This government has perfected a neat trick whenever it needs money. It simply raids the National Lottery. It appears from THIS report that the National Lottery will be used to finance any shortfall in the cost of the Olympics. So the Lottery has become the latest example of a stealth tax, and, as usual, it's the poor who are going to pay.
Labour's last manifesto said this: “Our Lottery bill will give a duty and a power to every Lottery distributor to involve the public more dramatically in decision-making at every level.”
Involving the public in decision making actually means raiding the public's piggy bank rather than anything meaningful. There doesn’t seem to be any suggestion that the DCMS will be consulting the public before taking the cash away from the main lottery fund. Now there's a surprise...
Chris Doidge also blogs about this HERE.
13 comments:
Forgive me, but I'm not really sure this is an entirely bad thing.
The lottery never had a remit to help out the established charity sector.
And there are only so many 'arts' projects it can fund without going down the quality food-chain.
So 'heritage' projects [such as those 'millennium' ones] are, arguably, within its remit. And a one-off thing like the Olympics should be kept away from the normal taxpayer. [Unless you live in London, right Ken!]
Obviously if this means that those lovely 'Restoration' type projects that Griff Rhys-Jones keeps banging on about can't be funded, I would be very cross.
The lottery dosh has to be sent somehow,and this seems reasonable. And anyway only thick people play the lottery, so where's the harm?
£20 billion for new nuclear submarines by 2020 - but £12 billion + for an Olympic Village by 2012
Not bothered - The Lottery is a voluntary stupidity tax. I don't play therefore I don't pay.
The Lottery should be directly financing Government projects. It is money voluntarily given to the state.
I would like to see the lottery money given to establishing X-Prizes for space & high technology in Britain.
This would make available prizes of about £10 billion over a 10 year period. When you note that Spaceship One which was the template for Branson's new Virgin Galactic was done on a seedcorn prize of $10 million the potential is clearly spectacular & the effect on our industry many times the investment.
http://www.xprize.org/
I realise that, like everybody else after lottery money, I am riding my own hobbyhorse but I think the fund has already provided more than enough unvisited Popular Arts Centres & prestigious but even less popular operas. This is something which not only would be useful but would give people a feeling of participation in what may be the most important activity in human history (& it wouldn't cost the government anything).
http://www.xprize.org/
Richard Branson should have got the job!
Why should any lottery money go to any cause other than the cause of improving winners bank balances? No one buys a lottery ticket to contribute to the Olympic Games or any other cause. we only buy to win.
This is excellent news.
Lottery 'players' are losers anyway and this is, as the previous poster said, a tax on stupidity anyway.
My concern was that this Olympic debacle would simply be an open money-syphon for Red Ken. Now it looks like the Lottery losers will become an even easier milch-cow for him.
Phew!
Yes the lottery is a tax on those who can't do maths. Yes there is a limit to the number of projects the lottery fund can assist (though somehow I doubt that it has yet been reached).
But neither of these excuses justify the government raiding the fund for its own vainglorious projects.
The lottery was sold to the public on the grounds that a chunk of the dosh raised would go to "worthy causes". The image conjured up in the public's perception was of country parks for the disabled and talking books for the blind.
But, of course, when NuLabour speak of "public involvment" we know what they really mean, for in their warped mindset: "The people are the party and the party is the people". Therefore if the Great Leader says the money should go on one of his pet projects he's not being selfish. Not at all, he's only got the people's interests at heart.
Just keep repeating "Big Brother loves me" and everything will be aaaaaaallll right.
Pemium bonds for me now, if this government really wished to do somthing about poverty , they would stop importing it in first place.
There is no reason to stop their new voters entering the country, Dame shirley Porter you were an ameture, compared to this load of Gerrymandering Bastards!
cityblue: I'm with you. Lottery players deserve to be taken for a ride. Never give a sucker an even break.
Mind you, "winning" the Olympics was a disaster. By the time we're through twenty-four hours of "Nah-Nah" finger pointing at Jacques Chirac will have cost us Twenty-four billion pounds; just under £278 per second.
For that money every one of England's Cathedrals and parish churches could be put into good repair for another hundred years, with plenty of money left over for other worthwhile causes.
Cathedrals.
As I say we each have our own hobbyhorses.
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Defend-funding/
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