MANY people choose the same numbers every week to play the Lottery, superstiously refusing to risk a change.

And they will be very tempted to have a flutter on the midweek game with these "lucky" numbers. They will not want to chance their numbers coming up without their having bought a ticket.

Yesterday's People newspaper made an excellent proposal which would mean that people would not be coerced into playing twice if they did not choose to, or could not really afford to take part.

Change the midweek Lottery numbers from 51 to 99 so that there is no possibility of the Saturday numbers coming up during the week, the newspaper suggested.

It's a simple solution which could easily be implemented and would remove any suggestion that Camelot and the Government are motivated mainly by greed rather than giving people a real choice of when to play.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.