"Fado" -- Part 3

This thread of posts started a couple of days ago, and once again there's a brief item in the Diário de Notícias of Funchal that gives a bit of insight into the way Portuguese feel. We could call it their "soul".

(Parenthetical notes)
Yesterday, thanks to one of the blogs I follow, My Little Russia, I came across a website called Big Russian Soul (BRS) that has a quiz you can take to see how much you really understand the Russian soul. I failed miserably, of course, having never lived in the Russian culture. Now, if the quiz were about Portuguese (and Madeirans, in particular) I believe we could pass with flying colors.

While on the subject of Russia, I am planning to post some links for those of you who are interested in Russia or Ukraine. So watch for that in coming days.


Now, back to our regular programming....

Here is my quick translation of today's article, which talks about Europe's multi-national, multi-million euro lottery (my comments in italics):


Two Euros a Week on EuroMillion

Two euros ($2.50) is how much a Portuguese spends on average on the EuroMillion lottery every week. (Population of Portugal= approx. 10,000,000 ) In July a succession of jackpots led Portuguese to bet about 1.8% of their available income on the game. The figures were calculated by the Jornal de Negócios.

The Portuguese lead Europe in the amount of money bet on the EuroMillion lottery. Between October and the end of July, they spent more than 671 million euros.

Half of this amount was retained for operating expenses of the lottery and the other half was distributed by chance.

Calculations show that almost 336 million euros left the country. Prize winnings returned less than 297 million. In other words, the net result is a loss. Portugal has a EuroMillion deficit of 39 million euros (approx. $47 million).

The trend is the same in all the nine countries that participate in the contest. Ireland is the only exception. Thanks to the last jackpot, it achieved a positive balance. (At the beginning of the month, an Irish woman won a €115.6 million jackpot. The DN reported that over €1,000,000 were bet that week in Madeira alone by people hoping to win the big one.)

With Portuguese demonstrating the lowest level of satisfaction with their lives in relation to citizens of other European countries (see previous posts), it's understandable that they would be the heaviest bettors. But the numbers show that gambling only makes the poor poorer still.

"Fado".