Category: Blog

A man who lost £500,000 betting has described how his gambling addiction started with gaming as a teenager.

Jordan Lea, from Llysfaen, Conwy county, started placing bets at about 14, and by his late 20s, was in huge debt. 

He has set up a gambling help charity that is seeing “a huge amount” of young people getting hooked. 

Early education on problem gambling is urgently needed, Public Health Wales (PHW) said.

Mr Lea said there was “a very prominent link” between gaming and gambling, adding: “I actually became addicted to gambling through gaming when I was 14 or 15 years old.

“By the time I was 18, I was already primed for quite a severe gambling addiction, which led me down a [path to the] criminal justice system.”

By his late 20s, his life had collapsed into debt and compulsive betting, he told BBC Radio Wales.

But his life changed when a casino croupier confronted him about his problem.

“I just broke down in tears,” he said. 

“That was the catalyst that really pushed me to get help.”

He later founded Deal Me Out, an awareness and education charity on gambling and gaming-related harms in Wales.

“People call it the hidden addiction,” he said. 

“With online gambling it’s on your phone, you have a casino in your pocket. You can do that on the toilet without being seen by anyone.”

He believes a “severe lack of education” about the dangers of gambling meant his problems went unacknowledged for years.

As a support worker, his “primary concern” is now for young people getting hooked online “through skin betting with crypto websites”.

He said “frontline education” is needed for young people and their parents.

PHW said the links between gambling and gaming need to be acknowledged.

It called for urgent action to tighten “regulation of gambling industry advertising and practices”.

The organisation also wants early education, more addiction support, and help from frontline health workers to identify problem gamblers and get them the help they need. 

PHW’s Annie Ashman said harmful gambling was having “devastating effects” on health and wellbeing.

“A system-wide approach is needed to take action on every level of the causes and resulting harms that gambling can have,” she said. 

“This includes knocking down the barrier of shame and stigma, early education in schools, empowering GPs and other frontline services to identify and refer on to specialist services.”

Several suspects have been arrested in connection with Monday’s suicide bomb blast in a mosque in Pakistan’s northern city of Peshawar that killed more than 100 people.

More arrests will take place following a major police investigation into the attack that injured another 217 people, Peshawar Police Chief Mohammad Aijaz Khan said. 

Authorities are also investigating how the attacker entered the mosque, Khan added. Families that live in the police compound where the mosque is located are being interrogated as police cannot rule out that the attacker may have been helped by someone internally.

Police suspect that 12 kilograms (26.5 pounds) of explosives were used by a suicide bomber, Inspector General of Peshawar Police Moazim Jah Ansari said earlier. 

Footage emerged of the destroyed walls of the mosque, with glass windows and paneling pummeled in the powerful explosion.

Emergency workers searched through the rubble to locate survivors in the aftermath of the explosion, but authorities said “mostly dead bodies” were being found.

English National Opera may have been given a stay of execution but it knows it has to keep fighting to justify its existence, and its latest revival of Bizet’s Carmen throws a well-aimed punch. Calixto Bieito’s staging, first seen here in 2012, has become one of his most enduring at theatres worldwide, and with reason: the Catalan director’s penchant for shocks and violence is right at home in an opera with menace lurking behind every good tune. Alfons Flores’s stark, black set design conjures an imposing atmosphere economically, with a gallows-like flagpole, a phone box you can almost smell, or a huge Osborne bull. When the stage briefly fills up with the smugglers’ messy fleet of 1970s Mercs it seems almost comically crowded.

The soldiers in the opening scene set the tone: full of pent-up testosterone, they are not only dangerous but dangerously childish. The women hold their own, however: this staging may have originated pre-Weinstein but, while there’s plenty of casual cruelty, thanks to Jamie Manton’s skilful revival direction it doesn’t feel overly voyeuristic. Manton gets some cracking performances from his cast – the final scene is fingernail-gnawingly tense even though you know what’s about to happen – and Christopher Cowell’s English translation comes across clearly.

Returning as Don José, Sean Panikkar sounds a little lightweight to begin with but grows in vocal stature as his character disintegrates. He’s riveting at the end. Carrie-Ann Williams makes an impressive ENO debut as a late stand-in Micaëla, her top notes big and radiant, her softest passages slightly too quiet – as are Nmon Ford’s low notes as Escamillo, though he has a lithe swagger otherwise. There’s vivid support across the cast, especially from Keel Watson’s arrogant Zuniga, and an exuberant children’s chorus drawn from two of the local primary schools ENO works with.

But everything revolves around Carmen. Ginger Costa-Jackson, another ENO debutant, is magnetic. She sings in a strong, wine-dark mezzo-soprano and knows how to hold the stage through stillness. In her Habanera and her other big solos she never seems rushed; the world goes at her pace, thanks to the subtle breathing space that Kerem Hasan’s conducting affords her, and the precision of the orchestra’s response. They, the enlarged chorus, and indeed the whole company, are on fighting form.

The British transfer record was smashed on deadline day as an unprecedented January transfer window ended with Premier League clubs having spent £2.8bn during the 2022-23 season.

Chelsea’s 121m euro (£107m) deal for Benfica’s Argentina midfielder Enzo Fernandez – once confirmed – will take the total expenditure by top-flight clubs in January to a record-breaking £815m.

More than £275m was spent on deadline day alone before the window closed for English clubs at 23:00 GMT on Tuesday.

The deadline day outlay was an increase of 83% on the previous January record of £150m, set in 2018.

And, while an all-time high season expenditure across both the summer and winter windows was guaranteed after a record of £1.9bn was set in September, the final total is double the previous record of £1.4bn in 2017.

The 2018 winter record spend of £430m by Premier League clubs had also already been smashed prior to Tuesday’s deadline day, with the eventual total in 2023 an increase of 90% on that – and almost triple the previous January window (£295m), according to financial services firm Deloitte.

The Premier League’s financial dominance in Europe increased to the highest proportion ever reported, as the spending by English top-flight clubs accounted for 79% of the total across Europe’s ‘big five’ football leagues, where January spending fell by 35% from 2022 to €255m (£225m).

Indeed, Chelsea spent more in January – around £288m – than the combined total of all clubs in the Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, and Ligue 1.

Among English Football League clubs, spending rose to £25m, up from £20m in the previous winter window.

However, just 3% of Premier League clubs’ total outlay (£25m) was spent on acquiring players from the EFL, with a record 85% spent on talent playing outside the UK. 

Tim Bridge, the lead partner in Deloitte’s Sports Business Group, said: “The record spending by Premier League clubs this season is beyond anything that we’ve seen before. 

“Premier League clubs have outspent those within the rest of Europe’s ‘big five leagues by almost four to one in this transfer window, allowing them to hold on to their key players while attracting top talent from overseas.