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What Brown has really done with the new gambling tax is to present a high asking price, a 15 percent tax. The gambling industry has long stated that they'd be able to live with a 2 or 3 percent tax: that's the low bid. And now, as the Monty Python boys so eloquently put it, "we haggle!"

The gambling industry is set to bring billions into the UK because of the opportunities The Gambling Act has created and that's more than enough incentive for any politician to start talking about taxes.

A healthy slice of the gambling revenue pie would help fill the coffers of a new government, a government which Mr. Brown hopes to be the head of, so it should come as no surprise when the gambling tax surfaces as a serious issue during the forthcoming election. That's when the haggling will begin in earnest, for now the bidders have simply stated their opening bids.

As for the House of Lords thwarting the Manchester super-casino, the issue is again political. For one thing, that same House has openly stated that they'd embrace a revised bill where 16 smaller, regional casinos were separated from the super-casino as opposed to the current "all or nothing" bill which lumps them all together. Clearly it would be a mistake to misinterpret the Lords’ "thumbs down" as an indictment of the casino industry as a whole.

Secondly, the government isn't at all happy with the Lords’ decision, since they passed the super-casino bill with a 24 vote majority while the Lords rejected it by only three votes. The House of Lords are not elected officials and that has some government officials questioning whether the Lords’ dissention on this matter shouldn't simply be set aside in the name of the greater good: the government wants the super-casino in Manchester, Manchester certainly wants it, obviously the industry wants it, but not the Lords.

Saber-rattling aside it is unlikely that the current government has the will or power to ignore the Lords on this. It's much more likely that the whole issue will be pushed forward to the next election and that's something that the unsuccessful candidates for the super-casino—Blackpool, Glasgow, Newcastle, Cardiff and Sheffield—are welcoming as a second chance for their bids for the big money maker.

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