Winners and Losers

It was called “having a flutter”, but things have moved on, and is called progress, but I am not so sure. Have you noticed the number of TV ads and businesses, whose sole purpose in life is to take our money. Actually, that’s not quite accurate, because we are handing these businesses our money very willingly it seems.

The UK is full of newspaper, magazine and TV adverts for those ‘harmless’ gambling establishments. You can bet online, so you don’t have to go into any of those dingy betting shops, so you can lose your cash in the comfort of your living room. There are Bingo games everywhere as well, and have you noticed that everyone is a winner? All those happy ladies (yes they are shown as women) win every time. No losers. Great!! But the biggest doozies of them all are the nicely named ‘payday loan companies’ who will give you cash in a minute, online, and at a mere APR of 300% to 3,000%. Easy peasy, right? Then the scam of the country has to be the Lotto with winning odds of 14 million to 1 for the big prize.  

You would think we are a pretty smart nation. After all, we know that gambling is not harmless, and we also know that there are many more losers than winners. As for paying 3,000% APR? Surely we are not that daft are we? Sorry, but on every level, we are that daft and even dafter, because we believe the lies, and we keep going back to donate our hard earned cash to line the pockets of these aggressive fleecing industries. The sad thing is, they don’t even have to try very hard to convince us to part with our money.

Whatever happened to the ethic that we worked to earn our money, and we were good stewards when we got it? You must remember the time when work was hard, and every penny was important? My old Mum had a saying, “A fool and his money are easy parted”! Not good english, but wise and true. It seems nowadays that everyone wants an easy ride to the millionaire lifestyle, and no one wants to work for it. After all, there are so many winners shown on TV. In fact everyone is a winner. How come then that there are families and children who suffer because their dad, and yes even their mum get hooked on the lie that money is going to appear right out of their laptop screen, or they will have a deck chair on that luxury yacht? So they celebrate on the strength of their certain winnings?

High horse? Did somebody say I was on my high horse? Too true, because I have seen the tragedy of an unfettered gambling addiction on young children who played no part in their parent’s decision to put their last pound on a horse, or the bingo card, or the lottery, and when the money was done, there was no food. Never mind, now they can go to the payday loan company, who take no prisoners, and have no scruples! Seems there is a winner right there. Sad, isn’t it?