Shops caught selling cigarettes to children under 16 will be banned from selling tobacco to anyone for a year. If this is a serious government proposal, as the Daily Mirror reports, there are some changes afoot.

In 2004-05, just 117 shops were prosecuted for selling cigarettes to children under 16. Some received a conditional discharge. Others were hit with fines of up to 1,000. That's not a lot of money compared with profits on selling cigs for a year.

An ITN team covering the racist killing of Zahid Mubarek by his cellmate took cameras to Feltham Young Offender Institution. To remind viewers what a prison is like, it broadcast footage of a bunch of keys used at the jail.

Big mistake. Security was compromised by showing the keys. Feltham argued that unscrupulous viewers could make copies of the keys. So all 11,000 locks and 3,200 keys are being changed.

Feltham's governor said: "There's no risk to the young people who are being held."

That's reassuring. It would also be good to hear that the hundreds of thousands of pounds the new locks and keys will cost is to be paid for by ITN or its insurers. If it comes out of budgets designed to improve the conditions at Feltham, it will be one more injustice.

The Government's view of Positive Activities for Young People is that it provides "quality developmental sports, arts and cultural activities".

Sounds nice. But it doesn't exactly match the response when Driffield Town Council discussed community activities under the scheme for local young people.

Councillor Steve Poessl reckoned there were plenty of areas that need litter-picking. "I have noticed the grass and weeds growing through the block paving on the main street," he said. And then he suggested young people could go to Allotment Lane and clean the fencing.

"The road signs could be washed down and our town sign that you see coming into Driffield," he added. "It has algae all over it. It is a right mess."

As is councillor Poessl's grasp of Positive Activities for Young People.

Lincolnshire councillor Phil Dilks has poured scorn on the council's decision to increase youth service spending by 100,000. That brings the weekly spend to just 52p per young person.

He compares it with the 2m a year the council spends sending 350 young people to a private school in Stamford. He called it obscene and a scandal.

He thus qualifies for a "fire in the belly" award that this column gives to anyone supporting youth services. Nice one Phil.