the private sector be denied the chance to grab a piece of the illegal economy, it'll only go to criminals otherwise.
posted by fullerine at 12:41 AM on November 13, 2013 [4 favorites]


in Singapore they hang drug dealers...
posted by markchavez at 12:47 AM on November 13, 2013


markchavez: "in Singapore they hang drug dealers..."

Ooh yes! Let's escalate the war on drugs further! What could possibly go wrong?
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 12:58 AM on November 13, 2013 [25 favorites]


in Singapore they hang drug dealers...

Ah, the true sign of a civilised society
posted by bumcivilian at 12:59 AM on November 13, 2013 [3 favorites]


'Singapore... Disneyland with the death penalty'.
posted by Mister Bijou at 1:16 AM on November 13, 2013 [6 favorites]


In Singapore, they also charge locals S$100 simply to enter casinos (with free admission to foreign tourists).
posted by DoctorFedora at 1:22 AM on November 13, 2013 [4 favorites]


If the dealer has £100,000 in the bank, why does he buy his product on credit? It seems to me he could entirely avoid carrying drugs and large amounts of money at the same if he paid upfront. He could also avoid owing money to organized Albanian crime.
posted by topynate at 1:24 AM on November 13, 2013


in Singapore they hang drug dealers...

If that is the entirety of your great introductory comment, you may need to rethink MeFi.
posted by sodium lights the horizon at 1:24 AM on November 13, 2013 [38 favorites]


topynate: I doubt most street dealers are in a position to front the cash for their product, so if the whole business is structured around credit transactions it's probably simpler to just go with the existing structures.

The though also occurs that announcing to a bunch of hardened criminals that you have ready access to large stashes of accessible cash doesn't sound like the greatest of ideas either!
posted by pharm at 1:30 AM on November 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


Let's not take a successful business model that's stimulating the local economy and shackle it with regulation, eh?

In fact, let's expand it. Put in machines that connect to the financial markets and link the liquidity. Bitcoin ATMs to encourage fiscal innovation. Fixed skims to pay for local medical and social services.

Dope and gambling? Panem et circenses, people.
posted by Devonian at 2:03 AM on November 13, 2013 [6 favorites]


Losing 5-10% to launder money is a pretty decent percentage. I noticed yesterday that the change-counting machine in my local supermarket takes 8.9% of any money put through it as a fee. When the legal and moral way of converting cash is gouging you like that, why not put the money into a gambling machine instead?
posted by Hogshead at 2:03 AM on November 13, 2013 [7 favorites]


I don't know about hanging him - the young man in this article is basically doing everything you're meant to do as a fledgling entrepreneur, providing a valued service to his customers in the teaching, medical and financial professions.

His 100K saved is almost enough for a deposit on a flat. What's not to like, unless you think cocaine is bad mmmkay?
posted by colie at 2:06 AM on November 13, 2013 [5 favorites]


What's not to like?
The evil gambling companies who extort their cut of this man's hard earned income?
posted by fullerine at 2:58 AM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


(Thread-divert handy hint: About the change machines in local supermarkets - I've taken to using the self-service checkouts, after a period of considering them the work of Satan. Turns out you can just fill the coins-in hopper with your pocket full of shrapnel; it chunters through it for a while with its rather clever conveyer-belt sorting mechanism, then gives you sensible change. Entertaining robotics and no commission charged.)
posted by Devonian at 3:03 AM on November 13, 2013 [25 favorites]


I grew up in Manchester, back then Salford was poor and hard but people mostly treated each other with respect. Cheetham Hill was a very respectable lower middle class area. Later I lived in Hulme, which was a real shithole, textbook urban planning SNAFU, the stuff of sociology dissertations, the Hulme tower blocks and ratruns got demolished and it seems quite reasonable these days. The other areas, Salford especially have gone to the dogs.
posted by epo at 3:05 AM on November 13, 2013


"What's not to like, unless you think cocaine is bad mmmkay?"

