The usual whingers are complaining because once more the Conservative government is cutting funding from useless programs. In this instance it's the safe tattoo program in Canadian prisons.

The Conservative government is axing a safe-tattoo program for federal prisoners despite concerns the move will increase the spread of AIDS and hepatitis C.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day announced Monday that the government will not extend a pilot project offering tattoos to inmates, saying the initiative failed to improve inmate health.

"Taxpayers' dollars are something that we want to respect," Day told a news conference.

"And when you have taxpayer dollars going into something that does not work, then you shouldn't be supporting it."

Advocates of the project say safe tattooing is a wise financial and social investment because it prevents AIDS and hepatitis C, which can be contracted by using tainted needles.

Let's for a moment pretend we all live in the real world. Your neighbor's kid has been raped or murdered by some scruffy bastard who winds up - mercifully - in the Federal pen. Are you really supposed to give a damn as to who provides his tattoos while he's in the clink? Are you, as a taxpayer, expected to pay for them yourself? What kind of Wonderland madness is that?

Inmates are up to 10 times more likely to contract HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, than the general Canadian population. Their likelihood of contracting hepatitis C is about 30 times higher.

And the proponents of this tattoo program expect us to believe that prisoners are more likely to get blood and liver diseases from tattoos? Not because they are engaging in unprotected homosexual acts en masse and shooting up? Not because when they're on the outside, they are screwing a series of ho's and shooting smack?

People are in prison because they make bad choices. They should not be rewarded with taxpayer funded body art.