What T F is it with scratch cards. I work in a shop where we sell a range of 12 or so cards varying in price from £1 to £5 (a £10 card is about to be released as we speak). I sell myself, about 20 cards a shift and say the value of these is £40. I work 5 shifts a week so sell approx 100 cards a week. There are ten of us in the shop so lets say the shop sells approx 1000 cards a week. I've been employed there for 6 years so in that time ths shop has sold say 300,000 cards at a total cost of approx £600,000. In this time I have seen approx half a dozen payouts of more than twenty pounds and can say with absolute suretey that at least - I repeat at least - 90% of all the money paid out (mostly in £1 and £2 'wins') is repaid back over the counter immediately for more scratch cards.

I have seen on numerous occasions people spend what must be a days wage in ten minutes - and not win a penny. I saw one man buy 28 cards of differing prices (£78 in total I believe) - and win £2. I have seen staff dismissed for stealing them and mothers spending thier child benefit allowence on them while thier babys howl with hunger in the pram. I have seen children as young as five begging to be allowed a card and parents who make their children choose for them as though somehow God or fate will smile on them more kindly because the choice was made by an innocent child. I am not a fan of scratch cards.

Why one might ask is the government tied up in such a pernicious means of extracting cash from the weak and gullable ( for lets face it - like it or not scratch card purchase is a pursuit almost entierly of the lower end of the intellectual/social scale), and the answer my friends is this. Because a very large proportion of the money spent on 'scratchies' (as the little feller's are chumily known) is bennefits money. The scratch card is no less than the governments way of recouping a proportion of it's own money paid out in bennefits. If you or me as working people are stupid enough to throw our hard earned away on the the blighters then more fool us - it's a free country, but your shiftless layabout who spends his morning in bed and his night getting sozzled on 'Frosty Jack's', well he will throw away those last few £1coins on scratchcards without a seconds thought. What does he care - there's plenty more where that came from. And so next time you see the little finger crossed sign an think i might have a quick punt think again. You aren't going to win, you aren't meant to - and you never were.