A few years ago we applied to the board for a grant to assist our disabled riding group. As you might expect this was too good a cause for them to support and we had a rejection; no reason given, just a resounding “no”! They don’t even indicate what you could change in order to apply again. If you have ever filled out a lottery application for a grant you will realise that it is as demanding and time consuming as the Inland Revenue self assessment form in triplicate. It is certainly not conducive to encouraging you to apply a second time and we haven’t.

Distribution of the lottery money to “good” causes is done by what is now called the Community Fund. With all the ‘free’ money available the inevitable consequence has been that it is squandered. For instance £24 million goes on administration alone. Unusually for even big companies there are six directors all with their noses in the trough with salaries of £60 to £70,000. pa and the chief exec., Richard Buxton, on £103,000 pa. This year £24 million goes on administration covering 450 staff in 15 locations. A PR re-branding exercise took £130,000 and the glossy annual report took £25,000. Every employee gets free gym membership, £100 personal development grant, flexible working hours, free professional counselling, index-linked final salary pension scheme and a interest-free season ticket loan. Labours ex-policy director, Mathew Taylor, promised to end the ‘fat-cat’ earnings and make it a people’s lottery. Mr Taylor gets £45,000 pa in Tony Blair’s ‘think-tank’ and now, on top of this, is getting £30,000 pa from Camelot as a non-executive director for which he only has to attend six board meetings and the occasional strategy session. Last years chief executive, Dianne Thompson, was paid £870,000! That is £2,356 each day! What this Lottery ‘worker’ received for half an hour would have funded the whole of our disabled riders appl;ication!

Labour pledged to make the lottery non-profit-making but reappointed Camelot who then made £58 million profit!!

The board, lead by chairwoman, Lady Brittan, has given money to some good causes but we don’t often hear about them. What we hear about is the disasters like the Dome, some modern sculpture that nobody wants and more recently thousands of pounds going to organisations with often political activities aimed directly or indirectly at the British Government or its policies which have been democratically decided by us the people.

Why is it that the board won’t give a measly few hundred pounds to Brownbread Disabled Riders Group whereas they give £340,000 to anti-deportation campaigners, £5,000 to a pro-republican group in Northern Ireland that have attacked British troops (& gloating on the Internet about the injuries to the troops). Putting other facts in context there has been £1 million given to various war veteran charities but £68 million to refugees and asylum seekers! Is this fair?

The Government should sack the lot of them, arrest some of them for incitement to treason and think carefully about who should be running a multimillion pound organisation that should be distributing funds to “good” causes that benefit the community. You could read this and say, “oh, dear!”, or you can read this and do something about this fiasco. Go to the top. The Government set up the lottery so write to Tony Blair or your MP. Your MP is supposed to represent your democratic wishes.