In the damp, grey circus of the British legal system, we have recently been treated to the spectacle of two disgraced gambling titans, Kenny Alexander and Lee Feldman, attempting to play the role of the violated victim. For those who don’t follow the sordid movements of the men who profit from the chemical despair of the working class, Alexander and Feldman are the former chieftains of Entain—the parent company of Ladbrokes and Coral. They are currently mired in a delightful swamp of criminal allegations involving bribery and fraud related to their time operating in Turkey. But, in a move of such breathtaking arrogance that it borders on the transcendental, they decided to sue the UK Gambling Commission for 'breaching their privacy.'

The irony here is thick enough to choke a thoroughbred. These are men whose entire careers were built on the meticulous, intrusive data-mining of the vulnerable. Their industry survives by tracking every twitch of a gambler’s thumb, every pattern of loss, and every desperate late-night deposit. To hear them whinge about 'privacy' because a regulator dared to look into their fitness to run yet another gambling firm, 888, is like listening to a termite complain about the structural integrity of the house it’s currently eating. The High Court, in a rare moment of lucidity, has tossed their civil claim into the bin, ordering them to pay the Commission’s legal costs. It is a minor victory for the taxpayer, though a drop in the ocean compared to the billions these parasites have extracted from the public purse.

Let’s look at the backdrop of this farce. While they were busy clutching their pearls over their 'human rights,' Alexander and Feldman were also navigating the fallout of an HM Revenue & Customs investigation into 'corporate' bribery. The allegations involve their former Turkish subsidiary, a place where business was apparently conducted with the ethical rigour of a back-alley dice game. Entain eventually paid a £585 million settlement to the UK authorities to make the criminal investigation go away—a sum that would be life-changing for most of the addicts their machines created, but which to Entain was merely the cost of doing business. It is the corporate equivalent of a mugger handing back a fiver so the police let him keep the watch.

The specific gripe these two had was that the Gambling Commission dared to use information from the HMRC probe to block their attempt to seize control of 888, another online casino behemoth. They wanted to stage a comeback, to return to the throne of the betting world like a pair of disgraced emperors who forgot they’d already been exiled for arson. They claimed the Commission acted unlawfully by considering the very real, very public criminal clouds hanging over their heads. Imagine the sheer, unadulterated gall required to argue that your 'privacy' should protect you from the consequences of being investigated for international bribery. It is a level of narcissism usually reserved for cult leaders and reality television stars.

But let us not spend all our bile on the gamblers. The Gambling Commission itself is hardly a bastion of righteous justice. It is a ponderous, bureaucratic organism that usually moves with the urgency of a tectonic plate. For years, it has presided over an industry that thrives on the exploitation of the poor, issuing the occasional slap-on-the-wrist fine while the bookies continue to plaster every square inch of the sporting world with their neon logos. The Commission’s victory here isn't a triumph of morality; it’s simply a case of the house winning because the house always wins. They aren't protecting the public; they are protecting the sanctity of their own regulatory theatre.

There is something profoundly depressing about the fact that this is what passes for 'justice' in our terminal era. On one side, we have the suits—the slick, bejeweled leeches who view the world as a series of spreadsheets and 'calculated risks.' On the other, we have the state—a collection of tired civil servants trying to maintain the illusion that the game isn't rigged. And in the middle? The rest of us, the simian masses who keep feeding the machines, hoping for a jackpot that will never come, while the men who run the show sue each other over the right to keep their dirty secrets private.

Alexander and Feldman represent the logical conclusion of our modern economy: a system where the only thing more valuable than money is the ability to avoid accountability for how you made it. They lost this round, but don't weep for them. Men like this don't suffer; they simply pivot. They will retreat to their estates, count their millions, and wait for the next opportunity to feast on the weakness of others. Meanwhile, the UK continues to be a giant sportsbook surrounded by water, where the only sure bet is that the people in charge are just as crooked as the ones they’re supposed to be watching. It’s a pathetic, circular joke, and the punchline is that we’re all paying for the privilege of hearing it.