Think the National Lottery will solve your debt problems? There is a suspicion among many than this lazy way for MPs to get the public to pay for things that should be in the Budget, creates super-jackpots for a reason. The average jackpot is £4 million. But for that money, you could have 80 winners each week winning £50,000 (the average or so debt). That would mean 80 people each week clearing their debts, so no need for credit cards, loans etc. Food for thought?
Forget the lottery, it’s a mug’s game, just save the money for a rainy day. Most people who win jackpots are never happy (some have even been murdered for their money). And chances of winning are so low – you’re more likely to die from being struck by lightning on the way to buy the ticket – than you are of winning it!
Many people of faith say it’s a poverty tax (the dirt-poor spend their lecky bill on scratchcards due to desperation, and the money is used to fund a music hall). Quakers were offered hundreds of thousands of lottery funds to mend roofs. And refused, saying that ‘in order to win, someone poor has to lose’.
Lotteries are simply a form of gambling, and this causes all kinds of issues. Lotteries simply give the impression that ‘life begins when you win the lottery’ rather than working hard to produce something of worth to others (this is the real way to make money). So if you put a shiny new roof on your church, then there are many other older, vulnerable and unwell people who are now out of pocket, because they paid for your roof, in the hope that they could become rich. Quakers don’t like it, so they simply don’t take the money.
Gamblers Anonymous is a bit like Alcoholics Anonymous, where you can safely get help for the addiction often only known by ‘the banker and the bookie’. It may help to look up welfare issues for greyhounds and racehorses, rather than just think of gambling in monetary terms.
Lottery: a tax on people who are bad at maths. Ambrose Bierce
The universe will throw somebody a bone every now and then, and you win the lottery. But for the most part, you get in this life what you put in. Arian Foster
I despise the lottery. There’s less chance of you becoming a millionaire, than there is of getting hit on the head by a passing asteroid. Brian May (Queen guitarist, badger friend and qualified astrophysicist).
you can still help ‘good causes’ without lotteries
Yes, it does. But you can easily give to these causes without playing the lottery, simply by donating to small local charities. You don’t have to put on a red nose or get involved in ‘big charity causes’ to help. Nor do you have to put those at risk of spending all their electricity money in desperation on scratchcards, to help the causes you care about.
