Govermant selling Tote, to get greedy paws in other ways?

It been well pubished that the Goverment has gone to great lenghts to sell the Tote.

Does anyone else feel that the selling of this was so that in can reintroduce a tax on each bet docket (not sure if this used to be the case in UK or Ireland, but was one or both).

Personally I feel that the gaming and gambling industry has really grow in the last 10 years, and the Govermant want to take make some money out of it, if they tried to introduce a tax, people would have pointed out they already have a finger in the pie with the TOTE, therefore they saw that with taxes would make more money than the tote, so sold it off, to get ready to set up taxes acorss the industry.

Does anyone see this as a possibity, or is the gambling industry to diverse for them to tax the punter, and they will target the bookies with new taxes, or did they really just want to sell the tote to get out of the gambling industry, with a profit (not many of us do that!).

When i was into the game in a big way(gambling and owning) i always thought that a Tote monopoly wouldnt be a bad thing as plenty of the money it earned would go back into the sport,for the good of racing if you like but now im not so sure,if you take away the bookmakers,you take away the competition and for a lot of people you would take away the "atmosphere" of a racecourse.Racing isnt really getting a fair deal no matter what you do,the levy is a joke and if you went to a Tote style system im pretty sure it would drive plenty away from the sport.Selling it off solves nothing,it has to become profit making for those who have stumped up the cash which will put up the deduction percentage which will in turn impact on the dividends.A no win situation for racing whichever way you look at it.