LONDON — British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the son of a Church of Scotland minister, has axed plans to build a Las Vegas-style super-casino in a deprived area of one of the nation’s biggest cities. The controversial betting palace was given the go-ahead by Brown’s predecessor, Tony Blair, to try to regenerate the rundown eastern sector of the industrial city of Manchester. But Brown, who is sensitive to the argument that such casinos might stimulate further crime, addiction and deprivation among the poor, tore up the Manchester plan in Parliament July 10.
In a surprise move, he suggested to his fellow political leaders that they spend the parliamentary summer recess in “reflection” over whether there “may be a better way of meeting their (deprived areas) economic and social needs than the creation of super-casinos.”
The prime minister previously has acknowledged the “Protestant ethic” instilled in him by his father, John Ebenezer Brown, whose help and advice had become his “moral compass in life.”
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