To laughter and applause, he added: “I never realised until I got off my sick bed last week to deliver a certain party address in Southport just how telling that observation proved to be.”Moments later he invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill – who represented Dundee at Westminster for 10 years – to underline his commitment to the job he has held for nearly five years. “He, too, in a different context, was the man who promised nothing other than blood, toil, tears and sweat,” he said. “I have not come here to spill blood this afternoon, I certainly toil away at the job, I don’t want to leave you in tears and I think last weekend I did more than my bit for sweat.”Although Kennedy aides will have judged his appearance a success, and will hope it has scotched dark mutterings about his fitness and lifestyle, the past 10 days have exposed deep scepticism among senior colleagues over his abilities.After charges that he has relied on too small a circle of aides, in the coming weeks he will seek to rebuild his relationship with his MPs and keep them better informed about his leadership. Charles Kennedy joked yesterday that politics was as much about perspiration as inspiration as he attempted to draw a line under 10 torrid days in which fears over his health paralysed his leadership of the Liberal Democrats.
With speculation growing that he could be succeeded by his deputy, he mocked his own disastrous appearance before the party’s spring conference. They intensified when he appeared pale and gaunt and sweated prodigiously as he addressed Liberal Democrat activists in Southport on Sunday.But Mr Kennedy seemed a different man when he addressed the party’s Scottish conference in Dundee yesterday as he light-heartedly referred to the illness that had laid him low. Doubts over Mr Kennedy’s well-being had been triggered when he pulled out of the Commons debate on the Budget because of a “violent stomach bug”.

“I don’t think it is going to become a competition for junior ministers to see how many times they can demonstrate fidelity to their leader, but we shall see whether it catches on.”. The Blair Generation – it’s a slogan likely to become all too familiar in the run-up to the next general election after it was coined by a Labour minister yesterday. Department for Transport guidelines say an individual speed hump should not be more than 100mm high and cannot be less than 900mm long.¿ Last September an Oxford builder, Ian Beesley, was fined £763 for ripping up a road hump outside his house because traffic going over it kept him awake at night.. “They’re ripping them out in Barnet and I think that may be the only answer.”GETTING THE HUMP: ‘ROUND TOPS’, ‘CUSHIONS’ AND ‘TABLES’¿ There are three basic speed hump designs: the original sleeping policeman, known as a ’round top’; the ’speed cushion’, a raised square in the middle of a lane; and the ’speed table’, the wider, flat-topped hump that usually straddles junctions.¿ Residents of Boulton in Derby elected Ron Allen to the city council on an anti-speed hump ticket after dozens of the devices were installed near their homes.¿ Hundreds of speed humps had to be lowered in Liverpool after hearses became marooned on them.¿ There are an estimated 100,000 speed bumps in Britain. “If you have a beautiful listed street of terraced houses and place a crude piece of tarmac over concrete, you are destroying the architectural heritage of the borough.”They went ahead with them in most areas and now there is a large hump every 10 feet and it makes driving a complete misery,” he added. Patrick Allen, 53, a solicitor from Camden, said he had repeatedly protested against the borough’s plans to implement speed humps.

“There has been a lot of residents’ opposition to the new road humps and we made it clear that we were very unhappy with their plans,” Mr Allen said. Ultimately up to £14m will be spent on the project, which hopes to halve the annual accident rate from the current average of 52.However, the growing opposition to speed humps among councils has been welcomed by the majority of residents and motorists. Camden in north London has reiterated its intention to retain its borough-wide humps.”Studies clearly show that the use of physical enforcement measures results in a reduction in the number of casualties on the road,” a spokesman said. “They may not be popular, but until new methods come forward to help reduce the number of casualties, we will not be removing them.”Similarly in Edinburgh, the council has already prioritised about 440 of the city’s streets for speed humps, based on the number of accidents occurring each year.Main roads will be exempt from the programme, for which £2m will be set aside for the first phase to be finished by April 2006.