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Jake Van Der Kamp

You are reading a comment on horse-racing by a person who claims the most successful horse-betting record in all of Hong Kong.

 Twenty or so years ago, someone in the office passed round a hat containing 40 slips of paper, each bearing the name of a different horse entered for the Melbourne Cup; $10 in the hat bought one of the slips of paper and the winner took the pot.

 There you go, a 40-to-one payout ratio, and as your correspondent has never since bet on a horse or even gone to a horse race, his record remains intact.

 Find someone, if you can, who has a better win record in his betting career on the track.

 Unfortunately, most other people who bet on horses don't know when to stop. You can read the sad results almost every day in the stories of ruined lives told to our courts.

 It is an unsavoury business and always has been, no matter how often it is referred to as 'The Sport of Kings' or dressed up in the trappings of wealth or called 'gaming' instead of gambling. Somehow or other, it always gets ensnared in underworld connections.

 On Monday, Jockey Club chairman of stewards Alan Li Fook-sum found himself having to complain about it again.

 The Government, he said, must close loopholes that allowed billions of dollars to pass through illegal gambling channels. The problem has gone past local bookmakers who offer 15 per cent discounts on bets. It is increasingly an offshore activity.

 Mr Li offered two arguments why the government should tighten up. The first - 'Illegal gambling encourages people to break the law and so undermines the social fabric and rule of law'.

 There is an obvious solution to this. Legalise this illegal gambling and there will be no law to break.

 A law to stop people from doing something they are going to do anyway is worse than useless. Far better to create legal channels for them to do it so that at least it can be watched and not driven underground for the triads to profit from it being made criminal.

 Mr Li's second argument - 'Illegal gambling is a problem which should concern us all. It deprives the Government of tax revenue and charity of funds. In effect, it is stealing from the Treasury and from Hong Kong's most needy'.

 The Government could indeed feel the pinch. Income from bets and sweeps accounts for 7 per cent of operating revenue.

 But this only raises the question of whether sinners' taxes are not counter-productive. In becoming as addicted to these revenues as the sinners to their pursuits, our Government now has a fiscal interest in sustaining activities it may otherwise want to restrain.

 As to Mr Li's most needy, he has only to read the court pages to see how their need so often arises. Gambling is particularly a vice because its illusions are at their most seductive among the poor and it preys worst on them.

 Yes, it is true that the Jockey Club is a big contributor to charities, but isn't it a little odd at the turn of the 21st century in a society as wealthy as ours that key public services should still have to rely so heavily on a private hidden tax on the poor?  And let's just emphasise again that the form this hidden tax takes leads to some of the social ailments that require these public services.

 There has to be a better way of doing this.

 Mr Li's problem, however, can only become worse. The Internet, so beloved of our authorities, is rapidly becoming the world's leading channel of gambling.

 What is to stop someone who operates a Web site out of Timbuktu and deals through offshore bank accounts from offering better odds on a Wednesday night turn-out at Happy Valley than an official entity which must also hit the punters for taxes and charity payments?  It can't be stopped. The Jockey Club will have to rethink itself soon and possibly in different ways than Mr Li has in mind.



Jockey Club backs the wrong nag