Yesterday in Australia we had a thing called ‘The Melbourne Cup’ – a horse race that supposedly ‘stops the nation’. And as always, Australians spent an astronomical amount of money gambling on it and the associated races. In 2016 the figure was $657 million in just four days. That seems like quite a fucking lot of money to me. And that doesn’t even include the money spent on stupid hats and enough booze to sail a battleship in.
(In 2016/17 Australians bet more than $200 BILLION on various forms of sports betting and gambling making us the biggest betting nation on the planet!)
I know it’s not super useful to play the “what if…” game, but at a time when I see people lamenting that “we” should be doing more for the homeless… more for the farmers… and don’t even get me started on the comments I see when we talk about doing more to help refugees. “We can’t even afford to look after our own” they shout. And who is this “we” they speak of?
How can we as individuals afford to spend a lazy $657 million in four days gambling on fucking horse races?
Hypocrite alert: Yes, I’m a hypocrite, because literally every dollar I spend on anything other than food and shelter falls into this same category, right? That $4 Kombucha? I could have drank tap water and used that money to save someone’s life. But I didn’t. So I get it. I’m a fucking hypocrite. But $657 million. On gambling. In four days. Holy. Fuck.
Maybe if we dressed refugees up in silks, and whipped them a bit to run faster around a race course, people could send $657 million their way instead? To keep things interesting we could even kill one or two since that seems to be acceptable with horse racing? And we could bet on how much better their lives would be if we helped them a little instead of being shitty and selfish and xenophobic.
Sputnik
I don’t send out newsletters very often, and sure as shit don’t send spam, but if you’re keen to get semi-regular updates of the stuff I write, click here to sign up.
PIC: This pic of wild horses was taken near King’s Canyon, Northern Territory.
