Reality Bites: The Gambling Gene. RTE2: 9.00pm

We're still reeling at the inanity of last week's Merlot and Me instalment of Reality Bites. Essentially it did nothing but reinforce the negative. Did the departing shot really have to be of Mrs Johnny Vegas swilling a glass of wine? Tonight we see Ireland in the middle of a gambling explosion.  Online betting is leading the way - with the market here worth a staggering €2bn a year.  So do the Irish have a gambling gene? Joe O'Shea is not primed with the gambling gene - we've been lead to believe - but he is intrigued, so he takes a jaunt into the heart of a betting nation.

Comments

• cianireland

  Lazy and racist. Australians gamble 200% more than Irish people, followed closely by Singaporeans. Irish people gamble significantly less and thereabouts at a par with most other gambling nations. The FACT based STATISTICS tell that story on a per capita basis- we don't need a fools opinion and we don't need to hypothesize about a 'gambling gene' that doesn't exist. It is easy to blame the Irish borrowers for the bust but what about the lenders? The banks? Again, this fool misses the fact that Irish borrowers includes Irish banks who borrowing from the supposedly non-gambling Germans. Don't forget the Germans leant the money and gambled on Irish banks. There are a lot of parties complicit and not just feckless Irish gamblers bound to hopeless risk taking by a genetic anomaly. This notion that Irish people are standout problem gamblers is a lazy and racist narrative that we repeatedly hear as a justification for our bust- it is neat and convenient but wholly inaccurate. The bust occurred in most of the western world and was accentuated in Ireland by an inappropriate economic union. Stop this racist slur against Irish people. And definitely stop doing it to ourselves. This is a worthless piece of slander that is opinion based, medically inaccurate and devoid of even the most simple statistical research. Disgraceful that WE paid to have this slander done to us. I'm disgusted.

  Posted 19:29 | Wed 30th Jan 2013

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