What's better, the health lottery or the National lottery? FIGHT!

Stop selling the Health Lottery, plead charities: Good causes are losing out as supermarkets push new game

 Charity leaders are urging supermarkets to stop selling tickets for the controversial Health Lottery amid claims that stores are deliberately promoting the new game at the expense of the National Lottery.

What's wrong with a bit of healthy (ahem) competition? Surely the Health Lottery gives to good causes too?*

Acevo, the association of chief executives of voluntary organisations, has written to supermarkets asking them to ‘do the right thing’ and drop the lottery because it gives a far lower proportion of revenue to good causes than its rival.

I'm sure supermarkets are very eager to do the right thing, although probably not until they've made a healthy profit, achieved a healthy market share and given the customers what they want.

The Government has asked the National Lottery Commission to investigate whether the game was damaging sales of the National Lottery.
It has also asked the Gambling Commission to check whether the Health Lottery complies with restrictions on such competitions.
It is illegal to set up a national lottery to rival Camelot. The Health Lottery has circumvented this rule by setting up a network of 51 local lottery societies – which also makes it exempt from paying the extra 12p duty a ticket that the National Lottery gives to the Exchequer.

Ooh dear me, they are avoiding tax. Somebody call security!

*I had a look at the Health Lottery website, linked above, but details on where it's money goes are a bit sketchy. They give grants to local health 'charities', and although the don't seem to mention many names, there seem to be charities of both the fake and real kind. It was only a cursory glance and I'm sure readers will know more than me.