DON'T blame me. I didn't vote for them. I didn't vote for this spineless, gormless, joyless, clueless Government. I didn't endorse its fearful, pitiful manifesto nor give a mandate to its tedious, obsequious ministers. Just wanted to make that clear.

New Labour's priorities send me into a rage. This is a party with another huge majority; with enough money and power to transform society. Tony Blair spent the last parliament telling us about his radical intentions one minute, and dampening down expectations the next.

Listen, says Tony later, finally sensing the nation's disaffection: when you give us the historic second term, that's when we will deliver. Promise.

Now you've given it to him (not me, remember: I voted for another rabble). And what does he do? Target incapacity claimants.

Just like 1997. Within months of taking office, New Labour set its sights on lone parent benefits, prompting the Government's worst back bench rebellion. Mind you, only 65 MPs had the guts to stand up for single mums in front of the Prime Minister and his bully boys. Shame on the rest.

Mr Blair later admitted he had made a mistake on that issue. He learns from his mistakes. He learns how to make them bigger and more spectacular.

So it is that the Blair Government's major priority is to go after the incapacitated to save a few quid here and there. And yet, it has no intention of stopping boardroom directors helping themselves to millions of pounds, sometimes at tax-payers' expense.

Only days after the PM defended the welfare reforms, it emerged that Railtrack's chief executive Steve Marshall was getting a 12.5 per cent pay rise. That followed the £1 million "golden goodbye" to his predecessor Gerald Corbett, and whacking bonuses to other directors.

Mr Marshall has since cancelled his executive and bonus options, worth about £400,000. Which is better than shamelessly pocketing the lot, although he is still much better off than a whole hospital ward of disabled claimants.

If this Government believed its own rhetoric, it would have done the right and radical thing and brought back Railtrack into public hands. The company only survives thanks to a gigantic State subsidy, out of which will come the big bonuses to the directors.

But, instead, ministers choose to scare the living daylights out of the sick and the vulnerable.

Mr Blair's election victory speech talked of allying ambition with "comp-assion, decency and obligation to others less fortunate". Since then, he has helped himself to a £47,000 pay rise, made further threatening noises about defendants' legal rights and targeted the disabled. It makes my stomach somersault.

Meanwhile, the York Barbican Centre has been put up for sale. At least New Labour is consistent, putting profit before people at each level of government. Who knows, perhaps this is part of a pattern. Step one, remove incapacity benefit. Step two, sell off the municipal pools and health centres so those claiming incapacity benefit can no longer afford fitness therapy. Step three, clamp their wheelchairs.

Oh no - I hope I haven't given Mr Blair an idea.

EVEN in a cycling city such as York, pedal-power can be a perilous pursuit. Yesterday, two cyclists told how they were knocked off their bikes by cars at that dodgy junction between Fulford Road and Cemetery Road in York.

But even if you stick to the cycle paths you are not necessarily safe. A Transit van once took a short cut across the city's motor-free Millennium Bridge. And motorbikes are supposedly still whizzing across it, although there is no sign of them on the CCTV cameras (another great victory for this crime-busting invention).

At this rate, the only safe place to cycle will be the footstreets. And then all those flippin' pedestrians get in the way.