Mechanic To Millionaire

It's the fourth-biggest sum a UK EuroMillions winner has ever won. Among the first things he does? Phones his ex of course. But she's not the only one Neil Trotter is gloating too having scooped the jackpot from £10 worth of lucky dip tickets he bought in Londis on Friday.

First thing I'd do with that kind of money is keep my trap stitched but Trotter maintains he needed to go public in order to 'stay the same person'. And true to his word, the British Touring Car fanatic is planning to buy the first of many McLarens.

A promising amateur racer himself, how will this extraordinary turn of good fortune affect Neil's ability
to achieve his life goals? Of course (I know what you're tapping furiously into the comments), there is no reason to pick apart Neil's dreams specifically but it will be interesting to see how this story progresses and, more broadly, examine whether the things we are supposed to aspire to as a society will really make us happy.

This is something I have pondered for a while but of course it requires a platform to work from. A case study like Trotter is a good starting point for such a venture as The Lottery is perhaps the most definite symbol of our subconscious slavery to consumerism. In the case of The EuroMillions in particular, an entire continent is told that you will be the lucky one when the chances of winning are so utterly minute that tickets must be worth less than the paper they're printed on. Yet that dream of financial freedom is enough that we hand over a comparatively significant proportion of our income, justifying the decision with extraordinarily unrealistic reasoning.

In order to work out whether the aspirations which are sold to us as a collective could ever make us happy, a network of case studies needs to be established. These will no doubt become apparent over the course of this blog and so too will several possible conclusions so I'm quite happy to let this run its course as and when the right stories pop up like a Whack-A-Noel. I hope you'll stick around as I continue to post - after all, being the deviant that I am, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure this blog makes no sense unless you do :p Meanwhile I'll keep try to write, film and generally document in as many mediums as possible, some truly riveting posts which will keep you coming back for more.

I'm fully aware that 'blogging' isn't really a thing anymore. Everything needs a gimmick nowadays but

to me that's all part of the challenge. There's something very real about posting like this. A blog doesn't demand criteria from your posts, sneering if you have something of depth to say, sending your supposedly private message to everyone or deleting your post after 10 seconds then making sure it can still be saved without your knowledge for every perv on the web.

No, a blog simply gives you the tools then lets the free market decide. Well, unfortunately for you, my blog is so great that I've already decided for you - see you tomorrow, you poor sod.