– Yes, it is!
Morality has the power to bend
-What can we do?
In every love there is an insult
–For me and for you
The past is gone, the future is uncertain
–The devil will surely get his due.
from The Ballad of Joe Hogaby Batchi
We’re just a few days away from the UK general election; July 4th to be exact, from what I’m about to write. So, dear reader, what is on the radar of the UK media and public? The economy? Um, no. The National Health Service? Hmm, to an extent. The prospect of tax increases or cuts? Well, well. Stopping immigration? As usual, nothing going on today. So what’s dominating the headlines today?
It’s a gamble.
You can’t get a pound out of millions of pounds, just £100 or £150.
No, he’s not on horseback, folks. Hedge funder Sundar Sangorn stood behind a podium outside 10 Downing Street in the pouring rain, soaking wet, to announce the date of the election – the date for which there is only one bet – this July.
Commentators have been speculating about the election date for the past year, with most choosing November, and some vaguely speculating that a delay would give the Conservatives enough time to implement tax cuts that would appeal to a wider range of voters.
Perhaps the main threat to the Conservative vote is not the divisions within the party or the failure of four prime ministers in most areas of governance, but the rise of a far-right party called Reform, currently led by Nigel Farage. Farage was and is the UK’s leading Mr Brexit, who insists it’s not “done” yet. He is a friend and campaigner of Donald Trump, and has crossed the Atlantic to support Donald Wigworm’s campaign. So while some commentators have assumed that hedge funds would call the election in November while Farage is in the US helping his heroes win the US election, Farage is in the US helping his heroes win the US election so he won’t be here to bother him.
mistaken.
Hedges inevitably consulted several people in secret about the best date to declare the election. All factors must have been considered. The victory was a sham, aimed at stemming the tsunami of a Labour resurgence. The announcement date, carefully considered behind closed doors and secret closets in Number 10, came as a surprise to some – but apparently not to the two Conservative candidates who were privy to the discussions that determined this exact date.
So what did these Conservative candidates running in Wales and Bristol North do? Luckily, they used inside information to go to the bookmakers and place bets on election day, before the election was announced.
The media is now abuzz about these allegations and the fact that an internal investigation at 10 Downing Street has found that the two men, and several others, including security officers who may have heard rumours about a particular date, went out and, in British parlance, “placed a bet”.
I don’t know what odds were offered, but if an exact date had been given, they must have been pretty good odds (duh!).
The two candidates have been expelled from the Conservative Party and will either withdraw or run as independents after being found guilty of wrongdoing. Rule Britannia!
To be honest, I didn’t think bookmakers would accept bets on election day. I sometimes go to my local bookmaker and bet £3.60 on a special horse racing bet on three horses that will finish first and second out of six combinations. I usually lose £3.60, but I should note here that I once won £46 on this bet. Well, that was three years ago. I fell into this lazy lifestyle as I got older.
As a teenager in Pune, I knew that there was a busy junction called Sarbatwala Chowk, on the corner of Satyapil Road, where bookmakers hung out and took bets on horse races, most of which were what were called “cotton figures.”
The bet was to predict the last two digits of the closing price of a bale of cotton on the New York Mercantile Exchange. I think the odds were 100 to 1.
One of our friends was forced by his parents to leave Bombay and attend a commerce college in Poona (as it was then) in disgrace because he had sold his mother’s Indian musical instruments and smashed a window in their apartment, pretending that a thief had stolen it. He used the money to bet on horse racing.
He used the money his father had given him for college tuition in the same way, and was suspended from college as a result. In despair, he borrowed money from friends and put it together to make “Rose de Bahamas” It won against incredible odds, and our friend got enough money to pay for his college tuition, treat us to tea, andMuscas Rice“Thick bread with butter”
He never forgot his victory, and with a flick of his wrist like a jockey loosening the reins of a racehorse, he repeated the name of his Savior.Rose de Bahamas“.
