Spin doctors: gambling firms adopt hard tactics to flood towns with 24hr slot machines

It is almost 2am in Peterborough and a handful of punters are wordlessly feeding their money into the machines at Merkur Slots. A fragment of a song, the lyric "nothing to lose", drifts through the shop as their funds rapidly evaporate. Closing time is fast approaching, but that does not mean the end of the gambling. Five minutes' walk down Lincoln Road, a near-deserted street lit by the neon signs of shuttered vape shops and fast food outlets, sit two more Merkurs, this time with 24-hour licences. Even in the small hours, many of the roughly 20 machines in each…