PARDON me if I repeat myself, but columnists do that. The same issues keep popping up, like moles spoiling a good lawn.

Often it's to do with banning this or that. Fox hunting one crack of dawn, smacking the next. Or smoking.

I'll leave the foxes and those in ruddy-faced pursuit for another day. Enough has been said, written and shouted on that matter to turn a sane person's brain to Stilton cheese.

As for smacking, this week's Parliamentary compromise will please no one. Moves to impose a ban on smacking collapsed on Tuesday after rebels failed to win a ban. Forty-seven Labour MPs defied a three-line whip, but were defeated amid warnings that a total ban would "criminalise most parents".

Instead there will be a defence of "reasonable chastisement". So you can still hit your children - but not if doing so leaves too much of a mark. How daft is that? Perhaps a devious inventor will now produce a special parental device, the rod that leaves no bruise.

Only a bunch of lawyers/politicians/lords could come up with such a nonsense solution. As the NSPCC points out, such compromises are bad legal reforms - and worse than no reform at all, because once all the hot air has cleared, no one has a clue where they stand.

So that's it for smacking, except to point out - not for the first time, it's true - that it is wrong for an adult to hit a child. On the few occasions I was driven to use such chastisement, it felt like an abject admission of parental failure.

So that brings me back to smoking, a subject discussed here as recently as September 30. After meandering around various combustible things I had smoked many years ago, I suggested, as a total non-smoker for more or less 25 years, that it would be a good idea if a smoking ban were brought in for York pubs.

I was reminded of this on Saturday night when we nipped into the Three Legged Mare in Petergate before going to see a film at the City Screen, York.

The pint of Terrier I had was lovely but the fine liquid was spoiled by the fairly foul atmosphere. True, it was the weekend and the pub was full and happy, which is a cheerful and sustaining sight. But the smoke was awful, a choking fug that made it harder to enjoy the beer.

So a story in Tuesday's Press raised my spirits for a moment or two. The report indicated that the issue of whether smoking should be allowed in pubs was to be taken to a ballot in York. So that's good news then; isn't it?

Up to a point. But a fog surrounds this ballot, as befits the topic. The initiative is being pushed by a pressure group called Atmosphere Improves Results (AIR) - a title which, incidentally, seems to have been concocted merely to fit the acronym. This group is part-funded by the tobacco industry and is lobbying for self-regulation on smoking. So AIR is opposed to an outright ban, which seems to contract the freshness of its name.

Anita Adams, the forthright licensee of the Golden Slipper in Goodramgate, promoted the ballot, which she sees as a move against Government 'red tape' on pubs.

Here's a thing, though. Such a ballot would ask regular drinkers what they thought about smoking. That's all very well - but what about asking those non-smokers who stay away from pubs because they can't stand the stench?

An outright ban would please me, but I have no desire to be a dictator. Lots of people like to smoke, many more don't. Why doesn't an enterprising York landlord open a smoke-free pub? Or why doesn't York Brewery give over one floor of its new Stonegate pub to those who don't like smoking?

I'd raise a glass to that.

Updated: 08:41 Thursday, November 04, 2004