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After years of organised, mass protest (surely someone complained?), the government has finally bowed to the overwhelming weight of public pressure and announced a brand new source of student funding - the National Robbery. Simply obtain your playslip, select your numbers, pay for your ticket and, if you are the lucky student, a supplemental grant of between £10 and £2,000,000 could be yours. At the very least, you could win the standard grant amount - nothing.
How to play the National Robbery
You can choose to play either weekly or in one lump sum. If you prefer the latter, simply send all your cash to Camelot Group plc, PO Box 287, Watford and sit back secure in the knowledge that money hasn't changed you at all. Otherwise, visit your nearest National Robbery retailer and use the provided playslips to select your lucky numbers at a measly £1 for six. Alternatively, play several times and lose even more money in one go!
How to choose your numbers
There are several methods you could (un)profitably employ:
a) Choose by instinct and sucking your pen until you die of toxic ink poisoning;
b) Choose by climbing up Pen Dinas at midnight, dancing naked around a bonfire, sacrificing a member of the CU and asking Satan to pick six digits - note that the number was chosen particularly for this reason;
c) Choose by hacking wildly at your playslip with a biro in the middle of WH Smiths, stopping when you have either vaguely struck six numbers, there is nothing left of the paper or you are arrested for causing a disturbance;
d) Choosing significant digits, such as the number of pubic hairs you had at age fourteen, the longest time in minutes you've ever made love for or your IQ. For double digit figures, you could substitute your weight or your bank balance after playing the National Robbery consistently for two months.
All of these methods have the advantage that they each produce both the same odds of winning and the same payout - sod all.
Buying your ticket
Take your playslip to the counter assistant and wait for the details to be entered into the National Robbery terminal. The National Robbery is operated by means of an ultra-high speed network of computers which is made even faster by not connecting any of these terminals to it. Each computer is able to calculate several million random numbers a second, giving the illusion that lots of people are playing.
You are responsible for checking the numbers before you leave the retailer to ensure they are the ones you selected. If they are not, you may be forced to spend several long minutes worrying whether this is a fateful accident and if the altered numbers are actually the lucky ones or merely spoilers.
How to win
Clasp your palms together, hold them to your face and say in a clear voice, "Dear [diety of your choice], please, please, please, please let me win the National Robbery. Amen. PS. I didn't mean all those things I said about my parents." Alternatively, more cunning players will wait until the winner is announced then find out where they live, hack them to bits with a meat cleaver, steal their mattress and burn their house down before fleeing to Miami and beginning a whole new life.
All winners have the option of refusing any such publicity. To do this, remember to tick the box on your ticket that says "I do not wish to appear with Noel Edmonds or Anthea Turner on Saturday night television whilst either I or they are still alive."
Allocation of prize money
The chances of winning the top prize of two million pounds have been precisely calculated by financially astute and hideously expensive private consultants as 1 in 13,983,816. There is no chance that you have been ripped off - it is a certainty. There are, however, two guaranteed big cash prize winners each week - Camelot Group plc and HM Government ltd. Five worthy causes will also receive smaller payments of patronising insignificance. In particular, the less mentally able members of our society will receive minor cash donations to encourage their attempts to lose more money on this ridiculous farce.
How to claim your prize
Don't be bloody stupid.
The National Robbery game rules
You lose, we win. Tosser.
Ade Rixon
(With thanks to Antony Espindola at UCL for the logo.)