Can't be fagged

Well done Tower Hamlets Council. This is the sort of attention to detail that built the Empire and split the atom. The east London council wants to force smokers to stay on late (that will be after 4.30pm, then) in order to make up for time taken out of the office on smoking breaks. Not only that, if employees are late back from lunch in the pub, they will have to stay in detention, too.

Good to see innovative management practices imported from the private to the public sector. This is the sort of bean-counting that has got British manufacturing industry where it is today - timing workers' visits to the loo, banning personal phone calls at work. Surely Tower Hamlets should paint over all its windows to prevent its employees staring out of them?

Or maybe this is an even cleverer plan. Perhaps this is a real blow for openness in local government, a cunning move to outwit the secret society of nicotine-heads. Everyone knows that all the real business in local government, as in most offices, istransacted between the freemasonry of yellow-fingers in the smoke-filled smoking room or in the doorway when it is drizzling. Anything which forces these secret cabals into the open should be welcomed.