This piece of mine appears in today's Times:

When it comes to self-advancement, there is no interest group that comes close to the British Medical Association. When trade union officials speak, we know what they are up to. They are trying to increase their influence and power. And we judge the sense of what they say accordingly.

The BMA is, except in one crucial respect, no different. It is like any other trade union, with the same overriding motivation: to increase its influence and power. The crucial difference, however, is that when the prefix “Doctor” is attached to a name, we lose our critical faculties. We assume that anything emanating from the BMA is disinterested and motivated only by the desire to increase the sum of human good.

Often, this is obfuscated by our lack of medical knowledge. We have to take on trust the recommendations of experts. But just occasionally, the transfer of money into doctors’ hands — which the BMA exists to pursue — is made blatant.

There is no clearer example of this than the report it issued on Tuesday. Problem gambling, it said, should be treated on the NHS like any other “illness”.

You can safely ignore the bulk of the report, designed to put the fear of God into us about gambling and the horrific prospect — in the BMA’s eyes — of the Gambling Act giving human beings the ability to decide for themselves how to spend their own money.

The real purpose of the report was revealed in the words of Vivienne Nathanson, the BMA’s head of science and ethics: “The BMA is concerned that there are insufficient treatment facilities available.”

So £10 million should be spent through the NHS, and another £10 million on campaigns against gambling. To translate: hand over your money to us now.

The BMA is only able to make this demand with a straight face because we have been hoodwinked into the idea that it our duty to make good other people’s character flaws.

I gamble. At least once a week, I log in to one of the 15 bookmakers sites with which I have an account and place a sum varying from £5 to £50 on the horses. I have no idea if I am an addict. I know only that I have enjoyed it since — horror! — childhood, and it does me no harm at all.

Maybe one day I will go crazy and put £5,000 on a horse. Maybe I’ll put £50,000 on and lose. Maybe I’ll bet another £50,000 to recoup my losses, take out a second mortgage and lose again. Maybe I’ll lose everything. And — there’s no maybe about this — it’ll be no one else’s fault, and no one else’s duty to help me but my own.

Life is full of choices about how to behave and, as Anna Karenina learnt, actions have consequences. If you can’t gamble safely, don’t. Or suffer the effects. It’s that simple.