no snow angel

Mr Salter spoke up in the House yesterday for the work being done at a school in his constituency to ensure that despite the snow it would open for pupils and parents. Now we're getting somewhere, I thought. The school is actually in his constituency rather than in Reading East, where he spends most of his time and does his photocalls, and this is what a good constituency MP should do. His 15-second intervention got about 17 pages of sycophantic coverage in His Master's Voice, but we are all used to that. But when the time came to vote in the House that same evening Mr Salter was absent. Long gone. Not a dereliction of duty on a par with saying he had voted against the Iraq war when in fact he was absent then too, but still... Mr Salter tells us that he goes back to Reading every night. Indeed I believe he does, and always has. But if his home in leafy Tilehurst is such an easy commute then why does he regularly slope off before close of business to catch his train? And none of this answers why he claimed over £40K of taxpayers' money between 1997 and 2001 for a non-existent London property.