Switching on to the Rovers

THERE are few places in England further away from Blackburn than Broadstairs in Kent, yet here I am on a visit to a local firm "Decorative Additions", and they have wisely decided to present me with a "Blackburn Rovers decorative light switch cover".

I've been wanting one of those for a long time. Now my desire is about to be satisfied.

The trip to Broadstairs is part of the campaign for the European and local elections. In the North West, where we have an all-postal ballot, we are now into an elongated polling day.

But in the country south of a line from Rutland to Runcorn polling day will be as normal next Thursday, 10 June.

Aside from the obvious importance of this firm in making Rovers' memorabilia (at least for me), I'm visiting the company because it's start-up has been assisted by European Union funding.

So that's Wednesday. Today's it's Bristol. But in between times it's been a rather familiar beat of negotiating a new United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq.

This resolution really is important. Its aim is to endorse the proper transfer of sovereignty from the coalition to the people of Iraq.

In terms of time, the negotiation of resolutions is rather like an iceberg. You only see about 10 per cent of the effort.

We began discussion on this resolution three weeks ago at the "G8" Foreign Ministers' meeting in Washington. There US Secretary of State Colin Powell and I outlined our thinking on the resolution to colleagues like Joschka Fischer, Michel Barnier, Sergei Lavrov - German, French and Russian Foreign Ministers respectively. Since then, we have worked carefully on the drafts, on each occasion putting them back to Security Council colleagues. So my Spring Bank Holiday Monday was punctuated by calls to the Chinese and Pakistani Foreign Ministers.

Whilst we have been drafting the resolution, the UN Special Representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, has been in active consultations to decide who to nominate as President, Prime Minister, and to the other key posts in the Iraqi Interim Government. The plan then is for an elected "Transitional Government" to take over, and for this to supervise the drawing up of a permanent Constitution for Iraq.

I'm now on the train back to London, complete with my two Rovers light switch covers. Very dainty they are. As I told the company, I'm glad I was given two - one for my son, one for my daughter. The covers are only samples, I was told, though the firm make the real thing for some of our competition in the Premiership.

In the town of Deal, not far from Broadstairs, I did an open-air meeting. It was similar, obviously to those I do regularly in the centre of Blackburn, but not quite the same. A bit like other town's football teams I guess. Blackburn's just got the edge on other places.