The charming Paddy Power is running a book on whether Oscar Pistorius will be convicted or not. Even if you are not a fan of signing petitions, I'd urge you to sign this one as not only is it morally wrong, if they get away with this then what next? Betting on how long someone can take torture?
http://www.change.org/petitions/patrick-...e_petition
Just seen from a friend's post on Facebook that ASA have suspended it because of the volume of complaints. And quite right too.
I can't find a reference for it, but I'm sure I've read somewhere that early on in the development of life assurance, they realised that the moral hazard created when offering policies which paid out on someone else's death was just too great, and it was made illegal, except for husband and wife. Even then there were plenty of suspicious deaths by arsenic. I've sometimes wondered if there was a similar case for making third party bets on the deaths of companies - e.g. credit default swaps - illegal.