Lottery

Today is the day of the largest ever lottery draw. The Euro Millions Lottery jackpot is expected to reach £125million. Quite a significant sum, and potentially going to one luck recipient. I’m never really sure where I stand on the lottery. Sometimes I see it as an inspirational tool for people, who can dream about what they would do if they won. It can change people’s lives and is no worse a form of gambling than betting on horse racing or any other event. The ones I don’t understand are the people who scoop the jackpot and then stay doing the same things they always have. Why do it if it’s not going to change your life? On the other hand I can see the argument for it being a stealth tax on the poorest people. They are more likely to spend money on playing the lottery, yet less likely to receive direct benefits form the Good Causes Fund, which supports ballets and operas etc. I must admit to feeling concern about certain people who you see spending £20 or £30 a time playing it, when they clearly do not have a lot of spare cash. I guess they will argue that it’s their only chance to dramatically change their lives, and that’s probably true, but it still leaves me with qualms. The odds on winning the National Lottery are something like 1 in 14million, and that obviously doesn’t decrease just because you’ve bought more tickets, each one has the same chance of winning. The Euro Millions Lottery odds are more like 1 in 76million, which probably explains why it’s rolled over since last November. To play it you pick 5 numbers from the main selection and then 2 “lucky star” numbers. To win the jackpot you need all 7 numbers to come up. Last week apparently people who had 4 numbers and the 2 lucky start numbers won a princely sum of £5,703. Which doesn’t sound a lot to me when you were close to winning £100million. Now I don’t want to sound like some sort of lottery snob. I do buy tickets from time to time, but don’t have set numbers. I use lucky dip selections where the machine picks numbers at random, so I’ll never have the horror of seeing “my numbers” come up when I didn’t buy a ticket . I think I’ll be spending £1.50 on a Euro Millions Ticket for tonight though, £125million seems like a good potential return on the investment! Here’s hoping for good news for the next post…. Of course I will be sharing any good fortune with all those who know me, I think my £125million could bring a fair bit of happiness for others too! To temper my ambitions the following cartoon should keep my feet on the ground.