Ken Linford 21.12.27 - 21.3.81

Today is the 25th anniversary of the death of my father, Ken Linford.

He was in the motor trade for most of his life and at the time he died was general manager of a car showroom in Hitchin, Herts where I grew up.

We didn't always have the easiest of relationships but I like to think we'd have got on a lot better once I was older, although he would probably have been horrified that his son ended up in a grubby profession like journalism instead of something fine and upstanding like architecture or the law!

I do know however that he would have been very proud of his little grandson George. Right from the moment he was born in 2004 I have caught glimpses of my dad in him, and I find it very comforting that even though he has been dead such a long time some small part of him has managed to survive.

Of my many memories of dad, the one which I perhaps treasure the most is of an evening about three months before he died when we went out for our first curry together. It was perhaps the first and only time that I felt we were able to relate to eachother as adults, and I suspect there would have many more such times had he lived.

I also pay tribute to his honesty in business, which was legendary in his field of work, and his gift for friendship.

As a mark of respect, there will be no other posts on this blog today even if Blair resigns.

Rest in peace dad.

Blair-must-go watch: Linford beats Guardian to it!

"You have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

That was my blunt message to Prime Minister Tony Blair in my columns and accompanying podcast this weekend. After months of toying with the idea of firing Cromwell's Golden Bullet in his direction, I have to confess it gave me immense satisfaction to let him have it at last!

Of course, if it was just me (and Bob Piper!) he'd ignore it - but it isn't just me and a consensus now appears to be developing across the political blogosphere that Blair will be gone by the time of the Labour Conference this autumn.

Most devastatingly of all, the Guardian has now come out and said, in a leader entitled Nine years is enough published this morning, that Blair should go this summer rather than attempt to see out a decade in Number 10.

I don't think the Grauniad has quite the monopoly on progressive/left-of-centre political thought that it thinks it has - it's a fact that this Government is far less concerned about what it thinks than it is about the Sun, for instance - but this editorial will undoubtedly be seen as a further nail in the Prime Minister's political coffin.

I'm just glad I managed to beat them to it...!

March 21 update: A Newsnight poll published last night reveals that
half the population now want Blair to go. This is, surely, the tipping point...

Farewell, Humphrey - you were a reminder of a gentler age

I was very sad to learn from the BBC this morning of the death of Humphrey the Downing Street cat.

Humphrey was a stray who was taken in to Number 10 during the last days of Margaret Thatcher and became almost synomymous with the place during John Major's time as Prime Minister.

He was unceremoniously evicted in 1997 at the behest of Cherie Blair amid all sorts of ghastly rumours she had actually had him done in.

Thankfully those rumours were untrue - but it's a shame poor old Humphrey didn't live to see the Blairs equally unceremoniously evicted from Number 10 as they doubtless will be before too long.

March 21 update: The great Michael White has now penned a full tribute to Humphrey which can be read here.