JANUARY seems to be the month for losing weight, giving up smoking and suing people who cause accidents, if television advertising is anything to go by. All three if you really want to hit the jackpot.

As to the suing, I despair. It's ruining the Scout Organisation for a start - people are becoming too afraid to volunteer as leaders in case a scout gets their mouth burnt by a hot sausage and the parents claim compensation.

I run a community group myself and I know how important it is to do proper risk assessments, but with the best will in the world things can go wrong occasionally.

Sadly, in this culture there is much talk of rights but precious little of personal responsibility, the phrase 'accidents happen' consoles no one but a lawyer.

On the subject of dieting, I feel that if I just cut out all those programmes about the morbidly obese having their stomachs stapled, which seems to be all that's on television at the moment, in between the ads for green tea and Weight Watchers, I could reduce my calorie intake at a stroke. Not being 57 stone or having as many chins as Russell Grant only makes me justify another biscuit.

No, if I could change one thing, as the Boots advert suggests, it would be to encourage people to give up smoking. Not just for their own sakes, but for all our sakes.

A total ban on smoking in pubs and clubs in England can't come soon enough for me. I applaud Tony Blair for (eventually) deciding to allow ministers a free vote when the health bill returns to the Commons soon, even if this change of heart has come about as a result of the pressure from rebel MPs and cancer charities.

Roll on the day when you can enjoy a drink in a York pub and not come out coughing. Nationally, the Wetherspoons chain is leading the way, but neither of the York ones are smoke-free yet, although they do have no-smoking areas.

As far as I'm concerned, smoking in anyone else's presence in an enclosed space is morally indefensible, unless that person is also a smoker. Sure, you have the right to poison your own system with cigarettes, but the rights of others not to breathe your toxins outweighs your claim because it's not their choice to begin with.

I can at least opt not to enter a smoky pub, but children of parents who smoke in the home or in the car get no say in the matter.

I'm reminded of the mother featured on the front page of this newspaper before Christmas, who declared that it was "her right" to smoke in front of her young child if she wanted to, after a landlord threw her out of his pub for doing precisely that.

And what of the child's right not to have its health damaged by passive smoking? Not to mention parental responsibility, which should first and foremost be to the child. Having a smoker in the house can have devastating consequences for babies and children, including a much higher risk of cot death, the exacerbation of asthma and increased tendency to developing serious respiratory conditions.

Children are particularly vulnerable because their airways are narrow and they breathe faster, taking in more fumes, but passive smoking affects us all badly. Thirty minutes is enough to affect your heart - a recent TV advert in which an entire family sit in a room together innocently inhaling someone's cigarette smoke carried the stark message that continued passive smoking increases even a non-smoker's risk of heart disease by 25 per cent.

Shockingly, 11,000 deaths a year are caused by passive smoking.

The good news is that the recent raft of anti-smoking adverts has made an impact on many adults. Following the one last year that showed fat dripping out of smokers' arteries, 10,000 people called the British Heart Foundation's smoking healthline for advice on quitting.

The bad news is that however dire the warnings and stark the adverts, a fifth of Britain's 15-year-olds are regular smokers. Some start even younger: a programme called Honey We're Killing The Kids featured a ten-year-old boy with a serious addiction to nicotine. He'd had his first cigarette when he was four. No surprise that his mother was a heavy smoker. And I thought the Harry Enfield sketch with Waynetta Slob sticking a fag in her baby's mouth was far-fetched.

I suspect children assume they're too young for their health to be affected by smoking. This isn't helped by the contradictory message put out by reality shows such as Celebrity Big Brother. You can be sure that seeing models and pop stars puffing away night after night confirms to impressionable young people that smoking is "cool", even though it clearly isn't.

All I can say is, what with all the bartering over cigarettes - to Pete Burns, apparently more necessary than food - and Dennis Rodman and George Galloway permanently champing on cigars, the passive smoking in the Big Brother house must be horrendous.

It's just a thought, but I wonder if non-smokers Tracey and Faria could sue?

Updated: 15:37 Friday, January 13, 2006