Up to £29.5m of tax payers money is to be used to pay the salaries of undercover council officers to police the smoking ban when it is introduced in July . The Officers are empowered to covertly photograph and film those who light up in public. They can also issue on the spot fines of £50.  Up to 1,200 officers are expected to be trained in the coming months. 

and once upon a time Vulgaria was a fictional land.............. 

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Nice to see the government spend this money on criminalizing smokers while gun crime is escalating. Four youths shot dead in London in two weeks!!!

When the smoking ban was introduced in Ireland we were threatened with the same. I cannot remember or recall one prosecution under this law in the 4 years this law has been in force in Ireland. A couple of pubs in Galway and Cork removed the ban from their premises as a protest and found no increase in trade, even more bizarre these pubs were highlighted on the news and still no enforcement officer turned up.

If they are going to be taking your picture and or video, can you say that they are infringing you human rights?

Look, as a smoker , this is one of the best laws to be ever passed, and no doubt over the next number of weeks/months all sort of really annoying s##t will be reported and said, but once the ban is introduced it'll be all forgotten.

There is one down side to the ban, if you frequent busy pubs and someone leaves one go, the smell is worse than smoke. Perhaps the undercover officers could photograph those people and throw them up on flickr?, now that would be good use of taxpayers money.

Sorry I hit the return button on the above comment before I finished.

Anyway, I was wondering, how does one apply for one of these jobs?, is there special skills needed to be an officer? e.g ability to recognise fire. How come these jobs never get advertised? it really annoys me when a job comes along, you like the look of it, but they never advertise it.

 

Using the figures in your blog that would mean that the average official would earn £24,583 pa. and as they are civil servants will get mileage and probably unsocial hours premium. No wonder these jobs are never advertised.

Does anyone know who much a policeman/nurse/fireman ot teacher earn in a year?. It would be a good compare.

Would a petition similar to the road usage toll grab these morons attention?

This is incredible, I'm not really annoyed I'm fuming.

If they are going to work undercover does this mean that they will have to blend into the surroundings? I would imagine standing in the spot where the cigerette machine was with a telephoto lense is'nt decreet, so I can only assume that they will have a few pints whilst watching for "ban breakers". So not only will they get a salary of £25k they'll have expenses also.

I support the ban, and I also support the call for a petition to ban the officers.

Superb website.....

I suppose they will also receive "incentives" for the amount of money they collect, coupled with "responsibility premium" for carrying cash.

I visit Ireland quiet a bit and have never seen anyone smoking in the pubs, its self policed, and most people in Ireland never thought that it would work, but it does. Why do I have to pay for this shite?

I agree a petition would get attention.

I am also in favour of the ban.

Just to let you know that the ban is self policing in Ireland, you would be shunned and ridiculed if you lit up in a pub. Indeed many pubs will bar you immediately if you light up.I thought I read or heard that the officers that were employed to enforce the ban have now being "re-assigned" to other duties.

On the point of the perception that it would not work, this is true also and some bookies were giving very short odds on how long it would last, but last it has.

Again its a great law, and fun, as you need to go out for a smoke you meet all sorts of people.

I cannot see why you need 1200 undercover officers.