Life's a Lottery

There was a piece on the news this morning about some schools around the country adopting a lottery system to replace their hugely oversubscribed admissions policies. Education chiefs said such an arbitrary method was the only equitable solution to the growing problem of too many youngsters scrambling for limited places at the same few schools.
I pondered this for a moment and then it hit me. WHAT A BRILLIANT IDEA! THIS, SURELY, HAS TO BE THE WAY FORWARD FOR ALL OUR BUSTING-AT-THE-SEAMS PUBLIC SERVICES!!!

Imagine the air of excitement it would generate! The National Health Service, for one, would be vastly improved. It would become a thrilling entertainment, not just a boring necessity, and the prizes on offer would be so much more valuable than a new lounge suite, a speedboat or a weekend away in Porthcawl.
Picture the scene. You come back from that holiday in the Gambia with a touch of green monkey disease and so, despite one of your legs having fallen off and your face resembling a baboon's arse, you hop along to a packed casualty department, grab a numbered ticket from the dispenser on the wall, and take your seat between the little lad with a bucket stuck on his head and that woman who is foaming at the mouth and has crimson, lizard-like skin.
The theme tune to Sale of the Century suddenly bursts forth from the speakers on the wall and then the consultant appears from behind a curtain, grinning widely and dressed not in the usual white coat but in a lurid, leopard skin-print jacket, bedecked in bling and with a revolving bow-tie.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you. You're too kind. What a lovely audience. Welcome again to Life's a Lottery! You've got to be in it to win it!!"

"Excuse me please, this gentlemen here has just coughed up his spleen!"

"Yes, he's slick 'n' he's sick but only the tombola cures Ebola!! Now, eyes down and look in, here we go. All the sixes, number 37!!!"

On a Tuesday morning you'd run out to the front of your drive and clamber over the huge piles of rat-infested, rotting rubbish bags to line up with your neighbours and await the arrival of the binmen. You would be able to cut the atmosphere with a knife as silence fell and the banana-yellow, brightly lit bin lorry came round the corner blasting out Ride of the Valkyries as the tattooed oaf behind the wheel lent out of the cab and bellowed "Come in Numbers 4, 11, 15 and 27, you're time is up!!"

At the risk of labouring the point, wouldn't it to be so much more fun if, when knife-wielding maniacs burst into your house intent on burglary and buggery, you dialled an 0800 number instead of 999 and were either told "Congratulations! You have been chosen from literally thousands to receive the attendance of a uniformed officer" or "I'm sorry. You have not been successful on this occasion but we here at the police value your call"?

There is a serious point here (I think). I mean, you might think that a lottery for healthcare, for instance, is ludicrous but it IS, as everyone in Britain knows, already happening - the postcode lottery, as they call it. Live in area A and you can get your hip replaced in under six months or get cancer treatment with some revolutionary new drug. Live in area B and it's 12 months just to get to see the consultant and anything above aspirin is deemed too expensive by the local hospital trust. On top of that, despite pledges to the contrary and regulations outlawing it, our governments HAVE used money from the National Lottery to pay for what should be public services, not charitable causes.

A lottery for school admissions may also seem sad but it is nothing to the lengths some desperate parents are apparently prepared to go to get little Jakasta or Tarquin into the "right" school. There was a piece on the wireless a few weeks ago about how loads of mummys and daddys were allegedly converting to Catholicism in an effort to improve their chances of getting their spawn into Roman Catholic schools which are deemed to be the best!!! Fucking Hell!!!! Thank God I'm not a parent and Jewish schools are thought to be the best!!!!!!!

I don't think there is anything for Grantham from all of the above. It is just a sad state of affairs which is insoluble, barring the introduction of a cull of one in three children or the election of a government which can bring ALL our schools up to a very high standard - both are equally unlikely.
Still, looks like it's going to be a nice day!