The Government is set to allow the doubling of the price of buying a National Lottery ticket which the bigoted lefty Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror sees as another way of transferring cash from the hard working poor to the evil rich. Is there a more misguided man on Fleet Street than the loathsome Maguire?
Of course he is correct in saying that the Lottery is - as George Orwell envisaged in 1984 - a way of taking cash from the plebs. And when he notes that ,some of the good causes that Camelot has given cash to, such as the Opera, are pastimes of the rich he is correct. But in saying that Lotto is a tax on the poor, Maguire tells a lie.
Loathsome writes:
The Government has given the green light to the doubling of what is effectively a tax on the poor. The 100% increase in the price of a lottery ticket will take even more money out of the pockets of low-income families. These hard-up grafters can ill afford to spend more on false hope.
Kevin knows as well as I do that many of the poor who buy lottery tickets are no more grafters than I am an Olympic standard gymnast. That so many who exist on welfare subsidy can afford to play the lottery, while in many cases arguing that they need food banks to survive,is an indictment of the welfare state.
The reality is that the lottery is a tax on the stupid not the poor. You and I know that a 14 million to one bet is a poor one and so don't play. Stupid folks ignore the odds, dream and waste their cash whether it be hard earned or just handed out by the State.
But loathsome cannot afford to admit this appalling truth for most of his readers are those very same stupid people some of whom graft but many of whom do not.