A game of chance sir?

I need to tell you about a couple of stories I read in the paper today. I don’t like “outraged of London” letters that people write about subjects they have heard or read but know nothing about – this is not one of those.

I’m not in a fury because I’ve read about someone who has claimed that their child was told that they couldn’t fly their country’s flag. I’m not going to rant on about how England has declined to anarchy because some rough 8 year old, who was probably trying to poke some shopkeeper in the eye with the flag while stealing chocolate, has been asked to leave a shop only for his mother to declare that the Muslim shopkeeper ejected them because of the flag, and not the torrent of abuse that they had hurled his way.

Far from it, I’m giggling. I am “amused of London.”

I read today of complaints that have been made against a Hoopla stall owner in Blackpool. The Hoopla stall is part of a fairground attraction. The complaint is that he was crooked. When I say crooked I mean that his Hoopla stall was really very hard to win on. “What?” I hear you ask, “You mean that the stalls at a fairground aren’t completely fair and honest?”

It seems that they aren’t – shocking isn’t it.

To be fair, it was apparent that this one was a little more bent than most and it was almost impossible to win – almost. There in lies the point, it wasn’t actually impossible to win just highly unlikely. Isn’t that standard gambling?

What made me laugh was the way that the ‘victims’ were so thick. If you go to a fair, and try your luck on the Hoopla or the shooting or whatever, you know you haven’t got much chance right? You have a couple of goes because it is fun, and because they are not impossible – sometimes you can get lucky, could tonight be your night? These people though take the absolute biscuit.

A Doctor, an educated man, complained because after he had spent £1,200 (I kid you not) he had still not managed to win a cuddly toy. ONE THOUSAND AND TWO HUNDRED F**&&(#ING POUNDS! Who on this planet would still be trying to win a prize worth at best £20 (there were bottles of cheap looking champagne on offer too, but they turned out to be empty) after you had passed the £30 mark? How on Earth would anyone still be trying after £1000? This man deserved everything he got – or didn’t get, to be accurate.

Another woman said that when she had run out of money, one of the stall holders walked with her to show her where a cash point was so that she could continue her run of bad luck, this lady should work in banking.

It really makes me laugh that people can be so dumb, free the stall holder I say and let him get back to his traditional dishonesty.

Lastly, in the same paper I saw that an Eastern European phone company has stopped selling an ‘unlucky’ phone number after its third owner on the trot had died suddenly. They no longer wanted the blood of their customers on their hands with the golden phone number of 0888 888 888. At first I agreed with them, that is quite a shocking set of coincidences. Then I read on.

The first owner died fairly suddenly of Cancer, an awful fact that is neither funny nor unimportant to somebody.

However, every time one person dies of any disease, the phone companies don’t declare their phone number unlucky. That needed the other two deaths to make it important to the report.

The second owner was gunned down in a mafia attack, on account of him also being a mobster, but for the other team.

The third, a ‘bent businessman’, was also shot by the mafia.

Now is it me, or is more likely that dealing with the mafia is actually where the bad luck is in this story, rather than having a specific phone number?

Or have I missed the boat completely and in fact the mafia simply really want that phone number?

Either way, I can’t help feeling that dealing with those guys has to shorten your odds of survival.

So if the odds are stacked against you on that phone number, I wonder if our Doctor friend has tried to buy it yet.