Smoking Budgets
Smoking ban costs will be £100m over budget | Uk News | News | Telegraph
...new figures show that the Health Department significantly underestimated. The Department of Health estimated that the bill for the ban, that comes into force in a month's time, would run to £1.6 billion.
Initially, it set aside £1 million for "education/communication" on the law, but now admits that the total budget for advertising the ban on television, billboards and leaflets stands at £8.7 million.
It also calculated that enforcement would cost no more that £8 million. However, it has already allocated £29.5 million to local authorities to train and hire enforcement officers.
Most significantly, it estimated the implementation costs for workplaces would be "minimal".
How do think Sam Walton would react to a marketing department that budgeted £1m for advertising and then spent £8.7m (at least), the same "oh it doesn't matter, it's for people's own good" as the NHS? I thought so, that is all you need to know about how the NHS is run. And of course they also forgot about the birds - will the RSPB start a "Keep Smoking" campaign?
A quick smoke? It's good for the wings | Science | Earth | Telegraph
Birds are picking up discarded cigarette butts and using the smoke to fumigate their wings of parasites, experts said yesterday.
Rooks have been spotted swooping on to the tracks at Exeter St David's railway station in Devon and placing their wings over the smoke to collect the fumes underneath.