infed

Just wondering whether anyone shares my concerns here... I live and work in a predominantly white working class area. I was recently undertaking some work with young people (I will not refer to it as youth work for all sorts of reasons!) which was funded by National Lottery money.

Although asked to ensure the Lottery branding and logo was reproduced on all our flyers and information leaflest, I had serious concerns about the legality and ethics of this.

Promoting gambling to children (minors) is clearly illegal, (see this article:http://www.christian.org.uk/issues/2008/gambling/advert_22feb08.htm) yet we seem to accept as a society that activities aimed at children will be carrying this distinctive brandng. How different is this from McDonalds attempts to brand school books?

These big organisations are clearly very aware of the potential of creating 'brand awareness' in people, preferably at the earliest age possible (as they know there is a correlation between age and brand loyalty).

It is also recognised that young people are particularly vulnerable to gambling problems, and that the poorest sections of the community spend (proportionally) a much greater amount of their income on lottery gambling than the richest sections. Some discourses consider gambling to be a public health problem.

I have worked with young people who are struggling to make ends meet financially, who buy lottery tickets instead of electric cards, or food - 'just in case' their numbers come up. I feel that the widespread, and widely unchallenged promotion of Lottery gambling, often to the most vulnerable young people, who may have few legitimate routes out of poverty, is at best irresponsible, and at worst a cynical manipulation of the poor and vulnerable.

When searching the internet to see of anyone else had challenged this, the only groups critically evaluating lottery funding as gambling promotion are Christian and Muslim groups - why is this not a broader debate among secular groups too?

Perhaps most people really do think this is fine, or perhaps we are all too jaded by continuously chasing funding to care too much about where it comes from, and what the 'trade-off' is?