Metro online - Tupac Shakur - George Orwell - Rab C Nesbitt TV - Henry Fielding - Douglas Coupland - Numbers Game TV - Strange But True? TV - Mark Thomas Lottery Product TV - Spitting Image TV - The Fifth Estate: Lottery Fraud TV -
The US Powerball Lottery has its roots in Lotto America back in 1988. Today its jackpot regularly tops the $100million mark. Nevertheless, if you thought 100-1 were long odds for a sports bet you should check out the Powerball jackpot odds of 1 in 146,107,962.00. A number of syndicates have overcome these odds to win prizes up to a whopping $340million but the largest ever individual win came in for Leslie Robbins and Colleen DeVries of Wisconsin, USA. They won $111,240,463 .10 the largest ever gambling win for an individual. Still you are 73 times more likely to die falling out of bed than win the Powerball lottery. Be careful as you get up in the morning!! BluesQ online article, Big Winners in the World of Betting
A number of people have accused the South Africa Lottery of fraud after 20 people won a share of the jackpot. The draw on Tuesday incredibly saw the numbers five, six, seven, eight and nine come up – with a ‘PowerBall’ of 10. Organisers were quick to say many players pick that combination of numbers, but an investigation into the lottery is underway. South Africa Lottery said on Tuesday: ‘Congratulations to tonight’s 20 winners of PowerBall draw. Metro online report 3 December 2020
There’s too much money here. Nobody should be hitting the Lotto for thirty-six million when we got people starving in the streets. That’s just not idealistic. That’s just rape. That’s just stupid. Tupac Shakur, The Killuminati Theory
The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous pries, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention ... It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant ... the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being non-existent persons. George Orwell, 1984
Mary: What numbers did you pick?
Rab: One to six.
Mary: One to six? What a challenge, eh?
TV: Finally, the winning lottery numbers in this week’s National Lottery are amazingly enough – Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, the bonus number Thirteen. Rab C Nesbitt: Lottery, BBC 1996
A lottery is a taxation
Upon all the fools in creation
And Heaven be praised
It is easily raised
Credulity’s always in fashion. Henry Fielding, 1707-54, The Lottery
Lottery tickets are a surtax on desperation. Douglas Coupland
Instant millionaire: what are the odds of that really happening? Numbers Game: Will You Make a Million? National Geographic 2013
This year lottery player Isabella Hughes claimed her numbers came to her in a dream. She won £2.25 million. Strange But True?
Stoneleigh Abbey: lottery award £7.37 million … That is the official line: and every word of it is shit … I want you to see what access you get for this … The long gallery: this is the bit you get to visit twelve days of the year … and you have to book a year in advance … I don’t know how many Jacobian house lovers there are in Britain … but we’ve rustled up a coachload. Mark Thomas Comedy Product s2e5, Channel 4 1998
We’ve already paid for a right to access … It starts with heredity stuff … The trust then makes the house and lands conditionally exempt … ibid.
They are paying themselves money and getting the charity into debt. ibid.
National Lottery: Greed! Gluttony! Envy! And the bonus sin: Avarice! Well, that’s four deadly sins that we encourage every week on the national lottery, and everyone loves the lottery, don’t they? Well, everyone except a few fuddy-duddy old bishops. Oh, cheer up bishops, who needs God? Anyway it’s just a bit of wholesome fun. Tonight, let’s dabble in the occult with Mystic Meg … Spitting Image s18e2, ITV 1996
This is the amazing true-life story of the long road to riches for the most unlikely crowd of millionaires you’ll ever meet. It’s also the story of a family who might have won a jackpot that belonged to someone else. The Fifth Estate: Lottery Fraud: Lucky 7, CBC 2016
Someone collects a huge lottery prize that really belongs to somebody else. ibid.
It all starts with a Lotto ticket Christmas 2003. ibid.
A major weakness in the Lotto: the ease with which a crooked store could scam trusting folk. ibid.