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Why pick on bingo?
• ON the hottest day of the year, we Zimmers spent hours standing in the blazing sun at Westminster. Why? To tell the government to leave our bingo alone.
It is putting up the tax on bingo to 22 per cent when all other gambling is taxed at 15 per cent. I don’t understand what they’ve got against bingo. The bookies and football pools are taxed at 15 per cent, so why should bingo pay more?
Two years ago Mecca bingo in Essex Road closed. We have lost a lot of elderly people since that hall closed. A lot of people who loved their game of bingo have not been out to do hardly anything since. It was the government’s fault then, what with the taxation and the smoking ban, and now they’re doing it again.
Now a lot of us go to bingo in Camden. It’s one of the last remaining pleasures for a lot of people. We can meet up and have a laugh in a safe place. For many of us it’s a reason to get out of the house. If the club closes we’ll have nowhere else to go.
This government has done so many terrible things but if I could meet Gordon Brown now I’d tell him exactly what I think about the way he’s hurting elderly people who love a little game of bingo. It’s about time this government stopped taking from the public and started giving.
DOLORES MURRAY
Basire Street, N1
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