David Porter » Entries tagged with "money"
John Lanchester
John Lanchester at The Hostry, Norwich Cathedral part of the Norwich and Norfolk Festival 2015 Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 20 May 2015 I have long admired John Lanchester the novelist. Now, after his money talk, he’s impressed as an explainer of complex financial matters. It was the first in the Norwich Writers Centre festival in a weekend and was in the form of a ‘conversation’ which we are told people prefer these days to a talk. It was chaired by the verbose Jonathan Morley, from WCN. Lanchester gave a reading from his book ‘How to Speak Money’, discussed literature and how the ‘unhelpful term non-fiction is a particularly English language thing’, politics and economics. He wrote the book from a desire to explain financial vocabulary, as most of us have ‘semi-knowledge’ at best; … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reviews
Lotteries, Raffles, Games of Chance: People Certainly Like a Bet
From football pools to local/national lotteries, horse racing to snow falling at Christmas, the gambling instinct is strong, despite psychological doubts. Life assurance, taking a financial risk on how long somebody will live, has been big business since the Romans inaugurated ‘burial clubs’. In the UK, betting on football pools has been around since 1923 (Littlewoods, with Vernons in 1925, Zetters in 1933 and Brittens in 1946). Catering for people to have a flutter or punt on horse or greyhound races, the Cambridge/Oxford Boat Race or other sporting events, on the weather, a bingo card or political fortunes creates a turnover in the UK alone of £95 billion a year at conservative estimates and employs 35,000 people directly and indirectly. In the USA people gamble on baseball games or other sporting events … Read entire article »
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101