Health Lottery - is it Doomed?

Last week, for the first Lottery I went to Sainsbury’s. Admittedly it is a new lottery so there will be teething troubles, but it was Saturday and the tickets had been avaiable for some time.

It took 30 minutes and 3 operators + 2 phone calls to achieve a result. I was advised my numbers were registered to the card for future use.

This week I was in Morrison’s. I handed over my card and was told it wasn’t registered. The operator tried to register and informed me the card was not able to be registered.
I asked if she could type the numbers in for me but was told it takes too long and I would have to get another card, fill in the numbers I wanted and come back. As there was a queue I left.

I returned to Sainsbury’s (in case the card was Store specific). The card could not scan. I was advised that none of the cards scan and every one has to be individually keyed in. She did this and the total transaction took over 5 minutes.
As it is Saturday the queue behind built up and I can’t see stores wearing that sort of a problem for long. Already Morrison’s have a totally separate queue system for the Health Lottery.

I fear, unless the card/machine problem is resolved the Lottery is DOOMED.:(

Anyone else having issues with this Lottery?

 

Sounds like an all to familiar story these days. Stuff like that makes me want to garden

 

spoke to the local cafe owner week ago asking him how it works ...

he was not too impressed, as he stated that it is not owned by Camelot (who run the current lotto) .... it is owned by consortium who own several newspapers

he stated that he asked the guy who installed the machine (it is a different machine to the camelot machine) what portion of the raised money actually goes to health services

He states that none of it goes to the state NHS health services as that is state goverened and a large portion of your pound per ticket played is swallowed up by administrative costs ...

thaqt's his take on the situation, but I have not bothered to verify

I (unsucesfully) play every type of lotto and even bet (unsucesfully) with the bookies on sport, X-factor, and anything else that I can loose my money on

I also asked him what he gets paid per ticket ... he stated he gets 20 pence per ticket, but it brings in customers who end up buying other stuff such as tobacco, milk, bread and sweets

I've already got 3 lines for tonight's draw .... could do with 3 in a row (£50)

 

For more info on the health lottery Click me

 

The wife and I are going to do it, just because the odds are better than the main lottery.

The Health Lottery is going to give 20p of your pound to health charities, compared to 28p in the pound that Camelot gives to charity, but as the chap being interviewed on BBC News said, it still works out fairer than Camelot because they wont be funding anything that nobody (except very rich people) will be interested in.

There will be teething troubles. There always are with large IT projects. That's not a cop out, its just the way it is. The reason for that is ALWAYS miscommunication between the various organisations involved.

It works like this. The software developers write the programs in a 'development' environment, and test them in as close to the real thing as possible. It is not cost effective to test in the real environment until the software is believed to be ready.

The network engineers make lots of estimates about 'traffic', data transfer rates, routing etc.

The analysts and project managers contact BT and the likes and say "we need a data line with ports X, Y and Z open to traffic of protocols A, B and C, can you provide that?" and the answer comes back as "Yes".

So the whole thing gets built, goes "live" and then falls straight on its behind. Its because BT or the likes, when asked if they could supply the line and answered yes, failed to say "provided that...", or when the network engineers opened connected all the routers up they were not told that port X needs to be open or protocol Y which is usually blocked by default needs to be enabled etc. So in short, somebody didn't tell someone something, so something wasn't done that should have been, and its only AFTER it goes "live" that these problems come to light. Then everyone looks silly, lots of people get shouted at, lots of people shrug their shoulders and say "I did tell you that weeks ago", everyone has a rant, some overtime is put in, and after a few days or weeks, everything gets sorted.

 

As many others I suppose like me that it was to support the NHS
Not at all, read what you see Jack not what you thought you saw
It is NOT for the NHS it is for charities concerned with health care

Now if it is anything like the National Lottery, the only people who benefit are professionals, I see only large established nurseries for kids get paid out to supply more toys, play areas etc
The essential day to day living creches, Local area mums who have established play groups in the local church hall, to give mums a break, Then it is too complicated and would not be considered anyway

I WAS going to give it a go, until I found out here it is not for the NHS, and a private company is going to make profits on it a bit like OXFAM every pound donated goes to the £35k area managers wages and 7 series BMW company car, nothing to the volunteer workers who are given TARGETS to meet (shouted at if not met )and 2p goes to the supported needy

Still the odds are APPEAR to be better, and as the National Lottery should be, a lower top prize and many reasonable lower prizes

Until I tried to do it
I have not got a dicky doo how it works, when the numbers are drawn, where they are announced ?
The shop had no cards left anyway, but the instructions were write five numbers on the card, but the card has three lines ? and pay your pound at the till,
Fine but is it three lines for a pound or a pound a line
Do you keep the same numbers, for ever ?
How is it drawn and how often ? When where is it announced or do you have to buy the Express for that

Jack McH

 

I have a friend who's wife is some sort of clever scientist lady. She worked for a certain well know cancer research charity for a lot of years. After several years of research she chanced upon an unusual phenomenon in her experiments. Realising the potential significance of her observations, she went to the board to ask for funding to pursue the experiment further. She knew they'd need justification, so she prepared a comprehensive report of her study in advance. As she sat before the board, in a room with teak walls and ceilings, and leather furniture, she was told that they would not fund her research along the lines she was going, because she had deviated too much from the studies of all the other researchers. I.e. she took a direction that non of the others had taken (the others who, lets face it, have yet to find a cure). She resigned because of it. She had genuinely believed in her work, and to observe something significant and then be rejected because nobody else had done the same experiment, she concluded that they were more interested in keeping the bean counters happy than making any solid progress.

I know the lady in question, she is a very clever lady indeed, and its such a shame that bean counting gets in the way of what's important.

 

Melinda Messinger "does it" Saturday on Channel 5

Health lottery draw

This was the first one. (she still does it, watched it last night)

 

I thought Melinda was broadminded

 

Hi *dim*. Bought my first Health lottery ticket today(guess what) I won £50.

 

Gotta get people to tune to Channel 5 somehow!!!

Val