I don't want to get into the whole 'No Smoking' debate except to say that those people who do smoke have been admirably restrained in their acceptance of the legislation that comes into force on 1st July this year.

I was half expecting a backlash along the lines of "We are the new Muslims" or "Smokers are the Niggers of the Free World," but they have gathered together in their groups of two or three and peacefully acknowledged their expulsion from polite society with good grace. Mind you, quite where that leaves the rest of us who have been residing in polite society for a number of years is another question. I detest smoking, the smell in the air, the stench it brings to people's clothes, cars etc - and ingrained smell that no amount of air fresheners of Fabrezing can remove, that doesn't mean I'm opposed to people smoking if they want to.

There is a serious health issue here that needs to be addressed - children.

Unless parents who smoke have the decency or good sense to leave the house and smoke in their back gardens they will be subjecting their children to secondary smoking whereas before it is quite possible they only smoked 'socially' - i.e down the pub.

The inevitable endgame of all this is of course the complete banning of smoking in all places, public, private, in your shed with your stained copies of Razzle (I know what you smokers get up to down the end of the garden). And then there will be a huge whole in the national budget where the taxes raised on tobacco sales used to be, ah but there will also be a huge whole in the NHS budget where the cost of treating smoking related diseases used to be. It's a ying and yang kind of debate isn't it - good karma v bad karma.

Another facet of the July legislation is the appointment, at a reputed cost of £30 million, of a smokers Gestapo - a crack team who can sniff out, at one hundred paces, the merest whiff of a Marlboro, a hint of a Hamlet, or the aroma of a Rothmans. Why bother? Why not set-up an 0800 SmokeStoppers Line similar to the successful CrimeStoppers line and award a £100 reward for every call that leads to a successful conviction under the new rules.

Come on, we English love snooping, we invented the modern spy and more than half of all HMRC investigations are started by a phone call from a disaffected spouse or nosey neighbour. There aren't enough pubs and clubs and restaurants left in England and Wales to spy on that would use up a budget of £30 million. With the advent of camera phones evidence would be gathered easily and silently and prosecutions could take place at special weekend courts.

Keep 'em peeled and give Shaw Taylor a call

Alternatively we could all be left to get on with our lives as adults and police ourselves - now there's a radical thought for the 21st Century.