Murky Waters

Denise Coates took a pay cut last year. Her personal earnings (including dividends) for the twelve months ended March 2022 were down to £263 million - a rather lacklustre sum compared with the  £300M she received (I can't write 'earned' again) in 2021 and £471M is 2020. Denise has been awarded a CBE for services to the community and business. The business of which she is undoubtedly the mastermind - she founded it in a portable building in the year 2000 - is the largest private sector employer in Stoke on Trent - a very economically disadvantaged area - and she has committed to keeping it, and its 6000+ employees, based there. The company owns Stoke City football club - a much-loved local institution that was once home to the world cup-winning goalkeeper, Gordon Banks. He was a player there when he made one of the best ever saves the game has ever seen, thwarting Pele in the 1970 competition. Denise has made a large donation to the The Courtauld - so generous that a suite galleries bears her name - as well as giving £1M (almost a day and a half's income) to the Tate. Her straightened circumstances this year are due to a business decision to divert cash into investment in expanding the company's global reach into Buenos Aires, the Netherlands, and Colorado and Ontario in North America. If only struggling Britain had more like her

Denise's company is Bet365, one of the most successful and profitable gambling companies in the world, which particularly targets online gamblers and relentlessly advertises its products in ever more innovative ways. NHS England reckons our country (UK) has 2.2 million people at risk of gambling addiction; Public Health England reported 409 gambling-related suicides in 2021. Denise supplies harmless fun to some and life-destroying addiction to others. A government that funds national sporting excellence, the arts, social projects and community improvement on the back of a numbers game is in no position to criticise Denise's activities

Neither am I. C S Lewis wrote that he had never gambled, but this gave him no moral worth, because it was the one temptation that had never beguiled him; I feel much the same way. The same applies to smoking - I've never felt any desire for it, I watched it kill many of my mother's generation, including her. I feel secure in my disdain. But I've just enjoyed a glass of decent wine and a fine winter ale from the brewery down the hill. My casual enjoyment is someone else's White Lightning cirrhosis. If I can spend my Sunday evening with a pint glass, why can't someone else spend theirs with Denise?

One of the Tudor lords in the pictures - from nearby Fawsley Hall - was imprisoned by Elisabeth, because she found a Puritan printing press in his attic, which she judjed a threat to even a Protestant crown - his attitude to the risks of excess would have been strict prohibition. Likwise, many of the folk customs we saw were vociferously (and often succesfully) opposed and suppressed by church and state - ostensibly because the believed people could not be trusted to control their base urges, but just as likely because those in authority fear the subversive power of the mob. But we have plenty of evidence of where that road leads: from Al Capone and Mexican cartels to county lines and Indian illegal gambling magnates distorting global sport

These questions are not new. This bit of visual fun is part of the current offering at Compton Verney - our closest arts "destination" in the leafy lanes between Stratford, Warwick and Banbury. We treated ourselves to lunch and an improving afternoon with Tudor aristocratic portraiture and some of the artefacts of folk customs in contemporary Britain - from Pearly kings and queens to mummers and morris. All good, harmless fun, in a lavish building set in genuinely lovely grounds, incorporating woodland walks and a picturesque lake. It's run by a foundation, named after its creator and benefactor, the late Sir Peter Moores, son of Sir John Moores, the founder of the Littlewoods Football Pools empire, a gambling business that made the family into billionaires. The Tudor lord would not approve of the walls he is hanging on. Now I come to think about it, as a child I used to help my father fill out his coupons, so I suppose this afternoon was just collecting my winnings