My nine-year-old son, who has been given Premium Bonds by a generous uncle, has just won £50 and is delighted that he has money to buy toys and games. But I worry what would happen were he to win the £1 million prize. Would it be ethical for me to use such a win to benefit us both now — by moving to a better house, say, or giving up my job so that I could be with him more?
Does it really worry you what to do, were your son to win £1 million with his Premium Bonds? You might as well worry about aliens materialising in your kitchen, cooking themselves some Pot Noodles, catching an episode of Jerry Springer on TV and wondering, “How come someone from a planet peopled by such evidently advanced life forms has never managed to travel to our galaxy?” Have you ever known anyone who has won £1 million on Premium Bonds? When the Premium Bond statisticians sit down to work out how long to make the odds of winning the jackpot, they imagine the most unlikely turn of events — a llama winning the Grand National; or Donald Rumsfeld quitting politics to become a stand-up comic; something like that — and then they make the odds four zillion times less likely than that.
But were your son to win that £1 million prize, it would be up to him what he did with it. You might persuade him that moving to a nicer house (bought in his name) would not only make life sweeter, but would also make a sturdy investment. But as for giving up your job, that’s quite an intangible investment for a young boy. When Oscar Wilde said that children begin by loving their parents, then they judge them and that rarely, if ever, do they forgive them, he wasn’t even talking about £1 million being part of the emotional equation.
FACING A DILEMMA
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