Melvyn Helena Waheed and Ivan - to name but four - are all close by

Melvyn, Helena, Waheed and Ivan - to name but four - are all close by. And one advantage of this is that should - God forbid - there be a worsening of the transport crisis, then several of us could come to the House together in one or other of the limousines owned by the aforementioned.BTW (sorry, "by the way"), when I mentioned God just then, I have to admit that - unlike you - I cannot be classified as a believer. But I know your own feelings on the subject and want to assure you that I have a deep respect for the religious views of others, no matter how weird or founded in the crepuscular gloom of pre-civilisation they are. So I feel I could get on well with the assorted bishops, rabbis, gurus and Zoroastrian fire-holders that I am sure you will want to appoint to other seats in the reformed chamber. Some of my best friends are Jesuits.Likes and dislikes: I like cappuccino, open government and intervention in foreign countries where justified by the scale of the humanitarian crisis. I am also a passionate supporter of education, having recently been elected a school governor (the second meeting is next week), and hoping to make it on to the curriculum sub-committee.I hate spiders, racial prejudice, conservatism of all sorts (including that of the Left) and truckers. I would be quite willing, in the current crisis, to organise and lead a group of militant cyclists, who would undertake to ride very slowly in front of large lorries, tractors and pantechnicons, as a retaliation against the blockade.

And there are many more ideas where that came from, Tony!I think you can see from the foregoing that I combine commitment with experience, ideas with common sense, and an everyday practicality with the dreams of a better society, in which the old divisions are set aside and...But the word limit on the application has been reached. Should you wish to take up references, they can be obtained from Frank Dobson MP (currently on retreat on Iona), Jimmy Somerville and Sir Alan Sugar.BFN David.. The current fuel confrontation is rich in ironies. Many of the very same people who screamed foul at French fishermen and farmers who held up British tourists and hauliers, regard their British counterparts as heroes (In some cases they are the counterparts). Meanwhile, at the TUC, leaders of unions that cheerfully held a previous Labour government to ransom, magisterially demand tough action against these wreckers of the economy The current fuel confrontation is rich in ironies. Many of the very same people who screamed foul at French fishermen and farmers who held up British tourists and hauliers, regard their British counterparts as heroes (In some cases they are the counterparts).

Meanwhile, at the TUC, leaders of unions that cheerfully held a previous Labour government to ransom, magisterially demand tough action against these wreckers of the economy. In fact, these ironies go to the very heart of the present crisis It is actually two crises One concerns the immediate threat to fuel supplies. Here, Tony Blair has now shown real leadership - and courage - by gambling on getting the tankers moving again The progress has been slower than ministers would like But he was right to intervene. The other problem is what to do about fuel tax.Empty pumps first. Much has been made of Labour's need to exorcise the ghosts of the 1978-9 Winter of Discontent. Yet, odd as it may seem, the more potent resonance is that of the 1984-5 miners' strike, which marked a decisive shift in government handling of industrial conflict. This applied as much to policing as to Margaret Thatcher's determination to prevent the National Coal Board from settling on anything like Arthur Scargill's terms.Hitherto, the police had largely seen their role as being to keep the peace and not to take sides between the parties involved. But Baroness Thatcher was, in her own words, "determined that there would be no surrender to the mob and the right to go to work would be upheld".

A task to which the police were rapidly - and, not least because of Scargill's obdurate refusal to hold a strike ballot, rightly - suborned.There are signs that until the first meeting on Monday of the Jack Straw-chaired Civil Contingencies Committee, on which the Association of Chief Police Officers is represented, some individual police forces had similarly interpreted their primary role as keepers of the peace. They began to get the message that ministers wanted to get the oil moving and the forces of the state would be deployed where necessary to ensure that it did.This comparison, of course, is outrageous to the armchair blockaders in the - largely - Tory papers. The writer Frederick Forsyth, for instance, just can't handle it. Strikers, when they existed, were, to a man, both "schooled and drilled by hard-left fanatics, apostles of the Soviet paradise" and "entirely out for "self". (Er, which is it, Frederick?) By contrast, blockading farmers, hauliers, small - and not so small - businessmen are, by definition, horny-handed, salt-of-the- earth, selfless patriots who have only the true interests of the British economy at heart.And for Kevin Morris, the President-elect of the Police Superintendents' Association (a 2.8-litre BMW Z3 driver who all too understandably thinks that petrol prices are too high) says the use of the tactics applied against striking miners would be "appalling", that there is a "huge groundswell" against fuel costs, and that "now, because someone is doing something about it, it's suddenly down to us to solve the problem".Unfortunately, that's democracy.

It is true that the miners - "lions led by donkeys" - were dragooned into a deeply anti-democratic and - in the end - self-destructive strike by their Marxist leader Arthur Scargill. But no-one who actually observed that tragic, year-long confrontation at close quarters recognises the Forsyth-Morris caricature in most of the individuals caught up in it.Policemen rooted in pit communities didn't much care for their role in the miners' strike either, however necessary it was. For now, it looks unlikely that the kind of strongarm tactics required against the miners will be necessary. But that doesn't alter the fact - admitted by BP at the highest level - that there has been real intimidation of individual tanker drivers by protesters at some terminals and refineries.The Scotland Office minister, Brian Wilson, said yesterday that BP had told him that drivers were in "real fear of reprisals".