A million just ain't what it used to be. In fact, a million dollars is a mere 820,237.40 euro.
In days of yore when I was a nipper, and Tina Turner was singing Private Dancer a million dollars meant a lavish lifestyle of swimming pools, private jets and lambos. These days it’d not even get me this four bed semi-detached in a desirable, but not too desirable, Dublin suburb.
When my brother and I ran a legal services business many moons ago, we used to give employment to ex-heroin addicts who’d gone through the rehabilitation programme. The trouble was they still had to live in the same drug-ridden areas of the city where they became addicted in the first place, so the relapse rate was high.
What I would buy with my million tomorrow is this:
It comes with a student accommodation block at back of main house with 80 bedrooms. I’d turn a portion of it into a luxury hotel/retreat/health farm which would finance the other part accommodating homeless and recovering addicts. We would grow veg to provide organic food for the hotel and employment for the residents and perhaps have an alpaca sanctuary;)......... "An' live off the fatta the lan' an' have rabbits."
We are in the short term accommodation business so marketing wouldn't be a problem. Redefining decadence as philanthropy….Two for the price of One…. Give an addict a hand while we wait on you hand and foot....Stay with us and you’re directly financing a roof over the head of one less fortunate.....
You don’t tell them the drug addicts are actually on site until after they book;)
I believe that there are inexpensive solutions to many of our social problems but simply no will by the authorities to implement them. People solve problems, governments simply hinder them doing so.
Just one example is a homeless group who took over an empty (publicly owned) office block here in Dublin a couple of years ago and housed the city’s homeless with donations from just about every business in town; food, personal hygiene supplies, beds, computers, showers. You name it; it was donated. But of course government intervened, the courts evicted them, and they were back on the street as quickly as you could say taxation is theft, leaving the building standing empty to this day.
I must confess that solving the city's homeless/heroin addiction problem is a longstanding plan of mine and my brother's, and we still haven't given up on financing it ourselves, lottery win or not.
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I nominate 