...but cocaine is bad

As happy as we get here to judge others for failing to buy free trade coffee, with its dubious benefit to the developing world and price insensitive margins that largely go straight into the pockets of retailers, participating in the stark systems of oppression and violence that are the drug trade genuinely is not at all ok or cute, regardless of however hip or edgy it is supposed to be. That cocaine that he sells comes from somewhere in the Andes where the money he spent on it either fuels the terrorists (the real kind not the show on tv) who use their profits to fund a brutal civil war that has raged for half a century that makes the sexual trafficking of children just another part of life or drug fiefdoms not so different from FARC's elsewhere. It was likely smuggled to the UK through West Africa where those profits go to neo-feudal thugs who destabilize their communities with similar violence, and then there are all of the questions about "James'" business model that he doesn't answer. With all that cash, and no way to rely on police protection, how does he deter theft? How do his suppliers? Does he carry a weapon? How often does he use it? What exactly are the impurities in his 'ordinary' cocaine? Aside from the inherent dangers of habitual pharmaceutical grade cocaine use, how much worse exactly is the 'ordinary' shit?

Of course the only real way to fight degenerate assholes like this is to destroy their business model by undercutting them with legal and pharmaceutical grade drugs produced in contexts that are not so abjectly awful, but that doesn't make him some kind of capitalist saint fighting the man. He is the man in all the ways that matter, just smaller and somehow shittier.
posted by Blasdelb at 3:11 AM on November 13, 2013 [37 favorites]


The thin veneer of propriety in which people pay taxes earned from a regular wage sits atop a huge strata of questionable financial activity, whether its drug dealers laundering money through gambling machines or corporations using loopholes to avoid paying any tax, they are all part of the ugly truth of the system. When those of us who live in the veneer catch a glimpse of the writhing pit of amoral connivery that exists all around us it can be quite unsettling, but closing our eyes doesn't really make it go away.

The figures for the amounts of money put through these roulette machines are incredible and the obvious social impacts of increasing levels of gambling addiction are inevitable, the staff in the betting shops who are not making the insane profits are the ones who are getting it in the neck from disgruntled punters. The recent punitive approach of government and its departments to benefits claimants would seem to be putting the boot in to the already vulnerable in order to appease the increasingly apathetic, aging voters. Low voter turnout leaves us open to attack from the far right with their empty promises of jobs for all (white/poor) xenophobic rhetoric, while it is business as usual for the unscrupulous profiteers.

Panem et circenses, indeed.

If you are going to read any one of those links, make it the 'already vulnerable' one. Government ministers are not the ones at the front line dealing with the results of the so-called austerity measures, it is volunteers and support organisations who are. 'Approximately half of all people turning up to Foodbanks are doing so as a direct result of having benefit payments delayed, reduced or withdrawn altogether.'
posted by asok at 3:16 AM on November 13, 2013 [8 favorites]


It's also worth remembering that any young man turning over this kind of cash while outsmarting the police and carrying a weapon in these communities is seen as an absolute king.
posted by colie at 3:43 AM on November 13, 2013


It is important to understand thoroughly how this economy works here in the UK. I recently conducted a study of people who go to Wetherspoon's, the McDonald's of England for breakfast. There are people who are so hard up for food it is cheaper and more potentially profitable to go to an amusement shop (fruit machines) to gamble and eat free tea and toast until the taps open at Wetherspoon's at nine. Amusements don't let you win cash. Instead, you win an ugly, unwieldy sculpture of a duck or cheetah that the house then buys back from you for the total of your winnings.

There are people who make enough money to drink all day long in a very warm room but cannot afford to heating or eating at home. The sad thing is that because food bank rules are so onerous, one family can only have nine days' food each year, many of these men will starve this winter.
posted by parmanparman at 3:58 AM on November 13, 2013 [14 favorites]


The subculture of Wetherspoon's is an immense sociological subject and well worthy of a FPP if you have more, parmanparman.

Wetherspoon's has almost 900 outlets in the UK (McDonald's has 1200) selling far cheaper booze than anyone else and its boss is a big admirer of Walmart. Yet they also are the biggest supporter of microbreweries, offer plenty of good ale, and pioneered family areas and no-smoking areas years ago.
posted by colie at 4:15 AM on November 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


> any young man turning over this kind of cash while outsmarting the police and carrying a weapon in these communities is seen as an absolute king

In the days of fort main, man + cash + weapon was the very definition of royalty.
posted by scruss at 4:16 AM on November 13, 2013 [3 favorites]


With state support for the poor and disadvantaged being removed (by a minority government with no actual mandate) much faster than anyone can actually believe, the stage is most certainly being set for a massive rise in gangsterism and underclass economics. We've always had that in the abandoned regions, but even post-Thatcher there was a strong expectation that the cradle-to-grave social welfare system would help you muddle through.

