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SkullheadWilderness [quote]lpg it's not a tax on the stupid.
you need to justify this assertion LPG. I prefer to call it a tax on the poor.
It's no coincidence that George Orwell was only ten years off with his predictions in '1984', the Lottery was introduced by The Grey Prime Minister in '94 (apparently the Camelot board all drink in the same Club as Major). Orwell said the Proles were illiterate and innumerate, but all of them could wax lyrical about the numbers in the lottery and when they came up and what the odds might be and all that crap. It's a really interesting bit of that novel, I read it in '94 saying Oh Wow man a la Neil from Young Ones.[/quote]
Regardless of their chances of winning, people need hope. With job's increasingly becoming harder to find and job security pretty much a forgotten term, the lottery to many is the only way they see a way of making their lives better.
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unemployment is low, jobs are freely available. they must be because we are having to look to europe to fill the skills shortage. if we are so poor how come every council house has a sky dish? (before you ask my parents still live in their council owned house)
people need hope do they? i think they just need to stop expecting the world on a plate and pull their finger out.
a diet of fast food and the aspirational celebrity 'lifestyle' peddled to the masses by the media has given people the idea that the way to get on in this world is either through getting on big brother or winning the lottery. frankly i think they deserve to sit there getting slowly fatter and never giving up hope. -
also think about it if you didnt have the NHS, and couldn't afford private insurance, had no opportunity to ever own property or invest, or even save money. could not pay for your kids to go to collage, and can hardly afford to feed them when they hit their teens so they need to drop out to help the family. it beats drinking the pay check away by a long shot.
some one mentioned 1984, i believe that they also state the those who 'win' are just made up stories to keep the preoles funding the party with lotto revenue, and channel their hopelessness away from anger at the haves.
now i have bought 3 lotto tickets in my life, one on my 18th birthday, i won $50 and got a tattoo and some booze with it. the other two where power ball jackpots i lost. so far i'm up about $43
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Mr smith - People choose to buy lottery tickets, how can it be a tax? Everyone dreams of getting something for nothing, there's nothing wrong with that. I do differentiate between gambling at a bookmakers, and playing the national lottery, because the money paid in goes to good causes, whereas the bookies are just a business, in it purely for profit.
As we're referencing 1984, you're like the 'gent' in the top hat who pushes the prole under a bus on Shaftesbury ave! Playing the lottery is just good, harmless fun, it just lets people dream and all this talk of 'they' need to do this and 'they' should be doing that makes you sound like a right dick.
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I am sure all this tension comes from everyone giving up the stuff they love for the new year.
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New on here. Hi there.
Anyway, just thought I'd say; I once read a article telling me that 18% of the UK population under the age of thirty factor in a lottery win into there long term retirement plans. As astonishing as this sounds due to the low odds of winnning (as I thought everyone was aware of the 1 in 14 mil chance - which would on average mean you'd have to play every week for 270,000 years to hit the last odd) I actually know one of these 18%. A girl of 25 from Essex. Really is a joke. I'm happy that money is being input into areas that would otherwise not recieve any funding, however I view it totally and completely as a government engine. Don't think no one makes money in the background, and don't think people get brushed with the chairty brush due to their association with these 'apparent' causes.
I refuce to buy a ticket buy the way!
Bike choice is a tuff one. But I'd probably pop down to Colnago and have a custom build done...
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you are entitled to your opinion as i am mine only i didn't say you sounded like a dick.
middle class? depends how you define middle class? i grew up on a council estate (where my parents still live) had free school meals, never had a family holiday, picked potatoes in the summer holidays etc etc (walked 100miles every day to eat coal).
now i have some nice bikes, i drink champagne now and again, listen to radio4, holiday abroad and get my wine by the case. middle class? quite possibly but i didn't get there buying a lottery ticket every week and hoping to be famous one day.
Pigfarmer i find those figures shocking but sadly probaby true.
gambling is the governments next big revenue earner they realise that the revenue from tobacco is going down so they need to extract money from the masses some other way hence the deregulation and gambling law changes, casinos etc. gambling should be a bit of fun not a weekly pray and hope for a better life. the government wins both ways though, they abolished betting tax in 2001 subsequently helping the u.k on it's way to being the gambling capital of the world, gaining revenue through vat/corporation tax etc from the companies operating in the u.k instead of abroad and with the lottery getting the public to fund directly (while creaming a bit off the top) projects that many should be paid for by local/regional councils or government. -
can we talk about bikes now. really really really nice expensive bikes
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Yep. Did anyone ever see Lucas Brunelles Lambo? (http://digave.com/videos/lamborghini.html) - I am sh*t at computers so no proper link.
Not fixed or single, but a damn fine looking machine...
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yeah he had it at londons calling, relly really light and expensive looking
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pigfarmer New on here. Hi there.
Anyway, just thought I'd say; I once read a article telling me that 18% of the UK population under the age of thirty factor in a lottery win into there long term retirement plans. As astonishing as this sounds due to the low odds of winnning (as I thought everyone was aware of the 1 in 14 mil chance -** which would on average mean you'd have to play every week for 270,000 years to hit the last odd**).
What does 'hit the last odd' mean ?
As I am sure you know after playing for 269,999 years (or more precisely 13,983,815 weeks / assuming you make a single bet once a week) your odds of winning are still 1 in 14,000,000 - the odds, of course, never improve.
If you really want to know I have just worked the odds of predicting the chosen numbers as 1/13,983,816 !
49 balls - 6 chosen = (49*48*47*46*45*44) this gives us just over one in ten billion (10,068,347,520), I thought my calculations were fucked, but of course the chosen numbers need not be in the sequence they are chosen (ordinal) so . .
There are 720 permutations of 6 numbers (6*5*4*3*2*1) . .
So: 10,068,347,520 / 720 = 13,983,816.
Or in practical terms - not a fucking chance in hell, really !
Any 'hope' mentioned with regard to the lottery should be qualified as 'false hope' - 'hope' nonetheless, but hope that trades on the average person's misunderstanding of the vanishingly small odds (as pointed out by pigfarmer's point about the 18% of the population mistakenly factoring a lottery win into their retirement plans). This is clearly a tax on the hopes of a certain demographic.
On a side note: you will not win. :)
Lottery bike : I kinda' like the one I have just made, I would spend the money on a really fancy coffin.
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I'd have one of these if I came into a lot of money. Well, after buying somewhere awesome in London for my friends and I to live in for the rest of uni! And pay for my £42,000 of student loan after I graduate.
I'd have one of these:
and one of these probably:
I know it's not particularly expensive as a "lotto" bike, but I really, really love it.
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Bicycle Coffin?
Vinz
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aidan
lpg
ads
pj_(pj)
pigfarmer
tynan
eeehhhh
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@chris_crash
SORRY! CAN'T HEAR YOU! PHIL COLLINS TOO LOUD ON THE MULTI-CHANGER!