I have never played so I'm £1,254 up! (Is it worth playing the lottery?)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	Is it worth playing the lottery?
Date:	21/08/09 (108 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Money for theTreasury

Disadvantages: Money for the Treasury

Anyone who tells you they play the Lotto partly because of the good causes is probably lying. People play to win and the good cause's angle helps to lift the guilt of making a stupid bet. It's far easier to win on the horses, but the horse's taboo, the genius of the lottery. If you can get normal working people that don't normally bet on sports to make a bet on this by saying its legit gambling because it has no stigma then your going to make some serious money, as Camelot and the treasury do.

The current lottery angle is the 2012 Olympics, every scratch card you buy seeing a percentage going to the huge bill. It was no surprise the Olympic bill has exploded and that's why the government's original estimate of three billion was deliberately low. Because the Olympics are all consuming, sports funding wise, money is being pulled from every other sports project in the country, mostly to build facilities that will never be used in London, the paradox being the young Olympians wont come through to race and compete in 2012 because of limited funding right now.

No, the Lotto is not so much about good causes and making millionaires but a government slush fund, a huge chunk of cash-some 23 billion raised so far-they can pull on to fund various projects, some controversial some what should have been done with normal funding. One of the problems is the quango that runs the funding sees to have a free hand to give it to who ever they want, which means it can become a form of gerrymandering, funding projects to help garner labour votes. We have all heard of the stories where grants go to Guinea Pig farmers in Peru or support groups for asylum seekers living in East London, a real smorgasbord of handouts on offer. Anyone who reads the Daily Mail (me) will be up on to all of them. The latest infuriating handouts have come in the travelling and gypsy community, almost £5 million given to them over the last ten years to help them 'circumnavigate planning laws and claim benefits', according to Britain's most read newspaper. This can only encourage them to set up illegal camps in the first place and so not living like everyone else do who have to pay taxes. Living in prefabs in field in Essex is hardly travelling guys! Some even received 'media training' to deal with local TV! The reason the Lotto do this, in my opinion, is because the government just can't or won't deal with the traveller problem through the current laws, this approach allowing the law not to be applied and the problem going away. It's a cowardly stance by New Labour and this type of project one of the reasons I never buy a Lotto ticket. I suspect the average law abiding Lotto ticket buyer would not receive cash hand outs if they didn't want to pay rent, council tax or put their kids through school. I wonder what those guys who build houses or extensions without planning permission and then have to pull them down think of this bypass of planning laws?

I have never played the lottery in its 15 year lifetime so by my reckoning, if I played the average one or two pound a week, I have saved around a grand, the average prize for getting 5 balls. The odds of me winning back that grand through getting five balls are around 365,000-1. The lotto maybe a national institution but it's also a mugs game.
Most people who play are from the lower social classes (not the reason I don't play as I too are upper working class) and most of the good causes goes to the middle-class, usually the big grants where that happens most. If you want 50 million to buy a painting or fix the National Opera House its one phone call but if you want to fix your football clubhouse or youth club it's a pile of paper an inch thick just to get them to answer the phone. If you want some of that cash then knock yourself out below.

www.lotteryfunding.org.uk
Or call
0845 275 0000

Where buying your ticket at the machine has an air of respectability about it the scratch card doesn't. These are the I.D cards of the underclass, single moms and lazy fathers on the dole picking a roll up with their fags and booze. This is where the Lottery is cynical as it's calculated that the unemployed are the biggest group per head that play the Lotto in some form. That guarantees that one-in-64 doll cheques are returned to the treasury straight away. With 17% of the one pound ticket going straight back to the government and one-in-five scratch cards bought by Britain's 6 million people on benefits I suppose it's not a bad plan. Sometimes working class people are not destined to be able to deal with winning big in the lottery, one or two big winners making the news for all manner of mess ups. You may remember Callie Rogers, the pretty young 16-year-old who bagged 1.9m in 2002. Well, you guessed it; she blew the lot and now in debt, a string of nasty boyfriends and bad investments seeing her back at home with her parents as a single mom with a cleaning job or two, where, it seems, she was meant to be.

As we know the odds of winning the big prize if you buy just one ticket a week are huge, around 13 million-to-one. A guy I know who works on the bins for the council thought he could increase his chances ten fold by buying £30 a week! In some ways he's right as the average jackpot winner spends over £6 per draw. If you take their families ticket purchases into the equation as they are likely to chare the money around its over £13. Sadly you're three hundred times more likely to drop dead with the ticket in your hand than win the lottery.

When the Lottery started here I had the probability theory most people have that if, say, number nine comes out on week one it wont come out on week two. If, say number 17 hasn't come out by week ten the odds of it coming out on week eleven must be very high-wrong! Each number has the same odds of coming out every week, which means 1,2,3,4,5,6, is just as likely to come out as 4,37,43,1,13,24, which when put like that should put you off the lottery straight away. STILL in the U.K. some 1200 people pick 1-6, according to Camelot's computer, knowing full well they will have to share the jackpot in the 13 million to one chance those numbers would come out. The chance of them coming out in order of 1-6 is too big to even calculate.

You can't increase your chances much by buying loads of tickets but you can increase the amount you win if you win by picking certain numbers. This theory is called the 'Birthday Effect'. Lots of people pick important numbers in their lives to help make up their six numbers, be it for sentimental or emotional reasons or just to memorize their weekly repeat combination. As birthdays run out after the 31st of the month you can se number 32 is less likely to be picked than 31. Low numbers are picked less because many lottery players use their age as one of the numbers.

What we do know is that Camelot and the Treasury will win every week and we also know the Lotto is the only way to fund many unpopular groups in society, and as long as you mugs keep buying the tickets then they will keep doing what the are doing.

Summary: Money for the Treasury