Lottery Good Causes

There is no question that lottery games raise a great deal of money for good causes, but are we inadvertently letting governments off the hook by using lottery money to support projects and initiatives that they should be funding from their own coffers?

I'm not an extreme altruist who believes that the freedom of the individual should be sacrificed for the greater good of society (like the Borg, for the Star Trek fans among you), but I do think that governments have an obligation to support the societies they claim to lead. I also think that they should do this through the regular taxation system, and that they should use lottery money only to fund good causes over and above what I consider to be their normal duty.

"What does he know?" you might be thinking. "Is he a politician all of a sudden?" And the answer is obviously not. But I do like to shout about politicians from time to time, and in this particular case I think I have a valid point.

Hardly a month seems to go by without some newspaper or television news programme telling us how lottery money is being used to prop up the NHS, assist care homes or support the education of our kids. No doubt some pen pushing bods believe that we will all applaud the lottery's support of such good causes, but my question is: why do those good causes need lottery support in the first place? The only answer I can think of is that our tax pounds aren't being used effectively.

As a tax payer, I would love to receive an itemised bill each year which tells me exactly where my money is going. Is it being spent on hospital beds, schools, medicines, public transport and other genuinely useful things? Or is the majority being wasted on expensive lunches for bureaucrats, endless administration and weapons of mass destruction which we think we're entitled to but nobody else is?

If the latter is the case, using lottery money to support the genuinely useful services that this country needs is unforgivable, and the longer we allow lottery funds to be treated as a voluntary kind of taxation, the worse things will get.

Lottery officials would undoubtedly say that the good causes supported really are "over and above" the normal social services we pay for via the regular taxation system. They will point out that there have been a number of schemes launched that would never have seen the light of day without lottery money.

But for every genuine good cause there are examples of the government dipping into lottery coffers to get itself out of trouble. To give such one - albeit extreme - example, Gordon Brown is said to be "appropriating" half a billion pounds worth of good cause money to prop up the 2012 Olympics. So what will be next? Will we see the launch of a scratchcard to support to public transport system? Or introduce a new superdraw to help pay off the national debt? Such ideas might make you smile today, but if things continue as they are now, I don't think they're unthinkable by any means.

So, what can we do? Well, we can keep a close eye on the good causes supported by the national lottery and voice our concerns should our money be used to pay for things that we're already supposed to be paying for through the taxation system. Ultimately we may be ignored, but if we don't speak out we'll never know.
 

Article Last Updated: 20/02/2007 13:08:03

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