Lotteries are weird. And lottery winners are weird (at least this one is). Lots of us pay our money religiously into the scheme every week. The government takes a big share as tax. 'Good causes' takes a big share. The organisers take a big share. Retailers even get a bit (see here for the full breakdown of the UK's National Lottery). What's left is distributed, rather unevenly, to some lucky winners.

Although it could be us, it almost always isn't. Yet, according to the Telegraph, we're delighted when someone near us wins, as if geography has anything at all to do with how winnings are distributed.

Compare our joy over the Cirencester couple to our extreme anger over bank bonuses. There's a severe outbreak of piety going on in the press, as bank bosses fall over themselves to forego bonuses or give them to charity. Even worse, those scoundrels in RBS's investment banking division, that dared to generate a £5.7bn profit, will be taking home bonuses this year. It's not fair!

We have this rabid reaction to bank bonuses, which people seem to interpret as ill-gotten and merely skimmed off the contributions of other people. Never mind that Stephen Hester, boss of RBS, seems to wish he could have retained many of his star performers who have left in the last year, because "they would have increased our profits by about a billion pounds."

The lottery, on the other hand, truly is ill-gotten and skimmed off the contributions of other people. Why tolerate that and not bonuses?

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Filed under: Current issues, Politics with tags banks, bonuses, lottery, stephen hester, unfair