Lottery largesse
Sir: It's a pity Edward Heathcoat Amory (`The finger of disaster', 14 November) hadn't waited a few more days before load- ing his pen with vitriol to write about the National Lottery.
For the new National Lottery website (www.national-lottery.co.uk) would have revealed to him the total inaccuracy of his assertion that 'almost no one has benefited from this social and economic juggernaut'. Twenty-nine good causes have received a total of £8,868,468 from the National Lot- tery in his neighbourhood of London W11 alone, ranging from the London Light- house (£158,427), to the Notting Hill Youth Project (£30,000), to the restoration of All Saints Church, Notting Hill (V8,800), to the conversion and moderni- sation of The Tabernacle into a community arts centre (£150,000), to Exploring Parent- hood (£174,097).
The last-named was to extend a tele- phone helpline service for parents in need of advice or information on parenting. Some of the awards may, like this one, have overtones of political correctness (for example, the £103,163 for the Commission for Filipino Migrant Workers and the £413,043 to Abantu For Development, to develop `Women's non-governmental organisations in Africa in order to help establish equal participation in policy deci- sion-making' somewhat exercise the eye- brows). But the sheer range and depth of the awards show that what has emerged from the National Lottery is much more than sustenance for the Royal Opera House and the Churchill Papers, which Edward Heathcoat Amory implicitly believes.
Yes, I'm biased. Early this summer Camelot appointed our agency to do their new advertising campaign. Until I started to unearth the sort of facts I've just listed, I shared a number of Edward Heathcoat Amory's misgivings. It's certainly a pity the National Lottery's light has been hidden for so long under a bushel. But even if the general public can be for- given for their ignorance, a serious investi- gator should have dug beyond ageing press cuttings. To argue that only the greedy Treasury and almost 700 luckless million- aires are the sole winners of the National Lottery is simply sloppy journalism. Most unlike The Spectator.
Robin Wight
WCRS Limited, 5 Golden Square, London W1
Edward Heathcoat Amory writes: When Robin Wight's agency recently won the Camelot account, their presentation docu- ment had on its cover the words 'Thank you Camelot for making us a better agency than we were seven weeks ago', a reference to the exhaustive creative process they had gone through to produce their winning pro' posal. As part of this self-improvement experience, Mr Wight seems to have visited Camelot's website. So did I, but even 'slop- py' journalists know better than to be take) in by the glossy corporate packaging ►n which the Lottery can afford to wrap itself, with Mr Wight's able assistance.
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