Te Radar: Pepper spray about seasoning not reasoning

The problem with the Health Department forcing cigarette companies to place graphic images of smoking-related hideousness on to the sides of cigarette cartons is that the campaign of evocative education doesn't go far enough.

I long for the day when the opening of a cigarette packet activates the sound of hacking phlegm-based coughing and wheezing.

This is of course merely a supplement to the initial stage of tobacco negation, where vendors are compelled to install video booths that screen films of smoking-related illness as mandatory viewing for anyone contemplating buying tobacco.

Health Minister Damien O'Connor in supporting the concept of images on packets described it as truth in labelling. It is a shame the taxpayer-funded Labour Party election Pledge Cards didn't adhere to this philosophy.

Still, his crusade has merits. There is a plethora of perils, other than the inhalation of tobacco, which people should be forewarned about in as explicit manner as possible.

DIY TV programmes are yet again being blamed for a rise in injuries, costing the taxpayer over $20 million a year. Topping the list is falls from ladders, followed by that most dangerous of pastimes, gardening.

To save the cost of these injuries all home improvement stores should be forced to display images of injuries to deter the home handyperson.

Mandatory viewing of splintered bones protruding from ruptured flesh, cripples with colostomy bags and accidentally amputated appendages should deter errant ladder climbers, chainsaw wielders, and anyone who uses the phrase: "Whadareya? How difficult can wiring be?"

Even the National Party could use the concept, by placing a series of disturbing images at the top of their emails, deterring people from scrolling down and reading the details, before forwarding them willy-nilly to all and sundry.

Alternately Don Brash could simply check who he is ccing emails to in order to prevent them from finding their way into the inboxes of his foes, not that it seems possible to tell quite who they are.

Given the rise in anti-police sentiment caused by their various misdemeanours including their rather casual approach to pepper spraying the incapacitated, and their over-zealous issuing of traffic fines, perhaps they would be well advised to investigate imagery as deterrence.

When pulling people over for speeding, rather than issuing them with punitive fines, they could force people to immediately watch graphically uncensored videos of car accidents.

Footage of the screaming of the mutilated and bleeding must surely be effective in both modifying driving behaviour and enhancing attitudes towards the emergency services.

Even those in the police hierarchy must be finding that images of their staff pepper spraying the public is causing something of a public relations calamity. Perhaps they need to emphasise in police school that when it comes to fighting the good fight for the heart of the public, that reasoning is better than seasoning.