At least the Queen doesn't lecture us

It's interesting to note that the never-ending supply of public money is being liberally tapped by those who seem to believe they know better than the public how to spend it.

Health officials to spend £30 million on Twitter and Facebook marketing campaign

Health officials could spend up to £30 million on advertising campaigns that will include networking on Twitter and Facebook, prompting criticism that the money could be better used in frontline services.

The budget, which will be spent over three years, has been set aside by the NHS in the North West.

It will help 50 organisations raise public awareness on such issues as healthy eating, the dangers of alcohol, and sexual health.

Up to eight public relations companies are being hired to devise suitable campaigns.

We have MRSA and C.Diff in our hospitals, there is a huge shortage in nursing staff according to the Nursing Times, yet this is considered a good way of spunking our money up the wall utlising public funds.

Not that there will be much value gained from such knob-jockey initiatives, of course, just a bit more righteous back-slapping in the offices of NHS admin clock-watchers the length and breadth of the country. Oh, and can we have a big pay rise and a taxpayer-funded party at Christmas too?

Strangely enough, this story came but a day after an insightful lad pointed out to the business world that Twitter was a bit of an irrelevance to youngsters, the health lobby's usual preferred reasoning for dicking our taxes on hare-brained schemes.

Twitter is for old people, work experience whiz-kid tells bankers

Today he is the talk of Tokyo, Wall Street and the City. Fund managers, CEOs and analysts are poring over his report, How Teenagers Consume Media, which he wrote last week while on work experience at Morgan Stanley.

In it he laid out the world according to the teenager: a confusing place where the PC is a radio, the games console is a telephone, the mobile telephone is a stereo and text-message machine, the DVDs are pirate copies and no one uses Twitter.

As for Facebook, the NHS office dickwads seem to have blithely ignored health concerns about the medium, in their drive to convince us that their daily dalliances on networking sites, at our expense, are somehow health-related.

Facebook is to blame for 'friendship addiction' and is fuelling insecurity in users

and ...

'Social Networking Sites Pose Health Risk'

Still, it's only a small amount of wasted funds, as highlighted by the unnamed NHS apologist.

It works out at around £150,000 per year, per organisation, which is around £1.07 per year per head of population.

Why, that's OK then. Just over a quid each for an initiative which will do fuck all for anyone but those who gain out of working out ways to divert attention to their being paid to flick rubber bands at each other at our expense.

By the same token, that makes the Royal Family quite cheap at only 69p per taxpayer, considering the Queen and the palaces we pay for have a distinct benefit in attracting tourism.

The Queen and the Royal Family cost the taxpayer 69p per person last year - an increase of 3p, Buckingham Palace accounts showed today.

The total cost of keeping the monarchy increased by £1.5 million to £41.5 million during the 2008-09 financial year.

Doing the maths, it works out that a bunch of thumb-twiddling overheads cost us each 9p less, with no corresponding income stream to compensate for their draining the health service of badly-needed frontline funds.

And the Queen keeps her nose out of our personal choices too, God bless her Union Flag embroidered socks.

The health service forgetting its remit to cure us first and foremost, and to keep the hell out of wasteful and judgemental idiocy? I should coco.