woman for the West

Reading West will need to select a Labour candidate soon. It will have to be a woman, to the chagrin of the Central Committee. In recent years there have been apparently good and able female Labour parliamentary candidates in that constituency, but they have naturally been respectively undermined, briefed against and outflanked. So it goes. And the Reading West constituency retains a Member in the Conservative interest. Now the minds of the Central Committee core have been focused by the disastrous (to them) election of a Labour MP in Reading East, despite their best efforts. Something Must Be Done, they cry. Fear not. Step forward Cllr Sarah Hacker, erstwhile Mayor of the Borough of Reading, whose dad bought her a council seat for her birthday. Oh yes. She has thrown her hat into this particular ring, she tells us, and in these words: she has been considering this move for "a few of years" (Google Translate from Albanian, or Howarth speak?) and wants to "deliver on our city's potential as well as representing the town" - make your mind up girl, is Reading a town or a city? There's more! She continues "Being Mayor means I have an expansive network" - wtf does that mean? Something to do with exercise bands for the Zumba classes she keeps going on about? They aren't doing her much good, by the look of her. If I were her I'd ask for my money back. Where was I? Ah yes. This network is so "expansive", she says, it has "given me the chance to improves". Oh yesss. What has it got in its pocketses? It has gots lovely Reading Borough Council cashes, yess, it has. She wants to be "the first woman to represent Reading West in Parliament". Maybe she does. There is at least one Reading Labour woman other than this creature who is (a) possessed of an intellect and political nous (b) not corrupt (c) has some idea of what the world is all about. So there is still hope for Labour in Reading West.

Sue me.

ah yes, I remember it well

sqwawkbox (never quite sure how to spell that thing) has been banging on about deselection of Labour MPs for being insufficiently loyal to JC. Some of this will of course happen. First they will come for the Jews and for the women, preferably both at once. And then - well, you know how it goes. But may I point out that it is perfectly possible to deselect a sitting Labour MP now, with no rule change, and that this has been done a number of times in fairly recent years. But it is seriously hard work, and in my case took seven years' campaigning and briefing. Most Labour members, even today, do not want to see their MP deselected, and it takes a long time to fill their ears with so much poison that they are prepared to vote against the MP, or not to vote for her, which usually amounts to much the same thing, because they have started to think "no smoke without fire". In the case of Reading East, after a failed deselection attempt in 2000 which resulted in the ouster of one party chair and the flight of another to Australia in fear of his kneecaps, the renewed efforts were still not working as well as the small group of "criminally insane" (says a very senior party organiser)  party members had hoped, following my re-election in 2001 with an increased majority. So they enlisted the help of the now disgraced former Chief Whip Hilary Armstrong, a crabbed virago who acquired the parliamentary seat she held for many years by sheer nepotism, with no discernible merit or hard work on her part. She has recently been compared (by one who knows) with Nurse Ratched in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'  - but I fear the former was cleverer. Hills however was well schooled in psychological torture, and you don't have to be clever for that. Anyway, she surfaces in the revisiting of earlier deselection schemes, as well she might. The Telegraph piece from 2004 however mentions my name, and strongly implies that I was deselected for being some kind of Corbynite lefty, which I consider a slur and a calumny, and urge all concerned to withdraw the remarks. Sqwawkbox, it wasn't quite like that.

In other news, it was nice to get a mention in the House this week when the Labour MP for Reading
East, Matt Rodda, made his maiden speech. It was very sensible and mentioned Reading and housing a lot. Jolly good for him.

in Reading Gaol by Reading town

picture: BBC

well, you probably know the rest. Oscar the beautiful genius was there. The gaol, a young offenders' institution since 1992, is to be closed, one of four in the UK to cease to be used as part of the prison system. What will happen to it is another matter. It is a nineteenth-century building in the centre of the town, unlike most prisons, close to the railway station and next to parkland which houses the ruins of Reading Abbey. You can see part of the ruins in the picture. Also pictured is part of an outdoor art installation, which was erected between the prison wall and the River Kennet in 2000. The Oscar Wilde Society and many others were enthusiastic about it, but Reading council was not. It tried to pull out of the project, but too late. The then leader of the council, David Sutton, publicly sneered at Oscar Wilde enthusiasists at the opening, at which I was present. The council turned its back on what is probably the greatest piece of international heritage Reading has. How should it be remembered, preserved, commemorated, now?

