more from the Reading Chronicle's pisstake:
He said walking through Reading West? on his return was "very weird", and added: "For the first time in 20 plus years, I did not feel this overwhelming sense of responsibility for every pot hole, late bus or infrastructure project going over budget. You don't know until you stop you carry this sense of duty around, it's really quite liberating."
You what? Really? Late buses? I can remember complaining on behalf of my elderly constituents who were left waiting in the rain for buses which were very late and sometimes didn't come at all, during one of Reading Buses' periodic bad patches. The result of this was Mr Salter attending a meeting of the Labour Group, where a resolution was drawn up that I would be "spoken to" by Cllr Sutton to indicate that such remarks should cease to be made, that I would also be "spoken to" by the then chair of the board of Reading Buses Tony Page (who in the event was much the more reasonable of the two) - Mr Salter was heard to say at this meeting, I am told by one who was there, "She'll shut her f***ing mouth or it'll be shut for her. Permanently." In seeking the meeting with me the group had agreed would take place, Cllr Sutton informed me by email that there had been "widespread outrage" at my remarks about a bus company which was "owned by the Labour Council".
Sense of duty?
Mr Salter also says in that piece that he thinks Labour have a good chance of winning the Reading West seat back. Well, possibly. He acknowledges that the selection of Naz Sarkar for 2010 was not the best choice. However, he and Tony Page worked furiously to ensure that Sarkar was in fact selected, and that the best potential candidate, Mark Bennett, was not (he is a local man by origins) so that the seat would be lost, thus ensuring Mr Salter's place in the history books. That's where their sense of duty leads them. And now they have an all-woman shortlist for the next election. Poor boys. So they are grooming Kelly Edwards to take it on, on condition that she (a) does what they say (b) keeps out of sight during the campaign and (c) does not win.
I don't think Mr Salter even used the phrase "sense of duty". I think the Chronicle made it up, to ensure their place in the local annals as having got away with the most outrageous fabrication in local journalism. And that is going some.
Nice one, Chron.
2 comments:
No-one knows what the new constituencies will be if the government goes ahead and cuts the number, equalises the sizes and ignore boundaries. They may not bear any relationship with the current boundaries.
It seems that Matrin Salter issued a death threat. The police should have been called.
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