Ten grand - the cost of iPhone-induced sobriety

The NHS spent ten thousand pounds developing the mobile version of its sobriety-inducing application, Drinks Tracker for iTunes.

The application is part of the government's seasonal campaign to get us to drink less - on which they have already spent £9 million of our cash - but it took a Freedom of Information request to break out the mobile application details.

The response bundles the cost with other mobile versions, and points out that 35,000 people have downloaded the app, before admitting that it cost ten grand to develop. That's not an unreasonable sum, assuming you accept that we need an iPhone application to cut down binge drinking.

The application, which we covered last month, asks the user how much they've had to drink, and expects them to enter the alcoholic content of their drinks - something we suggested might be beyond the wit of the average inebriated iPhone user.

But even worse is the desktop application, which we installed in the interests of research and has been greeting us every morning with questions about how much we've drunk the previous night - a bit like a nagging partner only without the benefits. ®