Las Vegas

Thursday August 23, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday August 23, 2012

Prince Harry’s latest on-camera escapade

Prince Harry has been caught on camera doing something embarrassing — again.

Celebrity gossip website TMZ on Tuesday posted photos of the 27-year-old royal cavorting nude with an unidentified woman in a VIP suite in Las Vegas. It’s hardly the first time the prince — who allegedly disrobed as part of a game of strip pool — has been filmed misbehaving. The third-in-line to the throne was famously photographed wearing a Nazi uniform for a costume party, and in another photo-gaffe he was seen cupping the breast of a female TV presenter. Some would argue footage in which he was heard to utter a racial slur while teasing a fellow army cadet from Pakistan was more serious.

If the reaction of Britons to Harry’s Las Vegas adventure was anything to go by, the nude photos will do little to tarnish his generally positive, party-prince image. The Associated Press asked an assortment of royal watchers and British subjects about what they thought about the prince’s naked romp.

The blurry, low-resolution photographs appear to have been snapped from inside a hotel suite, and it isn’t clear that the prince was aware that they were being taken.

That could be a violation of the royal’s privacy. It might also explain why Britain’s scandal-hungry tabloids – normally avid consumers of titillating photos – were steering clear of the images. Shirley Ashard, a caregiver, said the only outrage she could muster was against the photographer.

“That’s out of order,” she said. “How would you like it if someone took pictures of you in your hotel room?” (Source: CTV News) 

 

Thursday March 15, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday March 15, 2012

Massive gambling and lottery shakeup coming

Cities — including Hamilton — will help shape the future of gambling in their communities during a massive shakeup of gaming operations in Ontario.

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation announced the broad strokes of its plans to modernize its operations Monday, including introducing online gaming, building a new casino somewhere in the Greater Toronto Area, expanding into new areas and closing several money-losing operations.

It’s not clear how these changes will affect Hamilton, including Flamboro Downs, the racetrack and slot machine behemoth located on the city’s outskirts. And though this announcement opens the door to new gambling opportunities in Hamilton, it’s still too early to say what form that will take.

What is clear, however, is that city council and the community will have a say in the outcome.

“It will be up to us to determine what the future of gambling looks like in Hamilton,” said city spokesperson Mike Kirkopoulos.

The OLG offered few concrete details on Monday, declining to reveal which facilities would be closing and how exactly the changes will play out. The plan is expected to add $1.3 billion a year to provincial coffers and result in 2,300 net new jobs in gaming and 4,000 spinoff jobs in retail and hospitality.

Many of those jobs will be created by a brand new, state of the art casino scheduled to be built somewhere in the GTA. However, the OLG’s top executive say the Hamilton area is not being considered for that project.

One of the key elements of the plan is to bring facilities to “where people happen to be,” said OLG chair Paul Godfrey. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)