LET the work of change begin.'' Indeed.

It's a clunking phrase from the Prime Minster credited by his predecessor with possession of a clunking fist. But not a bad idea at all.

Here's a few changes I commend to Mr Brown, without any confidence they will be taken up.

1. Restore the link between the state pension and earnings immediately, setting the pension at two thirds of average earnings. Giving all our people security in old age is of paramount importance.

2. Get Britain working with a serious crackdown on benefit fiddling - if necessary wiping the slate clean and starting again. If we are to compete successfully and enjoy benefits like a decent pension, everyone capable of work must work - and diligently. What sadder comment on the current state of Britain could there be than the revelation that the number of sick days taken during this year's washout June fell by 17 per cent? Or that the Civil Service is trialling "duvet days", which legitimise absenteeism?

3 . Ensure taxes are fair - and levelled at all who should pay. That bosses earning millions with private equity companies pay less tax than their cleaners is utterly indefensible. Mr Brown should call their bluff to move elsewhere rather than pay more tax. And let them go if they act on their threat.

4 . Lift whole communities from fear by much tougher sentencing on thugs and anti-social yobs.

Reduce road deaths from reckless driving, including the heavy toll among young drivers and their passengers, by a judicious mixture of prison and (probably a greater deterrent) long driving bans.

5. Hold a referendum on Europe. Mr Brown's refusal to do this contradicts his promise to listen to the people. Like Tony Blair, he treats us as cretins by insisting that the new European "Reform"

Treaty is not the constitution rejected by voters in France and Holland, though other European leaders loudly proclaim it as such.

6. Improve confidence in Parliament by a) banning MPs from holding outside jobs and reducing their number; b) requiring a by-election to be held when an MP defects: people vote for a party rather than a person, and c) address the West Lothian question - the unfairness that allows Scottish MPs to vote on English affairs. As a Prime Minister whose domestic policies have no bearing in his own (Scottish) constituency, Mr Brown embodies this issue in spades.

But, of course, Mr Brown has already firmly ruled out English votes for English laws. Early evidence is that our "listening" PM is deaf.

M EANWHILE... Mr Brown's promise to fulfil the motto of his High School, "I will try my utmost", has sparked a spate of recollections of school mottoes. I remember two from my primary school, which changed its motto annually: "Be a Brick", and "Pluck Not Luck". The Victorian ethos lingered into the late Forties.

I N one of his last utterances before leaving office, Tony Blair said that the North-East rejected regional government because "Durham didn't want to be run from Newcastle, and Teesside didn't feel the required link with Tyneside". Well, Teesside is right to be cautious of Tyneside. I recently received two letters from the Newcastle Building Society, each signed by a different executive.

Both misspelt my postal town "Middlesborough".