The top scratchcard prize is £4 million - I’ve just looked it up on the National Lottery website.
I totally agree about the dangers of gambling addiction; it’s a wretched business. However for people who are not in the grip of that obsession, the lottery does no harm and much good. Giving directly to the charity is nothing but laudable but the great bulk of people do not do so with frequency unless nudged in that direction by the prospect - albeit slim - of winning a prize.
I would like to see a list of organisations and projects who have benefited from the lottery. I bet it’s long and impressive and none of it would have happened without the almost illusory prospect of winning a major prize.
I voted no. You've used up all your luck. In fact if the late great Dave Allen was still around he'd be suggesting a phone call to Rome. "Quick. Phone the pope and register a miracle. My toast landed butter side up!"
When the National Lottery was quite new I was working for an Arts organisation and we were putting on a big event ... we were negotiating with a major UK music star to be the headline act ... one of the ones that I think many of us here would .... I developed huge respect for him as I took a phone call from him one day when he said that he'd not realised that the event was Lottery Funded ... he would rather not support the Lottery as it was a tax on the hopes of the poor, and would we please find another headline act. Even more respect when he explained that he'd phoned himself rather than ask his manager to do it as he wanted to apologise properly for letting us down.
I don't know whether he still sticks to that ... he does seem to stick to other declared principles.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
All forms of gambling, from buying a raffle ticket to investing on the stock exchange, are an inducement to selfishness, since they reflect the desire to gain from others' losses. Call me curmudgeonly if you will, but I can't think of this as harmful or innocent fun.
Josusa, so do you regard Pensions as gambling then, since nearly everything except state pension is invested in stocks, or bonds. ? Someone investing in a company helps to keep people in jobs, and they get a dividend each year if it makes a profit. I don't see a problem with that. I can't stand Mike Ashley, but without his 90 million quid, there would be an awful lot of people who work at House of Fraser looking for a job.
If you had the fun, you weren't exploited. If you win the prize, it's a bonus.
If you don't do it purely for fun but out of compulsion or desperation, that's a different matter. The lottery is a tax on the poor or the desperate, I agree.
You only have to look at where betting shops are sited to see that they are there to exploit the poor and relieve them of their benefits. They are often also conveniently positioned near pawnshops for some reason.
Posts
I totally agree about the dangers of gambling addiction; it’s a wretched business. However for people who are not in the grip of that obsession, the lottery does no harm and much good. Giving directly to the charity is nothing but laudable but the great bulk of people do not do so with frequency unless nudged in that direction by the prospect - albeit slim - of winning a prize.
I would like to see a list of organisations and projects who have benefited from the lottery. I bet it’s long and impressive and none of it would have happened without the almost illusory prospect of winning a major prize.
That gave me a rather jaundiced view.
https://www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/good-causes/projects?local_authority=291
You've used up all your luck.
In fact if the late great Dave Allen was still around he'd be suggesting a phone call to Rome.
"Quick. Phone the pope and register a miracle. My toast landed butter side up!"
I don't know whether he still sticks to that ... he does seem to stick to other declared principles.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
If you don't do it purely for fun but out of compulsion or desperation, that's a different matter.
The lottery is a tax on the poor or the desperate, I agree.
You only have to look at where betting shops are sited to see that they are there to exploit the poor and relieve them of their benefits. They are often also conveniently positioned near pawnshops for some reason.