You can feel that going, week by week, with huge chunks of basic provision being handed over to the corporates on a "here's the cash, do what you will" basis. It's not that state spending has gone down at all, just that responsibilities are being abdicated with indecent haste. Income disparity and the London/Rest Of The UK divide is rocketing. (this picture is getting a lot of traction in UK social media today...).

And with the state reneging on the social contract, it's entirely to be expected that society will do the same.

We ain't seen nothing yet.
posted by Devonian at 4:29 AM on November 13, 2013 [12 favorites]


sodium lights the horizon--Surely you are not discouraging posts/posters re: Singapore.. Cultural sensitivity and acceptance runs in many directions. While I personally do not subscribe to hanging drug dealers ( seems just a bit harsh) Singapore does have one of the lowest rates of drug abuse in the world and a very low rate of alcohol use/abuse. Just saying.
posted by rmhsinc at 5:17 AM on November 13, 2013 [3 favorites]


Just saying what, exactly?
posted by rtha at 5:33 AM on November 13, 2013 [5 favorites]


Where did you get the idea I was against people posting?

I was just suggesting that if someone's first comment is a drive by, non-sequetous, deraily shot such as that, maybe MeFi isn't the ideal arena for their talents.
posted by sodium lights the horizon at 5:39 AM on November 13, 2013 [4 favorites]


The sad thing is that because food bank rules are so onerous, one family can only have nine days' food each year, many of these men will starve this winter.

Could someone in the UK expand on how this works? The US food support system works very differently, and I'd love to hear more details.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:40 AM on November 13, 2013


Just saying the comment ( re: Singapore) inviting the poster to find somewhere else to post was rather insensitive and not particularly reflective of an openness to look at the practices of other countries/cultures.
posted by rmhsinc at 5:42 AM on November 13, 2013


With state support for the poor and disadvantaged being removed (by a minority government with no actual mandate)

In 2010 the Conservatives won 36.1% of the popular vote. The Lib Dems won 23%. It gave the Conservatives 306 seats and the Lib Dems 57 seats.

In 2005, Labour won 35.2% of the popular vote. It gave them 355 seats.

If the Conservatives and the Lib Dems hadn't had a tiff about reform of the Lords reform then we'd have seen reform of Commons boundaries that would have removed inconsistencies between constituency sizes, and with that a current Labour advantage of seats:votes.

No government since 1931 has claimed a majority of the popular vote.

In short, it is bit of a nonsense to claim that the coalition government has no mandate.
posted by MuffinMan at 5:47 AM on November 13, 2013 [3 favorites]


Mod note: Comment removed. I'd like to kindly request that the Singapore derail ends here. Take it to (M)email if you'd like to continue that line of discussion please. Questions about moderation are always welcome over at the contact form. Thanks.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 5:48 AM on November 13, 2013 [3 favorites]


Dip Flash, in the UK they work on a "prescription" basis - people are identified by social workers, GPs, health visitors etc. and issued a voucher. The voucher generally entitles them to three days worth of food but they are limited to three vouchers per year. There is also generally support offered at the foodbank re: job applications etc. but it is all volunteer staffed (as far as I am aware) so may not be consistent across locations.
posted by halcyonday at 5:54 AM on November 13, 2013


It depends what you mean by mandate. In general, it's accepted that under the Westminster system as it's currently set up in the UK, a majority of seats gives the government a popular mandate to carry out the policies laid out in its manifesto. Voting isn't for parties, the theory goes, it's for your local MP and the platform on which they stand. It's very easy to come up with scenarios where one party actually wins the majority of votes in the country and has a minority of MPs. (100 MPs in one party win with 70 percent majorities in their seats, 101 in the other, with 51 percent majorities - that sort of thing).

There are plenty of ways to slice this particular turkey, but the moral authority to conduct wholesale reforms is tied to having a majority of seats. For politicians so reliant on messages - 'we can't rationalise sentencing/drug policy/rights for immigrants because it would send the wrong message' - to so cynically go against this basic tenet of how we imagine the system works is a curious way to encourage democratic participation. That and carrying out stuff you never said you'd do (while trying to pull off one of the most breathtakingly audacious deletions of history I've ever seen.)


