British shipping ministers (like most ships these days) don't stay in one place for long. In recent years they have tended to be politicians on the way up or on the way out and during the 18 years of the Conservative government, there was a particular penchant for peers. Perhaps they thought that ships tied up to them.

Glenda Jackson is a breaker of moulds in more ways than one. She is the shipping minister everyone has heard of; that itself being something of a triumph after a quarter century of the British industry's inexorable decline. That she has attained this fame because of her previous career as a distinguished actress may annoy her (though she probably has become resigned to it), but it should not worry those in the industry who see both her and her boss - also well known for his previous career- as sent by heaven to put this forgotten industry back on the map.

Possibly because you expect actresses to be people who take life lightly, Ms Jackson comes across as a very serious person, which she undoubtedly is. Industry people from all sides, who have become used to Politicians suggesting that shipping was very important, warm to her because she takes them seriously and has acquired certain convictions herself about quality shipping and the way it is so often faced with competition from marginal tonnage run on the smell of an oily rag.

She is doing what she can, and doesn't promise the earth, or blame all inertia on Europe, or the Treasury, and shipping people who are realists appreciate a certain frankness. She seeks allies where she can, and the alliance with EU Transport Commissioner Kinnock is clearly one that will benefit the shipping industry long term.

Of course shipping ministers have to be shared. and all her persuasiveness and the beautifully modulated use of a wonderful English language acting on shipping's behalf cannot disguise the fact that we have but a portion of her heart. The shipping industry is entitled to be jealous of all those other transport topics that queue as suitors for the Minister's attention.

Those wretched tube trains, the blasted motorways and red routes for buses, the airports and how everybody is going to find their way to the confounded Millennium Dome. The poor old shipping industry, looking its age and carrying few votes - will it get a look-in against all these sexier problem areas! And can any of us offer sufficient distraction to this woman of infinite variety to Persuade her to remain true to transport, against the avowed attractions of being Mayor of London?