Post Racing Podcast

Below you have the text of my side of the conversation today, with selections for several races and our "Something For The Weekend" picks.

1. Joe Saumarez Smith passes away aged 53

I’ve never really got involved in the politics of racing and I’m sure Sean knows more about the man but from everything I have read about him, it seems that we have lost someone that was passionate about the sport and a huge supporter of the game.

Not many that get involved in racing, in that kind of capacity stick around for as long as he did, and he spread the word about racing here all over the world.

Just 53 years old….a great loss.

• The ignorance of those politicians making decisions on betting/gambling

Is it ignorance, or are these people deliberately being destructive?

The Gambling commission produced figures last year and advised those looking to use them not to do so in a destructive manner. What has happened is, a few unscrupulous MP’s are now using them to inflate what might be a problem, to make it a problem….they are doing what is called “grossing up the numbers”, to make it appear we have over a million members of the public having a gambling addiction problem.

The problem has come about because of a 2.5% figure. This was produced by the Gambling Survey of Great Britain, which was commissioned by the Gambling Commission, who say themselves, “Sometimes it occurs the misuse is accidental, other times it’s a deliberate misuse of the data”.

Government bodies are apparently also using the data deliberately to skew the argument against betting, despite the Gambling Commission telling all these agencies to behave themselves and to stop. One in particular, Gambling With Lives, keeps deliberately ignoring what they are being told by the Gambling Commission, appearing on TV, having articles printed in the Telegraph, Express and iNews.

You have to blame the Gambling Commission for producing figures that could be used in such a way.

• Gambling Commission admits frictionless affordability checks have the potential to cause confusion because different credit reference agencies can have different information about the same person

On pretty much the same theme, the Gambling Commission itself now recognises the “frictionless” checks made on punters might not be as frictionless as they first thought. It very much depends on which credit reference agency the bookmakers employ to check up on you. Different agencies offer different opinions on you, so whilst one might say, “lovely bloke, not a problem in the world”….another might say, “might have an issue….he played the lottery last week!”

I went to login to Skybet recently and received a message that I sent you….”we need to confirm your identity etc etc etc and asked me to then have certain documentation ready (passport etc), to access my account. I refuse to do this.

• Grand National weights – early thoughts?

First thing that looks obvious is, Mullins has kept I AM MAXIMUS, last years winner, in the race to keep the weights down for his more fancied runners.

When I was putting my TOTE TEN TO FOLLOW lines together for Post Racing members, back in November, I made sure I had INOTHEWAYURTHINKIN in a line because I had it pegged as a National horse. He turned up at Aintree last year and easily won the Mildmay, beating IROKO doing handsprings. That horse is 12/1 to win the National.

At the start of this month INOTHEWAYURTHINKIN was 33/1. He’s now best priced 8/1 favourite. Nope, I didn’t take the 33/1….I’m far too busy doing my daily stuff to keep all these plates spinning, and the National wasn’t even on my mind.

The horse is a se...