Plucky and deeply principled government campaigner Harriet Harman, who has tirelessly fought the “blight” of betting shops, courageously gave up her opposition to them when bookmakers Paddy Power gave her 30-year old son Harry a well-paid job in its advertising department in July this year, this reported in The Sun, so it must be true.
Harman, the deputy leader of the Labour party and shadow culture, media and sport secretary, told us all with impressive conviction at the beginning of this year that the proliferation of gambling shops was “causing a blight on people’s lives and on our high streets” and pointed out in 2011 that Paddy Power was targeting poorer areas and the less well-off with its location of shops, having “three in Tottenham High Road but none whatsoever in Highgate Village or Muswell Hill”.
The evaporation of the fearless Ms Harman’s staunch opposition to the betting industry blights and ruination of people’s lives has fuelled claims by some industry conspiracy theorists and cynics we know, though not us of course, that Paddy Power has deliberately and cleverly muzzled Harman’s opposition to them, and the gambling industry, by buying her off with a lucrative job for her son, who would have otherwise not got it.
Bet they didn’t?