At heart, the very unpleasant ways in which the underclass survive are attractive because there is no alternative that makes any sort of sense to them, in a 'sod you, it's everyone for themselves' political environment.
posted by Devonian at 6:08 AM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


There are plenty of ways to slice this particular turkey, but the moral authority to conduct wholesale reforms is tied to having a majority of seats.

No it doesn't. Having the majority of seats removes the need to seek compromise or support from elsewhere. It doesn't confer moral authority. In the case that individual MPs wish to express their views, or their constituents' views, against the will of their party leader we have whips.

More importantly, in the case of the Conservatives they aren't conducting wholesale reforms in the way the hardline right would wish, precisely because they don't have the majority of seats and need to keep the Lib Dems on board.

The idea of mandate is neither here nor there - plenty of people on the right pointed out ad nauseam Tony Blair had "no mandate" based on either the 65% of people who didn't vote Labour or the even higher percentage who didn't vote or specifically vote Labour and the same arguments are now repeated against the Conservatives.
posted by MuffinMan at 6:33 AM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


The UK has classically been more generous with cash assistance for the poor, with your benefits intended to encompass things like food, rather than giving people food or vouchers for food directly, no? In the US, food aid is so huge because very few people qualify for cash assistance, and the food stamp amounts are often short of what's really required to feed a family.
posted by Sequence at 6:36 AM on November 13, 2013


Devonian, what do you mean by "one of the most breathtakingly audacious deletions of history"? (Sorry if there's a link or something hidden in your comment - I can't see it.)
posted by sneebler at 6:57 AM on November 13, 2013


Devonian, what do you mean by "one of the most breathtakingly audacious deletions of history"? (Sorry if there's a link or something hidden in your comment - I can't see it.)

At a guess, this:

The Tories attempt to delete all pre-2010 speeches from the internet
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:17 AM on November 13, 2013


Ah, sorry - the link to the deletion was malformed. Here it is. As I understand it, the Conservatives removed all pre-2010 speeches from their website and also installed a robots.txt blocker which had the effect of making the Internet Archive follow its policy of removing its copies of the documents.

MuffinMan: I don't want to derail the thread into a UK political system discussion, and if you don't think the concept of moral authority is linked to having an outright majority in the House of Commons then I understand that and appreciate your position, although I disagree and would only restate that the Coalition is behaving outwith the wishes of the electorate in ways that will damage democratic participation. It is not unique in this, it is the scale and mendacity of it which I find particularly noteworthy.
posted by Devonian at 7:28 AM on November 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


>The Tories attempt to delete all pre-2010 speeches from the internet.

Utter tosh and nonsense. Are you seriously suggesting that political parties cannot control the information provided by their own party political websites.

Are you suggesting, for example, that the democrats shouldn't get to decide what appears on "BarackObama.com" if they've said they want to reduce transparency at a government level.
posted by zoo at 7:29 AM on November 13, 2013


Are you suggesting, for example, that the democrats shouldn't get to decide what appears on "BarackObama.com" if they've said they want to reduce transparency at a government level.

From TFL above: "That's right; not just from their own site but from the Internet Archive, the largest publicly available digital library. "
posted by absalom at 7:33 AM on November 13, 2013


Philippe Bourgois wrote a fantastic ethnography, published in 1995, based on several years of hanging out in an East Harlem crack den, entitled In Search of Respect.

His basic argument is that drug dealers in blighted urban ghettoes were just (very) good capitalists who were motivated by the same entrepreneurial, pull yourself up by your bootstraps ethics as the Wall Street banker gangs, and all that death and horror was just the cost of success, much like all those lives and communities the banker boys have destroyed. The dealers had imbibed the capitalist ethos of the society and applied it in the only context in which they could given their limited opportunities elsewhere.
posted by spitbull at 7:34 AM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


>That's right; not just from their own site but from the Internet Archive

Your link says : "Conservatives posted a robot blocker on their website, which told search engines and the Internet Archive they were no longer permitted to keep a record of the Conservative Party web archive...The erasure had the effect of hiding Conservative speeches in a secretive corner of the internet like those that shelter the military, secret services, gangsters and paedophiles."

