PERHAPS the managers at the South Downs National Park need to get out more.

They are spending £35,000 of public money on an initiative to encourage people to be more polite to each other in the park which stretches from Winchester across to Eastbourne in East Sussex.

It included £8,000 on employing people to wave ‘Hello’ signs at visitors over the Easter weekend.

Anyone who has been in the park to ramble, cycle, walk the dog, watch nature, take photos knows that the vast majority of users are relentlessly polite and considerate.

News of the ‘Share the Path’ campaign has sparked a lot of media attention, including on page 2 of this week’s paper, with the Taxpayer’s Alliance branding it “utterly pointless and patronising” and saying that the authority has “clearly lost touch with reality.”

The facts point to two possible conclusions. One is that the national park is run by a bunch of people with too much time on their hands and so much money that the cost-cutting government will be looking very closely at their grants.

But the other, and this is more likely, is that it is all a fiendishly clever PR and marketing campaign, designed to stir controversy, that has done a great deal to raise the profile of the South Downs National Park.