TO Tony Blair it is "a good basis for future work'' - i.e. he doesn't like it but daren't say so.

To Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, it is "a gigantic step forward, enabling Europe to play its role on the world stage.''

The subject of these divergent views is the draft European Union constitution. Engaged on that most fundamental of government tasks - hoodwinking the people - Tony Blair and his Cabinet lapdogs present the constitution as just a spot of tidying up. A European superstate? Forget it.

"There is no way,'' thunders our PM, "that Britain is going to give up our independent sovereign right to determine our tax policy, our foreign policy, our defence policy, our own borders. So there's no way we would agree to put any of that at risk.''

The clear inference is that we will allow other matters to be put at risk. Which will save some hassle since the draft constitution bans national parliaments from legislating in a host of areas, including justice, social policy, "economic cohesion" (which will embrace regional policy), transport and the environment.

To be strictly accurate, countries will still have a free hand on these matters - if Brussels chooses not to act. Fat chance, eh?

Meanwhile, Article 24 of the draft gives ministers discretionary power to decide at any time to abolish the national veto on taxation, criminal law, social security, and perhaps even foreign and defence policy. Germany is already pushing for a putative foreign ministry.

Hands up anyone who believes that the rolling juggernaut that began as a limited coal and steel trading area, widened into the Common Market, subtly became the European Community, and now the European Union, isn't destined to deliver a United States of Europe, from which Britain will be unable to stand aside?

A few hands raised, I see. Tony Blair's? No. Faults our PM might have, but lack of intelligence isn't one.

The Royal Mail is losing £750,000 a day. But part-time (one day a week) non-executive chairman Allan Leighton picks up a "performance-related" bonus of £165,000. Former chief executive John Roberts, who resigned, is able prematurely to collect a pension of £160,000, on top of £119,000 compensation for loss of office. But why am I mentioning this? Situation normal.

A Sunday treat in my childhood was a car ride to Redcar, to enjoy a Pacitto's ice cream. Later I attended school for seven years in Redcar. I know a few Redcar residents, who, if asked where they live, will say Redcar - just like that. So how come what was always the slovenly pronunciation, Red-k, with the final syllable pronounced just like a child's k, has become the BBC's style, gratingly heard on Look North and recently even on the national TV weather forecast?

And on the same topic in the same (Cleveland) area: When what the residents of its sprawling new housing estates call Ingleby Bar-wick, near Yarm, was a parish of scattered farms, Barwick was pronounced Barrick. Berwick isn't Ber-wick. Keswick isn't Kes-wick. Warwick isn't War-wick, even if Dionne is. What's the matter with Teessiders? Middlesbrough types pronounce the town's Lodore Grove, named after the Lake District waterfall, as Loader. Ugh.