When did they have a brain transplant?

The latest suggestion to arrive on the doorstep of Government is this,

A ban on the sale of cigarettes to anyone who does not pay for a government smoking permit has been proposed by Health England, a ministerial advisory board.

A brilliant idea dreamt up by health bureacrats for the delectation of the people.

The permit might cost as little as £10, but acquiring it could be made difficult if the forms were sufficiently complex, Le Grand said last night.

His paper says: "Suppose every individual who wanted to buy tobacco had to purchase a permit. And suppose further they had to do this every year. To get a permit would involve filling out a form and supplying a photograph, as well as paying the fee. Permits would only be issued to those over 18 and evidence of age would have to be provided."

Oh I can see it now, all that lovely paperwork, and with photo ID as well. Now we must of course streamline the system. So lets have all the paperwork and photo IDs uploaded onto a national smokers database. This of course can be cross referenced to tha nice idea the government just had about the Children's database (with exam results that will never be deleted as it is designed to act as a Government approved national CV); which dovetails with the Children's Index (which due to security reasons will not carry the details of the children of celebrities and politicians, but will have all sorts of social information about parenting and propensity to commit crime - and whether you eat your greens). Then add the fingerprints that have been taken from all our children in schools. Tie that to Franco Frattini's idea of only the day before yesterday to have a complete satelitte tracking system that will track all visitors to the EU...

I love this though,

Le Grand said the proposal was an example of "libertarian paternalism". The government would leave people free to make their own decisions but it would "nudge them" in the right direction....

Oh sod it, could somebody just design a badge for me that I will wear at all times on my top garment. I am prepared to have a tatoo as well, just to get it over with.

Should Europe learn from Russia?

A correspondent points me to a rather splendid tale of how to deal with bureaucrats,

The mayor of a west Siberian oil town has ordered his bureaucrats to stop using expressions such as "I don't know" and "I can't" -- or look for another job.
Alexander Kuzmin, the 33-year-old mayor of Megion in the Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous district, has banned these and 25 other phrases as a way to make his administration more efficient, his spokeswoman said.

His approach is driven by a desire to serve his electorate,

"Town authorities are there to make town residents' lives comfortable and prosperous," Kuzmin, a oil engineer by training who studied business administration in Canada, said in a statement posted on the town's web site. "Town officials must work out mechanisms to solve and remove problems, not to avoid them."

A little bit authoritarian for my taste, but I would love to see it here.

Other phrases banned include,

It's not my job
It's impossible
I'm having lunch
There is no money
I was away/sick/on vacation
What am I supposed to do?
What can we do?
I'm not dealing with this
The working day is over
Somebody else has the documents