Anti-smokers love wasting your money

As my esteemed colleague has mentioned, the vultures are gathering.

479 of them, to be precise. Well, that was the body count as of Friday, anyway.

So, what's the cost to you, the taxpayer, of this irrelevant nonsense?

A registration fee of £375 per delegate, paid for exclusively from public funds, costs the country nigh on £180,000, without adding in travel expenses, hotels, subsistence allowance and the money squandered on hosting the whole exercise.

The wages of these tax-spongers will make you wince even more. A brief Google search suggests that we're looking at a minimum of £30,000pa.

So this conference is costing the country, at the very least, £15m. To put that into perspective, the MP expenses scandal only worked out at around £1m worth of abuse ... over a number of years. And there are still three weeks to go for more of them to claim a fully-paid jolly at your expense. Thankfully, at least the ones who have been jailed won't be there.

All in a good cause though. Let's look at those smoker prevalence figures again, shall we?

It was a roaring success in England

Smoking ban fails to curb the habit: Figures reveal men are smoking MORE

And also in Scotland.

THE smoking ban has failed to persuade Scots to pack in the habit, we can reveal.

Government figures show the numbers of smokers are about the same as when the ban was introduced in 2006.

And they say that smokers, who pay £10bn in tobacco duties per year, are a drain on the NHS? Good grief.

We're told that the country needs to make public sector cuts. How about 479 hugely wasteful burdens who could be dispensed with tomorrow without any effect on front line NHS services whatsoever?