Maybe the lottery should fund racism training

When Jesus told of the good Samaritan, I bet the 'Mail' said: 'Huh, political correctness gone mad'

The Daily Mail is running a campaign in which it insists the National Lottery is a disgrace. In a way they're right, because it is in effect a tax system in which the poorer you are the more you're likely to pay. You have to go back to feudal Europe to find the last time that happened, and even Louis XVI didn't have the cheek to announce how much he'd taken on national TV every Saturday night, followed by the latest Ronan Keating single.

It has also encouraged a feudal approach to reason. So people make statements such as "there must be a good chance of number 14 coming out this week, it hasn't come up since April". Which assumes the little balls have a) a memory; and b) a sense of fair play. And as the drum is spinning, they're yelling: "Oy, 23, get back, you've been out twice this month, let 14 have a go".

But the Mail's complaint is about the direction of the money that's raised. It wastes money that could be going towards "hospitals and schools struggling for lack of money". They may have been misinformed, because these things are still funded by taxation, unless they have some inside information, and soon the NHS will be supported by the lottery as well. You'll need three numbers for something minor like a cataract operation, and the midweek draw will be made in an intensive care unit, where the winner will get a liver transplant, presented by Lulu.

The Mail lists dozens of bodies who are outrageous for receiving lottery funds, such as the "Forest People's Project" whose aim, says the Mail, is to "help people in Rwanda make a living from pottery". Bloody Rwandans, as if they're not made of money already. All right, they've been through a war that wiped out a million people, but I would not be surprised if they did all that to get sympathy so they could get their pottery grant. Next thing they'll be having an earthquake so we send them a bag of free clay. Or the "Uwesko UK Trust" that "trains Ugandan orphans". Surely someone should be asking what we're doing letting in Ugandan kids in the first place if their parents are going to die. We're being taken for mugs. Or there's the "Intermediate Technology Development Group" that aims "to improve the livelihoods of women and farmers in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Peru". It takes some imagination to see this as an aspiration that should be condemned. I bet when Jesus told the story of the Samaritan that helped the traveller, the Mail stood up and said: "Huh, political correctness gone mad."

The list continues with the "Newham Tamil Association" and the "North of England Refugee Service" and on and on, and you might notice a pattern, possibly linked to colour. Not every body it complains about is black. They also despair at the £4,570 awarded to "deaf homosexuals in Birmingham", but surely it's in all our interests to see whether it's possible to come up with a camp sign language – especially in a Birmingham accent.

But that aside, their reason for yelling "an insult to decent values" is that the funding goes to blacks and foreigners, rather than to the decent suburban Neighbourhood Watch world it should go to, where hundreds of groups such as the "British Privet-Hedge Trimming Fellowship" and schemes training part-time racism and bigotry in the community as an evening class are desperate for funding.

This campaign represents the current strategy for the Mail and its backers. These people aren't content with screeching; they want to polarise society against the liberal values they detest. It's a trick they tried in the 1970s, when the hysteria reached the point where one book claimed we were about to be taken over in a coup plotted jointly by "students, Rastafarians and the IRA". Which would make for fascinating cabinet meetings: "When you're lighting that spliff, can you make sure it doesn't go near the Semtex?"

But then they had Thatcher. Now they prefer stunts such as the Countryside Alliance march, in which the Mail's role was to be the activists' guidebook. It offered special deals for travel and accommodation, kindly asking "why not make a weekend of it?". Which must be a first for the Mail, as I can't imagine they'd do that for a Stop the City demonstration, with a special offer: "Stay in one of London's most happening squats, leaving plenty of time for wrecking a statue before the demonstration. Just send £5 and coupons from the Mail."

Part of their reasoning is that they know every time they yell about something like this, New Labour bends a little more towards them. So David Blunkett is said to agree and "deplores the way the fund is spending our money". Surely any reasonable Home Secretary would announce that, after studying the accusation, all lottery funds are to go to the Project for Bringing More Asylum-Seekers through the Channel Tunnel, the Foundation for Secondary Pickets and an Advice Centre for Trainee Snipers, just to wind them up.