Tom Watson - Hypocrite?

It is a very simple question but Labour motorouth and Bermondsey resident Tom Watson still refuses to answer it! Is the "Derek Webb" who donated cash to Watson's constituency party, and which Watson himself declared on his Parliamentary Register of Interests, one and the same as the man standing next to him in this picture:

Why does this matter?

Firstly, you would have thought that someone who keeps opening his gob about transparency and freedom of information would be open and, er, transparent about his financiers. To refuse to give other than the statutory requirement - which does NOT identify the donor's identity adequately by address or otherwise - by this self-appointed champion of openness in public affairs may be viewed by some as rank hypocrisy. But there we are.....

Secondly, there are rules about MP's declaring a financial interest in an issue before speaking in Parliament. We don't know how long The Rutting Walrus has been associating with Webb but it does seem that the cash donations - channelled through his constituency Labour Party - were physically paid after his last pearls of wisdom on the issue at Westminster but if, as the, er, bookies suggest ("lol"), the folk of West Bromwich East are daft enough to re-elect this buffoon he MUST now declare that when he is opening the slot in the front of his mouth on gambling issues, someone called Derek Webb is shovelling coins in.

Thirdly, this hypocrite keeps shouting about banning Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBT's) without usually mentioning that he voted for the third reading of the LABOUR Gambling Bill which permitted the wretched things in the first place! Here is his voting record on gambling (which includes the infamous incident in December, 2013 when this gormless clown cocked-up and voted against his own campaign) and you will see that he was all for them in 2005!

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/11309/tom_watson/west_bromwich_east/divisions?policy=810

Now campaigning against something he voted for!

Incidentally, the multi-millionaire "Derek Webb" of the "Stop the FOBT's Campaign" claims to have also been making donations to the Lib Dems. I wonder if they declared this appropriately.....?

Thirdly, we all know Watson is a master of talking the talk but can he walk the walk? Having voted for FOBT's has he been diligent in bashing the bookies thereafter? We all know cases where he has let West Bromwich down badly (eg. The Public) but happily, he has, like all in Sandwell Labour, the uncritical backing of the Wolverhampton Labour propaganda machine, The Express and Star. Thus, by way of example, the arse-lickers ran a story on 23rd December, 2013:

"Mr Watson is calling on the Government to place betting shops in a new separate planning use class, allowing local authority planning committees to control them..."

What a shame that they were unable to find the space to tell the good people of West Bromwich East that when Parliament had voted on just this issue two years previously, Wealthy Watson was "absent":

"On 17 May 2011:

Tom Watson was absent for a vote on Localism Bill — New Clause 31 — Planning Permission for Betting Shops"

Fourthly, who IS "Derek Webb"? Let us assume for present purposes that the FOBT "Webb" IS indeed Watson's cash benefactor (neither of them will say). Like me, you may have assumed that various casino favourites like poker have been around since time immemorial and do not "belong" to anyone but, in fact, people like Webb invent variant games and then licence them to casinos. This is big business in Las Vegas and casinos across the world and it seems that ex-gambler Derek Webb was really very good at it, inventing games such as Three Card Poker.

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Someone, somewhere, must have been to Hull University with Watson. Did he get a degree or not? He refuses to say........

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This brought rich rewards to Webb who sold his company Prime Table Games LLC - registered in Nevada, USA - to Las Vegas-based Galaxy Gaming in 2011 for a whopping $23m including some Galaxy shares. (He had apparently previously sold other rights before this to another gaming company called Shufflemaster). Webb claims to have "ceased commercial activity" but it is difficult to verify this. He and his partner, Hannah O'Donnell, were operating two UK partnerships and £6.4m of the business sale went to "Prime Table Games UK". There is another partnership floating around called "D&H" - presumably "Derek and Hannah". A 2015 website for Prime Time Games states that the business "has no commercial functionality" but mysteriously states "The Prime Time Games poker asset will be disposed of in due course". The partnership used to work out of serviced offices at Castle Donington airport but later gave a "care of" address to the Advertising Standards Agency. It appears that Webb was on the electoral register in Littleover, the posh part of Derby (not in West Bromwich East, of course), in 2014 and was therefore legally entitled to make a donation to Labour even though the Guardian reported in 2013 that Derek "now lives mostly in an apartment in a Las Vegas luxury hotel". There are no addresses shown on his two campaigning websites.

Now I have to tread carefully here as I am told "gambling" Derek Webb is prone to instruct expensive lawyers when anyone treads on his toes and so I will simply but forward two statements without further comment:

Statement 1. Derek Webb is an all-round good guy who has made millions from the gaming industry and from people losing their money in casinos but is touched by the plight of people losing money on FOBT's. Thus he has set up and funded a secretive "not-for-profit" campaign with purely altruistic motives to help those poor unfortunates. He has - by his own statement - "ceased commercial activity".

Statement 2. Derek Webb still has interests in the casino card game industry - including a possible shareholding in Galaxy Gaming - which is losing business to FOBT's particularly in non-casino environments such as betting shops. Whilst our Derek's campaign is entirely altruistic, a "happy" side-effect of curbs on FOBT's may be an increase in people losing money instead via, er, casino table games.

Happily for Mr Webb, he seems able to make a distinction between someone losing their shirt slowly in a posh casino and someone ending up topless quickly at a slot machine in the semi-derelict West Bromwich High Street. Presumably Watson shares this odd view?

Being fair to Derek (I am not sure why I should be as he wants to keep his - if it be his - donation to Labour as secret as possible) he claims that the bookies are telling porkies. The big bookies say that the "take" or profit on FOBT's is around 3% and this is stated on the actual machines. Derek says this is a lie and the real take is more like 12%.

If the bookies are right then that would be a little unfortunate for Webb given some of his past statements eg. when trying to sell his Three Card Poker game - promising "big payouts on monster hands":

"With a mock-up of his game, Webb flew to gambling meccas such as Las Vegas; Reno; Tunica, Miss.; and Atlantic City, N.J., to sell his wares. He scheduled meetings with casino management. He explained the math, detailing the house edge of roughly 3.5 percent. Then he demonstrated his new game.

"You have to be able to talk on one level to the management about why the game will generate more revenue than some of the existing games that they've got," notes Webb."

In other words he was keen to market his own game at a higher return than the bookies are - allegedly - getting via FOBT's!

Fifthly, the man famously nick-named as "Ten Bellies" Watson (in the "Star" no less) is always jumping on bandwagons and embracing every leftie campaign around but insofar as he ever does purport to represent the unfortunate residents of West Bromwich East he has a number of constituents who are anti-gambling - eg the local Muslim community, some other faith groups and, seemingly, most of the sheep in the Council's Labour dictatorship!. I think they might be interested to know whether Watson and the local party have, on the face of it, taken some of the profits of gambling to finance his campaign!

Is it just me that finds it just a bit sickening that this great "tribune of the hard-left" is always spouting off about "the rich" and promising ever higher income tax, "mansion taxes" and the like and yet when a Derby/Las Vegas multi-millionaire suddenly wants to make a donation to Labour in the arse-end of the West Midlands the Nonce-Finder General can't get the receipt book out quick enough (though he then wants to keep the details away from his poor constituents)? Now don't forget to vote for Tommy next Thursday will you, suckers!

American Express? That will do nicely!

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