RECENTLY Westminster whispers have suggested that David Blunkett is keen to shaft Blackburn MP Jack Straw for a second time.

In the post 2001 election reshuffle the Sheffield MP unexpectedly pinched Mr Straw's job as Home Secretary.

Since then he has spent much of his time rubbishing Jack's achievements in the job.

But luckily for Mr Straw he was promoted to Foreign Secretary where with the war on Iraq he has been pretty busy.

But in recent weeks Mr Blunkett's aides have been prowling the Westminster corridors suggesting that Mr Straw hasn't been doing a very good job and that their champion would do a better one and should be given the post in the next Cabinet reshuffle.

However the migration fiasco which led to Manchester MP Beverley Hughes quitting the government has changed all that.

She had to go because she had lost control of the immigration service and the opposition of some Labour MPs are suggesting Mr Blunkett should follow suit because he had lost control of his department.

Westminster insiders suggest that Mr Blunkett will do well to keep his own job let alone pinch Jack's as Prime Minister Tony Blair is furious with him over the whole fiasco.

ROSSENDALE and Darwen MP Janet Anderson has been investigating her predecessors -- not just David Trippier, the Tory Environment Minister she beat to win the seat for Labour in 1992.

He is now a very successful businessman but Lewis Harcourt, later Lord Harcourt who won the seat in 1904 turned out to have been a key person in breeding the golden retriever which he named.

Peter Fisher, a 19th century MP was a Liberal leader and almost Prime Minister, who entertained the future King Edward VII. Mrs Anderson, in an unexpected display of humility, confessed: "I am beginning to feel out of my depth."