Manchester Super Casino To Crumble Like A House Of Cards?
We’ve all been following the recent casino news headlines that Gordon Brown has gone cold on the UK’s first super casino in Manchester with most journalists going as far as saying that he has scrapped plans to build a flagship land-based casino altogether.
Really? Did these sensationalist headline writers hear something in his comments that we didn’t? Does his desire for a review of the government’s position on super casinos equate to his scrapping of the possibility altogether? We don’t think so.
He has not, as yet, spoken of cancelling the proposed Manchester super casino - to arrive at this conclusion we must trust journalistic interpretation of what is inferred by the Prime Minister’s proposed review of the current situation.
As a straight-talking dour Scotsman, would Gordon Brown not have said that the building of a super casino in Manchester is not in line with his government’s aims for inner-city regeneration and is therefore being shelved?
Our thoughts are that when his comments were made, the majority of his time was being taken up dealing with COBRA and the events surrounding the recent attempted terrorist attack in Glasgow. The old “better order a review” line was trotted out to buy him some time to deal with much more pressing matters.
The process has already angered Blackpool and most of Lancashire when their bid for a super casino, the bookie’s clear favourite, was beaten by Manchester who were not even in the running in the eyes of many commentators. If the government now makes a further mockery of the process by cutting Manchester off at the knees, won’t it further damage itself in the eyes of the voters?
With this government’s love of foreign investment in the UK, it seems even more strange that they would shut down super casino proposals altogether. With Harrah’s and The Las Vegas Sands Corporation primed to channel billions of dollars into the UK’s casino expansion plans, a u-turn at this stage seems unlikely. The Las Vegas Sands Corp. has stated publicly since the PM’s comments that they will just funnel their billions elsewhere on the continent. That must hurt.
Is Gordon Brown chasing the middle-class middle ground? Having voted in favour of the super casino as Chancellor, is he stamping his authority as Prime Minister on his government early on? Have we called it wrongly? Give us your views on this. We could be set for a long debate.
Posted by CSI Team
