When roulettes is not roulette

Author: Simon Dexter

It’s quite possible that the term roulette is the most common analogy used by sub-editors striving for a catchy headline for the usually dull pieces they have to enliven.

A quick search recently brought forth an array of subjects, none of which had the slightest thing to do with casinos, roulette or indeed gambling.

Smokers play roulette with ingredients in contraband cigs

No, it’s not possible to swap your ciggies for roulette chips. This is an article from a Canadian website warning of the dangers of buying under-the-counter tobacco. Apparently insect eggs, dead flies, mould, even human faeces has been found in these illegal products. If you are a non-smoker then you are probably saying ‘serves them right’, if you are a smoker then it may alarm you a little bit. There’s a wonderful quote in this story from a Canadian mountie. “You never know what you’re smoking, people think cigarettes are cigarettes are cigarettes. That’s not true.” It turns out later in the article that the main thrust of his complaints is not about people’s health but the loss of revenue to the government. “The lost tax revenues from the sales of illegally obtained and sold cigarettes have a significant impact on our Canadian and provincial social programs and infrastructures,” he said.

Finding a cottage…without web-search roulette

Is searching the web so much like roulette? Perhaps to the inexperienced but this article from the Telegraph made little sense in relation to the headline. The writer mentioned a family-run business that provides holiday cottages in Cornwall for rent. A well-written piece though let down by the pompous phrase: “The guest book, typically the repository for whingers, was nothing short of ecstatic.”

So what about the web search roulette? “I’ll just take the odds numbered results.” Not a mention. The website address of the company the writer was talking about was given. However, if anyone doing an internet search for say “holiday cottages in Cornwall” would have found the company sitting at number 3 in the listings in the largest search engine. So much for web search roulette.

Russian roulette? No, London should be proud to be a casino

Hope at last that this could be a genuine article about casinos, roulette or at least something related to gambling. Not a chance. The topic of this high brow offering from the Business Online was the London Stock Exchange. With the recent news that some companies are withdrawing from the Aim (the junior LSE) because of a lack of regulation and monitoring, the article argued that any company should be allowed to float on this market as long as they had the money to do so. “London shouldn’t allow a business built on stolen assets and controlled by the Russian government to list, it was alleged.” - the articles says referring to the flotation of a Russian oil company last year The fact that the share price had increased seems all well and good for the writer. The fact the article had nothing to do with roulette seemed ok for the sub-editor as well.

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