If Gordon wants NHS savings, here are a few examples which won't threaten 'frontline services'

Look at the savings you could make, Gordon.

HOSPITAL bosses have performed an amazing U-turn on Great Western Hospital’s no smoking policy – all in the name of staff safety.

It's a policy now, not a ban.

That could be because Freedom2Choose pointed out to all NHS trusts in the country that their bans were nothing of the sort. The Health Act 2006 contained no provision whatsoever for banning smoking in the open air, and for a very good reason. Even by the hysterical standards of the anti-tobacco dullards, there is not even a germination of an inkling of an idea that outdoor smoking is remotely dangerous. The presence of cars on the roads where smokers are herded would tend to show that notion up as quite laughable.

We are talking about rather backward lunatics here, though, so I suppose some slack must be cut for their cerebral inadequacy.

Of course, any purported 'ban' is nothing of the sort as it is entirely unenforceable in law.

It is the quite giggleworthy 'voluntary ban'. Something that you aren't allowed to do ... except that you are. By law.

You see, these people are consumed with hatred for smokers. They don't care as we are deemed de-normal. We are outcasts and a danger to polite society (except for their friends though as, just like the most digusting of racists, they will all say that they have a 'smoking friend', who quite agrees, to exempt themselves from being single-mindedly hateful bigots).

Oh, I see. You think I'm exaggerating here, yes? Well, not really seeing as they don't seem to be able to distinguish between normal people enjoying a legal product and an unsightly outbreak of cockroach infestation.

Mr Bagnall confessed that feedback from visitors also suggests that the sight of smokers at GWH’s entrance is damaging the hospital’s reputation.

He said: “Naturally we are concerned about how people outside of GWH perceive the hospital and with little else outside the main entrance other than a group of smokers, it doesn’t give the right impression.”

The BNP would argue that a few 'pakis' hanging around their town is 'giving the wrong impression' too. The fact that Bagnall is insulting his staff and his patients by even entertaining such baseless complaints is quite telling.

And Bagnall, haven't you got better things to be busying yourself with on our taxes than this? I dunno, I just thought that the people who are dying from MRSA, C-diff and appalling healthcare might be more deserving of your time than the views of a few anonymous, prejudiced cranks. Just a thought.

Still, at least this hospital have decided that allowing smokers to die is a bit too far, unlike other 'health professionals' I could mention.

But with more staff trekking out to the outskirts of the site at all hours to get their nicotine fix, Carillion managers are concerned that it might not just be their health they are putting at risk.

Mark Bagnall, Carillion’s director of estates and facilities management, said: “Anecdotally we have heard that Wiltshire police have approached staff standing alongside the road and asked them to move further back onto the hospital site for safety reasons.

“We are, of course, constantly reviewing staff and patient safety and don’t want anyone being put at risk from passing vehicles”

So the ban which wasn't a ban is being relaxed, but only in somewhere a long hike away from the rest of those nice, civilised, non-smokers.

“For this reason we have decided to re-erect two smoking shelters toward the boundary area of the hospital site,” he said.

And it still isn't law that you have to restrict yourself to them. Remember that. So therefore no need for smoking wardens.

Don't be silly.

... hospital management is looking into possible adjustments to the roles of its two smoking officers who monitor smokers on site.

Here's a suggestion of an adjustment you could make, Bagnall. How about making them redundant? It won't cost much, they've been around so briefly that it's no more than a week's wages according to redundancy rules. I mean, what else are they going to do? Walk around the grounds pretending to be Bodie and Doyle?

We are in a recession, remember, and money in the public sector must be squeezed, or did you not notice as you were spunking our taxes up the wall of the out patients block?

You want savings in the health service, Gordon? You could start with handing P45s to two irrelevant smoking wardens, and times that by the number of hospitals which still cling to this illegal restriction of perfectly normal activity.

If you could see your way to cutting spending £43m pa on adverts that no-one is interested in watching too, you might start on the long road to being welcomed back by 22% of the voting population as well.

Or you could continue being a dangerous national laughing stock and upcoming general election also-ran. Your choice.