I AGREE wholeheartedly with the Government proposals to ban smoking in "private members clubs" (especially so-called Working Men's Clubs) as they are the worst offenders for harbouring stale smoke.

In the club of which I am a member, the extractor fans are a joke and pretty useless. Last Saturday night in a full concert room you could see this vast haze of smoke, you could almost cut the atmosphere with a knife.

The photograph in the Evening Press of a secretary of a working men's club says it all (February 6). Not a very good advertisement for the argument not to ban smoking. She is only one person with a cloud of smoke hovering above her head, you can just imagine what it would be like when her club is full. In your paper the following day she is there again, still smoking and still spouting the same moronic argument as the previous night.

The number of deaths from lung cancer stands at 38,000 in the past year, but that is only one aspect of smoke-related illness, there are many more. Make sure that at the next count you are not one of the statistics.

Working Men's Clubs allow the children of members on the premises. Sometimes when I enter my club it is like a crche where the parent/s sit around with their cronies blowing smoke around their offspring. It is an absolute disgrace.

Douglas Scorgie,

Hanover Court,

Hawthorne Avenue,

Haxby,

York.

Updated: 11:03 Tuesday, February 14, 2006