Smoking snoopers

The government is spending £29.5 million training local authority enforcement officers how to police the imminent smoking ban. We are generally a law-abiding lot. We grumble, turn a few shades of purple, then get on with it. Businesses have had to create smoke-free rest rooms for a number of years and I know many smokers feel a total ban would help them give up. Since employers and pub landlords will be fined if they allow smoking, as will the smoker, this is self-policing legislation. I wonder how long it will take to recoup this money through fines they wouldn’t have had to impose had the rules been made clearer?

The need for expensive training is puzzling; presumably these officers are capable of reading the regulations? And a local authority inspector (who has powers within a workplace) does not have powers of arrest over a smoking member of the public. So, will they have to make a citizen's arrest to hold them until the police arrive? By definition, any of us can do this without the luxury of training (there is no set form of words but you must tell the person what you are doing, why and what offence you believe they are committing - while they passively submit).

This money would be better spent on more workplace inspections or catching fly-tippers, predictably increasing because of the higher costs of waste disposal.