the crassness of Reading Labour

who stood up in the council chamber and cheered a Tory councillor who was making his last speech before leaving the council, having been deselected last autumn.  Local dead-tree reporting of this immediately brought out the following: Labour cannot comment on this after the shameful way they treated Jane Griffiths and why this lot - and Labour, and the Lib Dems and the Greens cannot just GET ON WITH THE WORK FOR WHICH THEY WERE VOTED IN FOR. START BE HAVING LIKE ADULTS. Oh, Silly me, they are politicians, aren’t they?
 and that was over seven years ago!  Reading Labour should have learned from that experience, but it seems they have not.  If a retiring councillor wants to have a public score-settling - and it would not be the first time this has happened - then surely this comes under the heading of private grief for that councillor's party.  And as such should be listened to in silence.  And then everyone should move on.  Undoubtedly Reading Labour had the text of the councillor's retiring speech beforehand, and had decided what they would do.  I can just imagine the cackling at the group meeting beforehand. So when Josephine Lovelock was heaving her vast wine-fed bulk off the chair she might have done well to reflect on the wisdom or otherwise of her group's actions.  People have long memories.  I don't know the councillor concerned and have no idea whether the reported accusations against him are true.  That's not the point here.  The point is that members of the public, as the comments showed, know a crass hypocritical gesture when they see it, and they don't like it.  And there is an election coming up.  Reading Labour are confident of cementing their control of the council in May.  Maybe that is just what they will do.  But shouldn't they think of what they actually want to DO with that control?  As historic Reading buildings like the Kings Meadow Baths crumble away with the connivance of the council, and as Reading Labour continue to fail to provide decent schools for Reading children, and as parts of south Reading look increasingly like the crappier suburbs of Belgrade, where is the vision?  Think about that.

In semi-related  news, this week the loathsome Ed Balls was in Reading.  Local reporting does not say why he was there, other than that he visited Alfred Sutton School in east Reading.  Yesterday on the Chronicle website he was pictured with a youngish person of drippy appearance with a Labour rosette on, who was not named.  Today her name has been added to the picture, perhaps after representations from Reading Labour.  Too late.  She is the candidate for Park ward, which Reading Labour are not fighting this year.  Their best offer previously was Basher McKenzie, and when the voters showed their disgust with the likes of him they couldn't think of anything else, so they put in a GIRL and then kept her safely out of the way.  They put a picture on their Facebook page later in the day, which has Gumdrops Gavin in the foreground (who should stay out of direct sunlight, or get a skin peel), the loathsome Balls next to her, and shadowed, so you can't see her face, some GIRL  or other with a rosette on.  Also, getting your picture taken does not constitute "campaigning", chaps.  Issues you're tackling in Park ward, anyone?  Anyone? (sound of tumbleweed)

After Bradford West, is this really all there is?  Still, Reading Labour "strongly supported" Ed Miliband for leader, we were told.  So that's all right then.

Doomed.

the man who wasn't there - again

There was a somewhat bizarre piece by Cllr Jan "Goody gumdrops" Gavin, called "A Day in the Life of a Labour Councillor" - as if anyone cared what time a Labour councillor gets up in the morning.  She says that a group of Labour MPs visited Reading that day to campaign for the increasingly desperate fine team of Labour campaigners in Redlands and Katesgrove.  But, bizarrely, she doesn't name any of them, or use any pictures of them.  She does however use a picture of M. Salter with a couple of bearded gits from Redlands, to my certain and evidenced knowledge stooges bought and paid for a long time ago.  The picture she uses is taken in Katesgrove, but there are no identifiable Katesgrove members in it.  This is undoubtedly because Katesgrove members are refusing to campaign, having taken the view that a candidate has been imposed on them.  They are bonkers to take this view.  Rose Williams is excellent.  However the only pictures of Rose I have seen have been of her alone in an empty street -just the way a candidate should never be pictured.  A message not very thinly disguised.  Katesgrove members probably wanted to select a bearded librarian who thinks members of the public are moronic.  They are plenty mad enough for that.

So, a photograph of the "campaign" in Katesgrove and Redlands which includes neither candidate and no-one from Katesgrove.  High-profile MPs give up their time to campaign in Reading and are ignored.  But we do see Gumdrops Gavin, M. Salter and a couple of bearded gits gurning for the cameras.  Hmmm.

Meanwhile, we are told that M. Salter has been spending a lot of time in Parliament lately, giving evidence to select committees and so on in his role as a paid lobbyist for the Angling Trust.  We also know that he has been spending time gurning for the media in Reading East.  So what has changed since he was an MP?  Not much, except that he spends a bit more time in the House of Commons now than he did when he had a place on the green benches.

M. Salter, paid lobbyist for the Angling Trust.
M. Salter, paid consultant for Thames Water.
M. Salter, paid chairman of a Whitley charity.
M. Salter, a teacher (so he told us a while ago, haven't heard anything about that lately).

What a busy boy.  Pity about the Katesgrove campaign.

update: the gun porn is back!  Coupled with mentions of someone called "Dave Sutton", not a name I mentioned in the post, still, if the cap fits... none of them bothered to explain why the MPs were not named or pictured, and why neither candidate was named or pictured either, they were over-excited by the guns and fanny shots, clearly.  Is there anyone from Reading Labour reading this blog who is over the mental and emotional age of 14 please?  and some of you might be dangerous.  Much more of this and Her Majesty's Police might have to be involved, eh messieurs?