From the BBC (follow that link because you will never find the story if you go to the main news page at http://news.bbc.co.uk):
Proposals to give automatic 18 ratings to films shown in Liverpool which feature smoking characters have been rejected by councillors.
Oh dear. With minimum pricing of alcohol being rejected in Scotland, it's been a bad few days for the puritans.
A public consultation found little support for the idea and cinema owners felt it would affect business...
73% of young people asked about the policy opposed the idea. Officials found that 65% of adults questioned also opposed the idea.
Interesting that young people are even more opposed to this hare-brained scheme than adults, particularly since Colin Eldridge claimed that it was young people who were demanding it. But then since these teenagers were effectively being asked "Shall we treat you like idiots and prevent you from seeing a whole bunch of films?" their reluctance to say 'yes' isn't so surprising.
With so little apparent public support, Liverpool's Licensing Committee will almost certainly have to abandon the idea. But don't expect to hear the last of it, as the Committee has also offered some advice to the anti-smokers:
The licensing committee advised the PCT to consider lobbying at national level, or commission further Liverpool-based research to back the idea.
An interesting choice of words, don't you think? Not "to see if the policy will be effective or popular", but "to back the idea". A pretty clear case of commissioning evidence to support a pre-ordained conclusion.
Watch this space for that 'evidence' to appear. One thing's for sure - they won't be troubling the general public for their views again.
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