Just flicking through the local free paper, The Louth Target, and found a story that says the county of Lincolnshire spends £17m per year treating people due to the bad effects of smoking, but that £108m per year in tax revenues are brought in by smokers here. Perhaps instead of ostracizing smokers, we should be thanking them for their net contribution to the tax coffers!

I thought I'd see how much of an effect this has on local finances, and found the county's spending plan (PDF). I'm totally blown away to see that the county council spends about £680m ($1.2bn) on local services (excluding police and health) each year. For a council covering 673,500 people, that's some £1000 each to cover education, roads, flood defences, and such.