The way junior football is funded in Australia is why the world should be communist

It sounds like an A-level question, and it’s in that order of things

Image: in Australian rules football, players may either kick or grab the ball. But there are no sleeves on their jerseys to grab (which was obviously a problem at one time, so they got rid of them).

If you want to know what an A-level question is, you can find out here. What that article doesn’t say is that an A-level question is intended to provoke an original viewpoint based on an existing set of known facts and data. It is the reproduction of facts and data that the examinations system—at least it did when I was a boy—seeks to elicit at its ordinary (or O-) level; at the advanced (or A-) level, the goal is to draw more on the candidate’s thinking power. That’s an A-level question.

Regardless of your viewpoint on the matter of gambling, it has, across the world, seen a boom in more recent decades. Like brothels and gin joints in seemier parts of our towns, gambling was long something that everyone knew existed but, with true Victorian hypocrisy, nobody did. It has associations to the criminal underworld (and not just if it’s only operated on an entirely fair basis), but, then, so does alcohol, if we consider the Prohibition era in 1920s America (and so do bananas, for that matter, in 1920s Colombia).

As an activity that is broadly ensconsed in the realm of the adult, it has long remained one of those things you can do when you’re 18. The truth is that, in many jurisdictions, you can drive a car before you’re 18, and even found a family. Scotland, until 1991, had three stages of life: from birth to the age of 12 (for a girl) or 14 (for a boy), a child was known as a pupil (and their parents as tutors) and had no rights in contract generally. From those ages to the age of 21 (both sexes; now reduced to 16), the child was forisfamiliated and could contract for certain items (necessities, basically). Full adulthood was at the time achieved at age 21. What is interesting with the old Scottish rules is the recognition, as biological fact in a system as turgid as the law, that girls and boys mature at different rates. With the more recent emergence of transgenderism into the full beam of the political and social spotlight, I am not aware of there having been any discussion regarding that developmental difference such as used to be recognised in Scots law. This all tends to my focal question: at what age is any person ripe enough to validly decide to place a bet?