FOLLOWING his so-called re-election "landslide" - in reality a slight slippage towards his Tory opponents - Tony Blair, this time, did not pose with the party's women MPs for a picture of the successors to the "Blair Babes" of the last Parliament.

His decision not to highlight Labour's women MPs could be because their number fell from 101 to 88. But a more compelling reason might be that they are a poor lot, lacking the talent needed for the Government's now urgent mission to "deliver".

At any rate, that is probably Tony Blair's view. For not one of the 88 has been considered suitable to hold the job for which any of them might be thought to be eminently fitted - Minister for Women. The Prime Minister has awarded that role to his political secretary, Sally Morgan.

On Blair's staff not as a civil servant, but an employee of the Labour Party, Ms Morgan has joined the Government as a Minister of State in John Prescott's Cabinet Office. Blair vaulted her in by the simple expedient of making her a life peer.

The appointment of Lady Morgan, as we should now call her, brings into sharp relief the question I raised a week or two ago - should we be governed by anyone not elected to the task?

Obviously, as long as the House of Lords exists, it must contain Government spokesmen (and women). But should the Lords be where one finds, for example, the Minister for the Arts (Baroness Blackstone), the Minister responsible for asylum, a particularly hot issue (former MP now Lord "Jeff" Rooker), the Minister for Trade (Baroness Symons), or the Minister for Housing and Planning (ex Dome mis-handler Lord Falconer, a former flatmate of Tony Blair).

Apart from Lord Rooker, none of these has ever faced the voters. Their share in rule over us comes entirely through Blair's patronage. And yet, in response to the Gothenburg riots, Tony Blair's vital charge was: "These people are not democratically elected." The same is true of much of his Government.

AND now - Tony Blair's salary hike. No one can begrudge him taking his due amount after his self-imposed underpayment throughout four hard-working years. But one wonders to what extent his decision was prompted less by the rise of £47,000, lifting his salary to £163,418, than a wish to secure the optimum pension after what will probably be his final term as PM.

Amounting to half his salary, his pension, non-contributory and index-linked, will yield £81,709-a-year. Because it is non-contributory, the cost, £2.1m, is borne by the taxpayer. And, of course, there are similar pensions for Government ministers.

A pensions' industry expert has calculated that, to produce merely the extra £23,500 to be collected in pension by Tony Blair will require £600,000 of taxpayers' money. As he says: "Index-linking is a very valuable but quite expensive feature that the average person may have trouble affording." Is it not strange that the pensions of our top-salaried figures are paid for by people who earn less and receive much lower pensions?

FOOT and mouth. Perceiving an apparent chink in my latest pro-vaccination piece, a countrywoman buttonholed me and said: "There are many types of foot-and-mouth. We can't be certain vaccination would work." Well, last November vaccination was used in the South African province of Kwazulu-Natal against the same type of foot-and-mouth that is now plaguing Britain. No further case has appeared.

A LIGHTER note. How come Homer Simpson is credited in the on-line Oxford English Dictionary with inventing "doh", meaning the penny has dropped on something blindingly obvious? Long ago on Crackerjack (I trust I hear you shouting it back), Peter Glaze regularly spluttered "doh" to mean "stupid me". In a fond tribute to him before the Simpsons emerged, Terry Jones, of Monty Python, observed: "I haven't heard a good "doh" for years.''

Published: 20/06/2001