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Playing responsibly?

Tags: National Lottery Camelot play responsibly gambling addiction

Here's a guilty little secret about me. Like millions of others in this country, I play Lotto. I have an online, weekly subscription to the Saturday draw, for one ticket, one set of numbers. So I spend one pound a week. If I win big, way-hey, I'm set for life. But even if I don't, part of my contribution goes towards "good causes" (not necessarily charity as I wished when the National Lottery was set up, but restoration of public buildings, funding sport and communities and patronising the arts are all worthy causes too).

Camelot, the company who run the Lottery, e-mailed their online subscribers today. In order to encourage "responsible playing", they are limiting how much you can spend. Now, there is an argument that if you have the money you should spend it on what you wish, and that there ought to be no limits. But the lottery is gambling, there are gambling addicts, and so Camelot have a duty to society to ensure that those addicts do not harm themselves.

Camelot have some strange ideas about "limits". They say:

You will be able to set a Weekly Add Funds Limit [...] The maximum limit you will be able to set is £350 per week.

You will be able to set a daily Instant Win Game Play Limit [...] The maximum number of Instant Win Games you will be able to play is 75 per day.
(My emphasis added)

I spend £52 per year on the Lotto. £350 per week on the Add Funds option? And a maximum of 75 Instant Win games per day? That's £75 every day that the National Lottery is content for you to fritter away, and this is deemed to be a responsible amount.

Camelot is prepared to let people spend £27,375 per year on Instant Win games, and add a further £18,200 of money to play on Lotto, Lotto Extra and all the other twice-weekly draw games they have.

Now, I'm no statistician, so cannot compute what the odds are of actually winning by playing so many games (£350 per week equals 350 shots spread over as many number combinations, lottery games and draws as you would like to spread them). But the odds can't be good. Camelot do not operate the National Lottery at a loss, and as with a casino, odds favour the house.

But this does not seem to encourage responsibility. If you have the money to spend over 45 grand a year on the National Lottery, then fair play to you. But if Camelot feels that players spending up to and including that amount of money are doing so "responsibly", and that a person who is compelled to spend that much does not exhibit some form of gambling addiction, then I can only hope that one of the "good causes" supported is Gamblers Anonymous.

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Simultaneously delighted and disturbed...

Tags: London Informer infamy fame

Infamy at last!

It would appear that I am famous, after a fashion. Or at the very least, I have appeared in a newspaper.

Not that I knew anything about it. I was at a talk at the Royal Society with The Ethical Palaeontologist when we met a friend of ours, David. David mentioned that he had seen my blog in his local newspaper.

Huh? I knew nothing about this.

So, last weekend, at our Bonfire Party, David gave me the newspaper clipping from the backpage of the London Informer of Friday, August 3, 2007. (Oh, and the escort ads on the reverse side? Classy...)

Wow. Just, wow.

I mean, I'm flattered by the attention and all, but out of all my posts, why pick the three silliest as representative of my blog? And if you edit them, don't edit the points out of them! The whole point of the "Pot Free Paul" blog post (or I inhaled, but I did not smoke... as I liked to call it) was not about my experiences with cannabis, but about the statements from the Cabinet Ministers!

It's nice to know that I am "approved" by the media now, although I can't help but wonder who nominated the blog for inclusion? Regardless, they did some background research on me (well, they visited my Myspace, Facebook and Bebo pages. Take a look at the top of the page - the "click and you arrive at" section. Those are some of my interests, but they are not listed on my blog! So someone did some digging. And again, picked a random selection (great, my favourite movie is Tron all of a sudden...).

Oh, FYI - I haven't quit my job, but I guess that sounds better.

Anyway, this is a little bit of "protesting too much". All told, I'm absolutely tickled that someone picked this up and featured it, even if it didn't appear to have any impact on my page hits. Today the London Informer, tomorrow the Pulitzer!

Head of State, head of the army, enemy of the Constitution...... and for once, I don't mean Bush

Tags: Pakistan emergency declaration President Musharraf Supreme Court opposition

Unless you've been living in a cave in Tora Bora for the past seven years (in which case none of this will ever have affected you) you might have noticed a little project being undertaken by the United States and her allies. You know, the one about bringing peace, security and democracy to the browner parts of the world.

Amongst the glorious allies in the project to bring the benefits of Western Liberal Democracy to the authoritarian dictatorships of the Middle East and South Asia is one General Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan.

You know, the guy who led a military coup against the democratically elected government and seized power. The guy who refused calls to hold elections. The guy who fired all the judges of the Supreme Court, because they insist on upholding the Constitution of Pakistan, rather than swearing an oath of personal allegiance to President Musharraf and the constitution he is attempting to impose. You remember him now, the guy who has imposed a state of emergency, and who will not lift it until the new Supreme Court decides that he can have yet another term in office. The guy who has shut down independent news channels for being critical of him (for all this, see here). The guy who has expelled three British journalists because of a story critical of him.

That's right, President Musharraf. Or, as President Bush knows him, "the General".

This is the kind of stand up guy we have on our side. Once again, we are propping up a dictator in an unstable region because, as the famous description of Saddam Hussein went, he may be a bastard, but he's our bastard.

We want to lecture people about the rule of law, upholding the democratic process, tolerating the voice of dissent in civil society, and the freedom of the press, yet at the same time we give robust support to a man who has trampled all over these principles.

The calls by Western leaders to Musharraf, suggesting that he might want to hold elections, have been nothing more than a minor slap on the wrist. No-one is stating that he cannot, should not, remain in power. The closest we come is a statement from President Bush, the irony of which is obviously lost on the US President, who is also Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed forces: "You can't be the president and the head of the military at the same time".

For those who want to read the full text of the emergency declaration, it is here. Note that Islamic extremist terrorists and members of the judiciary are of equal threat to the survival of the state, and that these dangers justify shutting down any and all voices of dissent.

Mmmm, democralicious...

Please let this be true!

Tags: ID cards scrapped Queens Speech

Rumours are flying that in next week's Queen's Speech at the opening of Parliament, the plans for the compulsory ID card scheme will be dropped in favour of undisclosed "other measures".

The ludicrously expensive, unworkable, wasteful, distasteful and useless idea for an ID card scheme, if scrapped, will not be mourned by anyone.

Government ministers are scrabbling around trotting out the usual lines of "not being aware of any plans" to scrap the ID Card scheme, and that they are still "very much" part of the agenda.

These reassurances sound very much like the directors of a football club declaring they have "full confidence" in the manager. A line only ever uttered immediately before sacking him.

So, if true, good news.

Gordon Brown has however signalled an intent to "improve" existing anti-terror legislation. By "improving" I can only guess he means increasing the detention without charge requirement, another bad idea.

When there was a failed attempt to detonate bombs in London on 21 July 2005, the police swung into action. The perpetrators were arrested, and earlier this year convictions were secured.

Contrast that with the Madrid train bombing of 11 March 2004. Convictions have only this past week been secured. So, even though our bombing happened over a year later, we still managed to complete the legal process ahead of our Spanish colleagues.

And they claim 28 days detention isn't enough...