A Flutter With a Cause

Every now and again, news emerges of someone who was meant to be raising money for charity letting temptation get the better of them. It's usually when they're  faced with the prospect of a large collection resulting from some gambling activity such as a raffle or a lottery. Its almost as if the perceived immorality of it all rubs off on them.  Sometimes it's just greed. Mostly it's because the temptee is in some kind of trouble and this offers a way out. Consider the case of 'Father Ted' and the car raffle. Ted's written off the car he's meant to be raffling so he tries to engineer the draw so that Dougal wins it. It's a fictional comedy show but that kind of scenario isn't so far fetched. Several years ago, 2 people who were running a syndicated lottery were sentenced for fraud. 7 jackpot prizes had not reached the winners. Where the money had gone wasn't released but all indications were that the company had made a couple of bad moves and ...

 The game of skittles - a bit like bowling only more English - was very popular in western regions. It involved throwing wooden balls at 9 small pins. A Somerset newspaper from the 1970s shows that the game was also turned to fundraising purposes.  The are two adverts for skittle tournaments, both proclaiming that they would be held in aid of charity. The beneficiaries are vague though. One advert says that the tournament is in aid of the blind while the other just says "in aid of charity." Obviously these games, held in "inns" in rural places are the main attraction- the charity bit being an add on to make it all seem a little more genteel? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Woods-Ware-China-Serving-Hatch-ebook/dp/B08D3JDN94

 The Stiff Sweep was an internally held Fundraising event at a place that I used to work in the early 2000s. Too tasteless to be used on the general public, it however somehow suited the leftfield and sometimes almost anarchic way that this group operated. It was the group leader's idea, a person with "no filter" to use modern parlance,  a character without empathy or sympathy for anyone. Here's how it worked: A selection of elderly or ill celebrities was selected and turned into a chart. This was  circulated among the participants,  previously vetted for how they would take the idea. The gambler selected the celebrity from the list that they thought was most likely to die next. They paid a pound into the pot. Then, when a purchased celebrity died, the participant who had purchased that name won half of the pounds that had been paid in. The other half was donated to the group and the whole thing started again.  This was before social media - it made watching the...