It's never enough

The "we know best" attitude that pervades the administrative class sickens me to the soul. It was always the case that the ban on smoking in "public places", including train platforms that are completely open to the elements, was never going to be the end. So - quelle surprise - the little Hitlers are now building the siege engines for their next assault.

The new Highway Code says you shouldn't smoke at the wheel. That doesn't in itself ban it, but it gives the dumb coppers a reason to persecute drivers and it gives the spy camera industry an incentive to get to work installing driver-level cameras which will generate money by snapping people not wearing seatbelts, taking a sip of water and now smoking. As with most of these new rules, you will be guilty because they say so.

The fact that there is not a shred of evidence that smoking is the cause of accidents or bad driving is, of course, neither here nor there. The safety issue is merely the trojan horse for the anti-smoking fanatics. It is not remotely comparable to driving whilst speaking on a mobile phone. Frankly, if you can't safely smoke a cigarette while driving a car, you shouldn't be driving at all. England's slide into a tyrannical prison state continues.