D’ye think we might have too many ministers, too much government?
Baroness Twycross, the new Labour gambling minister.
Why does Britain need a minister of gambling?
D’ye think we might have too many ministers, too much government?
Baroness Twycross, the new Labour gambling minister.
Why does Britain need a minister of gambling?
Gambling is a vice and has to be controlled.
A bit like looking at naughty pictures on the Interwebs or trying to stay warm.
Doesn’t she have other things in her portfolio other than this & her make up & Tampax? Dept of Culture, Media , Sport & Pornography isn’t it? But it seems an odd place to have gambling & the National Lottery. They’re financial should be in a finance ministry where there’s a vague possibility there’s someone understands money.
Still, it’s nice to see the National Lottery in trouble. Who’s stupid idea was that? Blair? The last thing a government should be in is gambling. Ghastly concept & belongs with gentlemen with suspicious tans, bad suits & heavy gold bracelets. I used to watch women in the Paki shop foregoing buying food for their kids in favour of lottery tickets. Which no doubt uses the proceeds to finance Drag Queen Story Times in libraries.
Still, let’s hope Desmond gets it. I knew him when he was knocking out dirty books in a Forest Gate warehouse. Proper geezer. Sort of bloke should be in government if not Prime Minister. At least he’d know what he was doing & is an honest crook.
It seems Desmond does indeed play the Lottery…
But really.. the current owner promised an overhaul of “the IT systems behind it”. And it is Delayed and Facing Difficulties…
Now… How much of that delay is caused by Government and every other Busybody having their 2 cents in… Any bets?
bis.
Even worse it was John Major who started the lottery. On par with the cones hotline.
Isn’t Rachel Reeves the gambling minister?
I can see no connection between Rachel Reeves & lambs in springtime. None whatsoever. Apart from a deserved oven.
I wonder how it’s possible to have a lottery and be in financial trouble.
But then there’s a history of that. All you have to do is give out slightly too much in prizes.
Strangely enough, most of the well-known ones that got into trouble were government-run…
The Lottery IT system is desperately in need of the retail units being replaced with generic functionality in an off-the-shelf POS terminal. In my day job it’s appalling going into a little PO branch and there’s a lottery POS terminal, a PO POS terminal, a gas’n’leccy POS terminal, *and* a general purpose corner shop POS terminal.
Well, yes jgh. But that would be efficient…. Can’t have that now, can we?
jgh: I guess none of those parties trusts any of the others, so having a common POS terminal is a non-starter.
Talking of too much government, I was agog to discover that Pat McFadden thinks he can make the Civil Service “more like a startup”. McFadden looks like one of the harder inmates of Barlinnie and I just wonder what he actually knows about startups. The Civil Service is absolutely the last place you would expect to find the kind of people who have the startup mentality. Government could never give them the opportunity to capitalise on their success either.
@TG Trust isn’t even an issue..
Nowadays it’s trivial to set up multiple “virtual machines” on a single system, have them perma-run, and simply have a selection/detection shell running popping the one up the customer demands.
No interaction between all the fancy, and possible quite different environments at all..
I run an old blade server at home to fiddle with stuff like that ( I like to run Ancient Games..) , but your mobile phone basically works the same “remembering” multiple applications.
The technical hurdle to do that on a “workstation” was taken two decades ago, became practical in terms of resources/hardware a decade ago.
There is not a single reason why there isn’t a single box that Does It All.
Well… other than the Gravy Train grinding to a halt…..
Gamblers win at a rate determined by the house, frequently enough to keep them coming back, not frequently enough for the house to make a loss.
The government loses every time.
Grikath: I know that, and it would work, but do the parties concerned trust that? None of their employees with decision-making powers will understand that, and would they trust the consultants who can also tell them that it’s feasible?
TG @ 6.20. Don’t underestimate the, ahem, ‘business’ accumen of Mr. McFadden; he would probably do a better job than Weasel Theeves………
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/labour-pat-mcfadden-expenses-house.