THREE years ago, Tony Blair promised that his Government was beginning its "year of delivery".

Today 110,000 former miners and thousands more elderly men are still waiting for money promised to them over a year ago.

Men aged between 60 and 65 were promised a £100 winter fuel payment last December but now may have to wait until this December to receive the money. These men are likely to have turned up their heating when they heard the Government's promise and will now have paid their increased bills while still waiting for the Government to deliver.

It is, of course, even worse for the miners. They were promised compensation 16 months ago for the debilitating lung diseases they contracted during a lifetime underground. Many of them have died - and many more will do so if the delay stretches for another three years as expected - while waiting for the Government to deliver.

It is practical incidents like these that damage the Government's reputation. Most of us just assume, without having any real way of checking, that the millions Gordon Brown promised for the NHS and education will indeed be delivered.

But if the Government can't organise itself to pay £100 each to men of a pensionable age within a year, and if it can only organise itself so that only one out of 110,000 miners is compensated within 16 months, what chance has the NHS of receiving its extra cash before, say, the turn of the next millennium?

The Government is very good at announcing well-intentioned promises twice or thrice over. It needs only to deliver once, but it is finding that much harder to do.

Down and out

THE removal of her airworthiness licence is a slap in the face - or a very rude punch on her long, long nose - for Concorde, the grand old lady of the skies.

She was born in the age of miracles when man was on the moon and anything was possible - even regular flight at twice the speed of sound. She was the spirit of her times: expensive and glamorous. You really could fly down to Rio for the night.

But in her twilight years she has disgraced herself. She messed her unblemished safety record with that terrible crash near Paris, and now inspectors have found as yet unspecified faults that are enough to have had her grounded.

If this is the end, it is a sad way for the grand old lady of the skies to bow out. Rather than at the height of her powers, she'll have been brought down by a cloud of suspicion and doubt.