I bet I know where this one's going.

Smoking
Drinking
Driving
Fat
Salt

Something's always been missing from that list. Something people do solely for fun and which must therefore be high on the Righteous target list.

Aha, here it is. Gambling.

Specifically, Internet gambling. The Gorgon once wanted to set up a supercasino to generate super amounts of tax, but has had to content himself with the moron tax - the Lottery - and the bookie taxes. The problem, for Labour, with internet gambling is that it's not based in this country and they can't tax it.

Gambling can be a problem for some. It's not for me. I rarely gamble on anything, not because of any moral stance but because I'm just no good at it. I can't pick winners.

Some can, some even make enough to live on through gambling, whether in the stock market or the race track and they don't have a gambling problem either. The problem affects those who are as bad at gambling as I am but who think they're good at it.

The woman in that story has such a problem and has racked up huge debts because of it. Apparently, many women are turning to online gambling, not least because they feel safer at home in front of a screen than in a seedy backstreet bookie's. Why are they gambling?

Karter is scathing about the gambling industry. "I think there is a great demonic force out there leading women quite deliberately into trouble," she said.

Ah, right, it's the Satanic influence of those gambling sites.

Casino and poker websites are attracting women with "female-friendly" gimmicks – including Barbie pink colour schemes, "hunk of the month" pin-ups and gambling horoscopes.

None of which these women gamblers would see unless they quite deliberately sought out a gambling website. The urge to gamble comes first, the seeking out something to bet on comes second. If they were searching for hunks or horoscopes, they'd look and leave. Or move to sites carrying more of what they wanted. The gambling sites don't reach through the screen and grab your credit card.

It's odd that the article focuses entirely on women gamblers. I've known a few addicted gamblers, all of whom were men and all of whom were constantly broke. Every penny went into a bookie's pocket or on a card game. If they had a win, they celebrated and forgot all the losses. One became a seriously boring pub companion because he'd head straight for the slot machine and stay there. If he had to go to the toilet, one of us had to keep 'feeding the machine' until he came back in case someone else took the imminent jackpot. I haven't seen him in years. I expect he's still loading up a slot machine somewhere.

Gambling might be on the rise among women but it's certainly not an exclusively female issue.

So why's it come up now? The government won't ban gambling because they want that lottery money, and the punter taxes at the bookies, plus the income tax on the bookies themselves. What about internet gambling, much of which is offshore and doesn't generate UK taxes? Dealing with that would add another few rifles to the 'Control the Internet Brigade' so they'll be thinking about it.

Are there clues? Well, the old chestnut never fails, does it?

"There are sites that are targeting women. But the children are placed in front of the TV so the children are not getting the emotional nurturing."

For the cheeeldren.

There are worse things a parent can do to a child than sit them in front of the TV. True, it's far from ideal parenting but much, much worse things happen to children in some homes.

But where is the final piece of the jigsaw? Where is the profit margin?

The British Medical Association wants gambling to be a recognised addiction in the NHS, and the money the gambling industry, through the Responsibility in Gambling Trust, pays into treatment programmes – £3.6m in 2007 – raised to at least £10m annually.

The BMA want all this under the control of the NHS and they want ten million beer vouchers a year for their trouble. The gambling industry already pays £3.6 million a year to help people stop gambling but the BMA want that trebled. Now. For the cheeeldren. Next year, they'll want more.

Yes, there are people who have a problem with gambling. But at what point do you define 'problem'? This is the BMA we're talking about, remember. Those who define the obesity problem and have been shrinking the 'acceptable size' since they took control. Those who define the alcohol problem and have routinely tightened the definition of 'problem drinker' since they took control. In a few weeks you'll be a problem drinker if you know where the off-licence is.

To me, it would seem that someone has a problem with gambling when it gets them into debt and they can't stop gambling. A flutter with a few spare quid is not a problem. Racking up the credit card week after week, that's a problem. It has nothing to do with the internet, either. Who's waited behind the lottery-buyers at the cigarette counter and been stunned at how many tickets and scratchcards some of them buy? That's a gambling outlet in a supermarket. You don't have to search for it. It's waiting for you when you go to the shop.

Ah, but that's the lottery. It's good gambling. Those who blow most of their pensions or half of their minimum wage on it are just fine. Leave them alone. It's the untaxed gambling that's bad.

If the BMA win this, they'll have to justify a demand for ten million quid every year. You just know they'll start tightening 'problem gambler' to the guy who puts a quid on the horses once a week, or any form of regular gambling. Even the lottery. As it is, I can find no definition of 'problem gambler' on the NHS, although Gamblers Anonymous has stringent membership requirements.

Gambling will next be denormalised and made socially unacceptable. That's why Labour haven't pushed this line so far. If gambling is denormalised, and if the lottery tickets are at the cigarette counter, well, that link is already half made and the moron tax will collapse.

Will Labour take this on board now? If they think they have the slightest chance of winning the next election, no. If they think they will lose and the Tories will get the lottery income, definitely.

So how big is this problem? Scary numbers time -

The Gambling Commission estimates that there are between 236,000 and 378,000 problem gamblers in Britain, but Gamblers Anonymous thinks it is nearer 600,000.

Well, Gamblers Anonymous has a vested interest in claiming a high customer base. Even so, their figure equates to one percent of the population and depends entirely on the definition of 'problem gambler'. The figures are, apparently, one-quarter female and three-quarters male.

So somewhere between half and one percent of the country are currently estimated (estimated, remember. They never seem to have actual figures for anything) to have a gambling problem. One of them lives in Downing Street and he's lost the entire country. Deal with him first.

It's the first broadside from the Righteous against gambling. They won't stop with this. What happens next depends on how certain Labour are about the outcome of the next election and whether they are downright spiteful enough to block a voluntary revenue stream that might be of use in denting our debts, simply to give the Tories a black eye. No government in power is going to block tax revenue from gambling, especially in the current situation, unless they think they are about to lose power and want to wreck the country for the next lot.

Well, I don't gamble so I shouldn't care anyway, right? I should be out there reviling and denormalising gamblers, just like the herds of sheep doing the same to all smokers and drinkers and fat people now.

I won't be doing that because I oppose all Righteous nannying life-control measures and because it will not solve anything. All it did to smokers was to get us to set up smoky-drinky places and buy imported tobacco. All it will do to drinkers is boost the sale of homebrew equipment and cause the setting up of illicit stills - which will produce drinks far more deadly than anything on sale now.

All that will happen when they get to denormalising gambling is that it'll happen through backstreet bookies with runners and enforcers. If those problem gamblers think the credit card companies are tough, wait until they owe Luigi the Crowbar a couple of grand. Plus interest at a rate that would make a credit card company drool.

Gambling is a tough one. Smoking was easy. They didn't ban tobacco, they just banned using it anywhere. So the tax income keeps coming and a whole section of the population gets treated like dirt for paying it. Pure Socialism. Likewise minimum pricing on alcohol. The tax revenue will rise along with the price and sales will stay the same, and another section of the population gets treated like dirt for paying it.

With gambling it's different. It's not a physical product. You can arrange a bet informally and there's no way for the government to find out. The only way they can tax it is if they know where it's happening. So if they ban gambling, the tax income stops at once but the gambling continues as before. They know banning it won't solve the 'problem'. It never has and was never intended to. It was always just an excuse to boost the taxes and control the population at the same time.

Still, the BMA are on the case now. They'll be pushing for gambling controls. The government will want to hang on to their tax income. The government would love to impose internet controls using gambling as an excuse but if they denormalise gambling, they're risking their tax take again.

This could turn into a really good battle.