ALL this reshuffle business is obviously something of an art. The effects are so marvellous, it's a wonder more people don't do it. So here are a few suggestions about how to move things around a bit.

Because I am sitting here doing nothing useful, I'll start at this very chair. Having been in the features department for a very long time, I think I shall promote myself to, oh let's glance about, sports editor.

I don't know anything about sport, apart from how to lose at squash once a week; but that shouldn't be a handicap. After all, Government ministers set off to work one day representing health and find that, by the time they have arrived at Westminster, they are now responsible for the environment, having had a short. but productive, spell in education while negotiating the M25.

That's me sorted. Over there I can see the photographers, some of whom have been taking pictures for half an eternity. They can be reshuffled off to design the pages instead.

The newsdesk can do swaps with the sports desk, the reporters can take the place of the relocated photographers, and that bloke who delivers sandwiches in the morning is promoted to running the press hall, on the grounds that he must have read a newspaper once or twice.

Oh, it's easy once you get going.

The running of York Minster could be handed over to one or other of the local churches, because the present incumbents have got themselves in such an unholy clerical pickle.

Down at York Hospital, the surgeons could clearly do with seeing new pastures - or, at least, the messy insides of a different part of the body. So head specialists can switch to the heart, while doctors toiling in the surgical procedure of gastro-oesophagostomy can go and work on something that is easier to spell.

Over at City of York Council, Ann Reid, who goes by the snappy title of executive member for traffic jams, or some such, can stay where she is for now, on the grounds of having only just got her feet under the tail-to-tail queue. But if the clogged roads of last Sunday afternoon persist, Coun Reid could find herself on the move in the next game of fantasy reshuffle.

Naturally, private companies could follow the Government's example, by needlessly moving people about, just to freshen things up a bit. Although it is possible that the results may end up being just as farcical as last week's reshuffle, in which Tony Blair seems to have played a game of musical Cabinet chairs, just to see who ends up where - and for the fun of watching John Prescott puffing and panting.

Traditionally, the reshuffle is intended to reinvigorate a Government. This one seems only to have caused confusion and a constitutional row over Tony Blair's plan to replace the Lord Chancellor.

It is interesting how often Tony Blair's detractors go about sniping about his presidential pretensions. Yet his shambolic reshuffle hasn't left him looking so much like a president as a harried man at the mercy of events he no longer controls. Which can't have been what was on his mind when he got up in the morning.

Transport Secretary Alistair Darling is now also part-time Scottish Secretary, which is handy, what with everything in transport running so smoothly. One of Mr Darling's big ideas is said to be building 12-lane super-motorways, based on America's freeways, possibly with tolls on the fastest lanes. Great - just what this country needs. Goodbye Britain, hello Los Angeles.

Updated: 11:25 Thursday, June 19, 2003