But the Transport Minister – who combines these duties with her political obligations as Minister for Yorkshire – should take note of the following comments.

Bus services have become so dysfunctional that many residents can no longer rely upon public transport to attend appointments at Otley's Wharfedale Hospital.

Overcrowding on the main commuter routes into Leeds is discouraging people from travelling by train.

And the 1,300 extra carriages promised by Ministers on several occasions are not required in several years hence. They are needed now, and in far greater numbers than envisaged by the Department for Transport.

These remarks, and others, were not made by a critic of the Government. They were made in Parliament by Paul Truswell, the Labour MP for Pudsey, who is increasingly concerned at how Yorkshire's future is being compromised by the continuing deficiencies in regional transport policy.

Ms Winterton should take note before she implores her opponents to stop moaning about congested roads, overcrowded trains and inadequate bus services.

Even her own MPs now acknowledge that the Government must raise its game, and it will take more than the promise of new tram-trains for one rail route – a token gesture – to silence them.



TALKING of transport, I'm glad I wasn't a passenger on the Leeds to Sheffield train that had the hapless Ruth Kelly in the driver's cab on Thursday morning.

I would have been worried if the train was about to derail – just like the Government's policies on public transport.


ROBIN Cook's Cabinet resignation five years ago – and his withering attack on the legitimacy of the Iraq war in the Commons – was rightly remembered this week.

Yet one the former Foreign Secretary's greatest achievements, apart from arranging for up-to-date copies of the Racing Post to be faxed to The Queen during her overseas visits, came in 1996 when he humiliated the then Tory government over the arms to Iraq scandal.

He digested the contents of a highly complex 1,800 page report in little more than two hours before delivering one of the great Commons speeches.

Many praised Cook's towering intellect. Yet, according to the memoirs of the former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell, there is a far simpler explanation.

Cook was "tipped off" by the inquiry's officials about "which chapters to read".

It was so typical of the man to have such inside knowledge – just like his contacts in the world of horse racing who provided the politician with so many winning tips.

Unlike we mere mortals, Cook would not be struggling to decipher the form guide at Doncaster, where the 2008 flat season begins today.



EXTRA geography lessons are the order of the day for Gordon Brown after he was on the receiving end of the Parliamentary put-down of the week from Robert Goodwill.

The Prime Minister accidentally referred to the Czech Republic as Czechoslovakia during a Commons statement on the EU, and was picked up on the mistake by the observant Scarborough and Whitby MP.

Mr Goodwill joked: "Following on from your reference to Czechoslovakia – obviously that's a far away place of which you know little – do we now have evidence that you have been receiving foreign affairs briefings from the President of the United States?"

Mr Brown said he had made it "absolutely clear" he was talking about the Czech Republic. I'm not so sure, judging by how his foreign policy has no direction.



ANNE McIntosh did herself no favours when she raised the plight of "small investors like myself" during her question to Gordon Brown on Northern Rock.

The Vale of York MP showed where the priorities of politicians lie. And her question also invited ridicule from the Prime Minister, who was able to exploit the Tory Party's indecisiveness over the bank's future, and how the Government's response was actually supporting the likes of Ms McIntosh.

It was the political own goal of the week.



THE remarks of Alfred Blunt, the then Bishop of Bradford, that precipitated the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936 after they were published by this newspaper clearly did not strike a chord with Bill Deedes, the former politician and distinguished journalist.

According to his just published biography by Stephen Robinson, Deedes referred to Blunt as "the bishop of someone or other" in a letter to his sister Frances.