Or, in technical terms, they added the line :

Disallow: /News/News_stories/2000/

to their robots.txt

If that's "hiding speeches in a secretive corner of the internet like ... gangsters and paedophiles", then we need to start rounding up webmasters.

And again - http://www.conservatives.com/ is a partisan website - It's not a government website.

Seriously, how can you even repeat this nonsense?
posted by zoo at 7:44 AM on November 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


Didn't you know that the admin areas of all websites were full of illegal activities, money laundering, and pornography?

As for the cache directory... woo, boy, that's the hardcore stuff in there. Lots of stuff hidden away in the 'back end', if you know what I mean...
posted by sodium lights the horizon at 7:52 AM on November 13, 2013


There are plenty of ways to slice this particular turkey, but the moral authority to conduct wholesale reforms is tied to having a majority of seats.

The coalition does have a majority of seats. What we're seeing now in terms of policy is a compromise position between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives, obviously slanted towards the Conservative side because they have many more seats.

You can argue that if you look at the manifestos of both parties at the last election this isn't what voters were sold but direct democracy has never been a feature of the Westminster system.
posted by atrazine at 7:57 AM on November 13, 2013


It's not that they can't do it or shouldn't be allowed to do it.

It's the act of doing it that's significant.

(Personally, I now doubt it was anything other than boneheaded stupidity based on 'let's not give anyone any ammunition in the run up to the next election, so can we make sure that nobody can search for what we said in the run up to the last one?' 'Sure, boss, I'll just turn Google off for the embarrasing stuff'. Whether they knew about the Internet Archive's policy of retrospectively applying robots.txt rules- I didn't - I can't say, but doubt. It's not quite the Streisland Effect, more a TimeLord Continuity Crapola.)
posted by Devonian at 8:00 AM on November 13, 2013


This is why I can't figure out why Republicans in the U.S. are so opposed to welfare and other social support net payments to poor people. Where the hell do they think that money's going to end up? It''s going to go straight up the chain to their bottom lines.

I can't figure out why they aren't forcing poor people to take money. In a world where demand is the new scarcity, we have the potential to be the Saudi Arabia of demand. The only thing you don't want is for the money you're showering on people to leak out into things that don't lead back to you (e.g., drugs obviously), which will absolutely happen with cash. So I'm thinking something like branded gift cards that force them to consume the things you want them to consume. It also has the benefit of enclosing more and more economic activity. (It's our generation's equivalent of the moon landings!)
posted by Naberius at 8:03 AM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


That cocaine that he sells comes from somewhere [...] where the money he spent on it either fuels the terrorists (the real kind not the show on tv) who use their profits to fund a brutal civil war that has raged for half a century that makes the sexual trafficking of children just another part of life or drug fiefdoms [...]

The same is just as true of chocolate and coffee.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:54 AM on November 13, 2013


This is why I can't figure out why Republicans in the U.S. are so opposed to welfare and other social support net payments to poor people.

Because they care more about "morality" than money, and being poor is a sign of moral failing, which should not be enabled by "handouts."
posted by rtha at 8:55 AM on November 13, 2013


(To clarify, I bring up chocolate and coffee not to brush off the societal effects of cocaine, just to, you know, ruin chocolate and coffee for everyone. You're welcome!)
posted by Sys Rq at 9:12 AM on November 13, 2013 [3 favorites]


It's still a ludicrous exaggeration though, right? At the very least the ratio of kilos produced to people beheaded is a lot higher for cocaine.
posted by topynate at 9:16 AM on November 13, 2013


Naberius, that link was depressing.
posted by aniola at 9:43 AM on November 13, 2013


I know! We'll fix it with voting.
posted by telstar at 10:13 AM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


Vote BRAND
posted by colie at 10:31 AM on November 13, 2013


So I'm thinking something like branded gift cards that force them to consume the things you want them.

Gift cards (also EBT) are easily converted by selling them or buying goods for someone at a discount from face value.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 11:24 AM on November 13, 2013


Yeah, but that's aftermarket. I don't give a shit what they do with the stuff after they buy it, or what happens to the card before it gets used. At some point, somebody's got to buy something from me because it's my card. Ka-ching!
posted by Naberius at 3:19 PM on November 13, 2013


« Older Metafilter: Everything has a point   |   Putting the play in playing music. Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments