Where there's smoke there's a bonfire

Just saw a snippet on the latest wheeze (geddit?) from our initiative-obsessed government.

Seems that, in the name of 'awareness', more money is being stuffed into a bit of a programme, plus attendant PR, to create squads of folk who will approach street smokers to offer to help them onto the path of righteousness.

Now, I am no fan of smoking, but now it's out in the open and not hurting me or mine I can pretty much leave smokers to do to themselves what they will, and leave to them the consequences, as no one can be unaware of what they might be. Frankly miserable, huddled types outside public buildings is about as good as it gets as a negative ad, to my mind.

Hence the money devoted to this latest brief flare of publicity designed to get a Labour Minister on the telly might be better assigned to DO something.

Of course, it took an inevitable twofer reactionary in the form of one Rod Liddle to undermine and hence highlight the vacuousness of this effort by leaving the Minister stuttering (and, possibly lying, as a 'fact' was disputed but not confirmed/denied by the moderators...again) when confronted with the 'claim' that the authority vanguarding this was listed as the worst for health delivery, and maybe sorting that out first may be a plan.