{"id":854419,"date":"2026-08-11T17:44:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/854419\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T17:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:44:11","slug":"gambling-campaigner-stunned-by-government-clampdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/854419\/","title":{"rendered":"Gambling campaigner ‘stunned’ by government clampdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

The daughter of a woman who lost \u00a330,000 in a slot machine addiction has said she is “stunned” after a clampdown on gambling was announced.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said councils will get more powers to block new betting shops under government plans aimed at improving high streets.<\/a><\/p>\n

Jackie Olden said her late mother Wendy Hughes got hooked after working at a bookmakers. She started a campaign against gambling just before her mother died from cancer in 2024 at the age of 64.<\/p>\n

The 44-year-old said: “I am flabbergasted that it has has happened so soon – I thought it would take another 10 years.”<\/p>\n

Hughes was asked to play the machines on a free demonstration mode to help drum up customer interest.<\/p>\n

She then continued gambling after being diagnosed with cancer in April 2023 and became progressively more unwell. <\/p>\n

In November of the same year, she lost almost \u00a32,000 in two sessions at the Merkur slots venue.<\/p>\n

It prompted Hughes, of Stockport, Greater Manchester, to begin playing slots in her own time before spiralling into debt. <\/p>\n

Olden said: “My mum didn’t dare take a day off.<\/p>\n

“If they had acted as they should have, she might have been diagnosed sooner.<\/p>\n

“She was never someone who would have gambled before this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The daughter of a woman who lost \u00a330,000 in a slot machine addiction has said she is “stunned”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":854420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,84,393,394],"class_list":["post-854419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/854420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}