58 year old Audrey White, the assistant manager of her local Palace Bingo Club, has won an incredible ￡1 million lottery jackpot and it was all due to an extremely fortuitous mistake.  Audrey had went into a nearby Suffolk supermarket and asked the clerk for a ￡2 scratch card.  The clerk handed her a ￡5 scratch card, instead.  Since Audrey had just won that amount from a previous card, she figured she would just keep the erroneous scratch card and you can bet  she is happy that she did!

The ￡5 scratch card that was mistakenly purchased ended up netting her a million pound jackpot!  A mother to three and having experienced financial hardships, the huge prize stunned her but she will clearly not have money worries for quite some time.  She states that she plans on paying off her mortgage and adding a conservatory to her home.  Audrey plans to continue working at the Palace Bingo Club indefinitely.

Talking to the press association, Audrey said, “I rubbed it off when I got home later and I just couldn’t believe it – I’m still in a state of shock.”

Discussing the handling of the money, she also said, “I’ve got a private bank account in Mayfair.  I’ve got my own private banker.  This sort of thing doesn’t happen to an assistant bingo manager”.

Well, Audrey, I guess you are wrong about that.  Apparently this is just the sort of thing that can happen to an assistant bingo manager – and any one of us, as well.

For those of you who are interested in exploring the paranormal and finding out about local history, you should tune into Most Haunted tomorrow evening.  They will be featuring the haunted history of Dingle’s Gaumont Cinema – the Gaumont Cinema by Toxteth.

There have been reports of ghosts appearing for many, many years as well as unexplainable events such as strange lights and noises.  Rumors abound, of course, given the long history of the location and building.  One story tells of a man who supposedly committed suicide behind the cinema screen.  Another local tale, which is of supreme interest to myself and the readers of this blog, tells of a bingo player who died while playing bingo.  The story says that her heart gave out due to the excitement of the game and now she haunts the premises looking to claim her bingo.

Paranormal experts say that the cinema building is in a possible nexus of otherworldly energy.  Apparently there is a triangle formed on the map of Liverpool when you draw a line from two other buildings with a haunting reputation – the Turner Memorial Home and the ancient Chapel of Toxteth.

The unique shape of the building follows the curving road and was built in 1937.  The art deco style building was built to hold the first Gaumont projectomatic theatre system in Britain.  An early precursor to today’s modern cinema equipment, the projectomatic system automated both the lights and the changing of the reels.  There has been some theorising that problems within the system have caused the odd lights that have been spotted, yet the issue has yet to be pinpointed.  When the theatre closed, the building was turned into a bingo hall for a time.

A couple from Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, just won the competition from Tombola Bingo by guessing the mystery location where their recent adverts were filmed.  More than 8,000 entires were received by the site but 52- year old Terrix Melville was the lucky winner when she correctly named the island paradise of Mauritius.  Now her and her husband Raymond will be gatting their dream honeymoon.

Mrs. Melville was at her job as a call centre team manager when she got the news and she promptly called her husband to give him the good news.  While the couple has been partnered for 21 years, they only recently were married three years ago.  There were unable to go on a honeymoon at that time so this trip is heavensent for the couple.

Said Mrs. Melville, “Our Tombola holiday will be our honeymoon, albeit a late one.  We have a year to take the holiday, so we’ll probably go for my birthday, just after Valentine’s Day.  We’ll leave the biting cold and dark days for a week of warm sunshine, blue skies and walking hand in hand along the golden sands of a beautiful tropical island.  It’s a dream come true.”

More and more dreams are coming true every day with the explosion of UK online bingo choices.  With the incredible competition for market share, the online bingo sites are coming up with ever larger jackpots and ever more exciting and extravagant promotions such as this one.

Three people have been prosecuted over a scam pulled at Gala Bingo in Sunderland.  The three employees raked in close to ￡9,000 in cash that they were not entitled to, ripping off both their employer and the other honest bingo players.

Christian Grant was the bingo caller in Sunderland and he came up with the scheme to override the random number generator to call numbers on particular cards.  He went to two other employees and convinced them to work the scheme with him, claim checkers Samantha Temple and Nandi Ndebele.

The fraud was discovered after an investigation was begun due to a customer’s complaint about odd behaviour from Grant.  The bingo player said he was moving the microphone away from his mouth while calling and there were abnormally long pauses between the numbers called.  She was suspicious over his behaviour and spoke to staff members.  The three were arrested as a result of the investigation.

Grant has been sentenced by the Newcastle Crown Court to nine months in jail for the abuse of his position.  He was handed the harshest sentence due to his cheating the players as well as the company and because he was the ringleader of the scheme.  Temple was sentenced to community order with one year’s supervision and Ndebele was sentenced to the same plus 100 hours of unpaid service.

The petition going around against the bingo tax was submitted via the 10 Downing Street website in September with more than 2,500 signatures of indignant bingo players.  The government has finally issued their response to that petition in their typical double speak.

“The government continues to recognize the important social role played by bingo clubs in many communities.  Budget 2009 introduced a package of reforms intended to simplify the bingo tax regime, continuing a process of reform that began in 2003.  Bingo participation fees became VAT exempt and bingo duty was increased to 22%.  The bingo industry had been campaigning for some time for VAT exemption on bingo participation fees and the bingo duty increase should not be seen in isolation”.

Basically, what the government is telling us is what did we expect?  Bingo operators wanted the VAT gone and now it is.  Clearly the government wasn’t going to lose anything on the deal so they raised the tax to compensate for it.  It almost sounds like they are considering the VAT exemption to be a favour to the industry, doesn’t it?

Since that budget of April 2009, we are seeing roughly four bingo clubs closing down every month.  This is a very serious situation for UK bingo that the government clearly is doing their best to ignore.

The full text of the government response is far too long to put into a blog post but you can find the entire text posted at the 10 Downing Street website, if you wish.