the spoilers have started early

my man in the Civic Offices Reading Labour Party (They're the same thing, stupid. Ed.) says the leaking of the names of Matt Rodda and Richard Davies to the Reading Chronicle was done by one of the boys.  Neither of these chaps is the favoured candidate, and the leak of their names was to ensure that work against them could begin forthwith.  Which it has done.  Richard Garvie, par contre, is Mr Salter's boy in Newbury, and thus deserves a bunk-up (ooh er missus).  As for Victoria the knicker lady (see previous post), I await a briefing from Buckinghamshire.  I fancy the Labour Party is looking for its own Louise Mensch-a-like.  (a) it has probably not found her yet and (b) Reading West is probably not the place to put her.

What larks.

the Reading constituencies start the process

We are informed that the Reading constituencies are about to choose their Labour candidates.  It's been in the Reading Chronicle, so it must be true.  There is a big picture of someone called Richard Garvie, who uses a dangler in his statement ("As a party, Reading East is important to us" - no, Reading East is not a party, dumbo, who edits your stuff, John Howarth?), and who is described as a "community campaigner", which is political-speak for "can't get elected", and the headline is barely literate, but hey, that's the Chronicle for you, n'est-ce pas, editor Sally Stevens, never were much cop, were you?  Nice long sentence, don't you think?

Where was I?  Ah yes, the Reading constituencies.  We already know that the Reading West constituency will be girls only, and that the Reading boys have been lining up one Rachel Eden, who has demonstrated that she will shut up and do as she is told, the only criteria for candidature.  Someone from Buckinghamshire called Victoria Groulef is also mentioned.  More to follow on her

Reading East will not be girls only, so naturally it is to be a white-boys-only shortlist, we are told.  There is one white boy who is not Richard Garvie, Matt Rodda or Richard Davies, all three of whom are mentioned by the Chronicle Arsewipe, whose name has not yet featured, but who has been shamelessly touting for the candidature for a long time now.  I'll leave you to guess who that is.  Sometimes the party members in Reading East can surprise you.  Sometimes they choose a surprising candidate. 

Only one person has ever won Reading East for Labour.

David Geary RIP

Reading-based readers of this blog may well remember Dave, who was a friend of mine for many years, and who was a fellow ward councillor for several of those years.  Dave was Mayor of Reading twice - the first time at the instigation of myself and significant other, who sat him down in the pub and told him he was the best person for the job.  And a great Mayor he was.  There were those in the Reading Labour Group at the time who wanted as Mayor the useless Ceinwen Williams, the councillor who very nearly got the Reading Festinal closed down by her incompetence in dealing with the police as lead councillor for Licensing.  Fortunately it soon emerged thatr the hapless Williams (now mercifully forgotten by most) and her handler Josephine Lovelock did not have the support they needed, and Reading got the Mayor it deserved.  Dave was a kind man, a funny man, and a Christian Socialist with an unshakable sense of honour.  There should be more like him in politics.  When there was a plan (before ,my time as a councillor) to build a Tesco on green land, and councillors in the controlling Labour Group were informed that if they voted against it they could be personally surcharged, Dave's was the only hand which went up to vote No.  Dave was one of the Cross Town Route Five (which included me) who voted against the dirty deal brokered by Martin Salter (later MP for Reading West) and Tony Page (later defeated candidate for Reading East) to permit the construction of a dual carriageway on the Thames and Kennet riverside.  This infamous and wrongheaded plan was ultimately turned down in 1993 by the then Secretary of State, John Gummer.  Support for it remains Reading Labour Group policy.

Dave had been ill for some time, and died last week at the age of 72.  I am sorry he is gone.  He was a man who made many friends and who kept those friends.  He was a man of decency and honour, and plentiful wisdom for those who knew how to listen.  He was bullied in the Labour Group by Josephine Lovelock, and I will never forget thatr he was one of the very few who spoke up for me when I suffered similar treatment, with accompanying briefings to the Guardian Diary.  I lnew some of Dave's family too, and I will also never forget the funeral of his mother Frances.  She had been a Spiritualist, and I can tell you that Spiritualists have the happiest funerals.  They know they are going to see each other soon, on the other side.  But the family was stalked at the time of Frances' death by Martin Salter, then an MP but not Frances' MP, who told other family members that Frances had wanted him to speak at her funeral.  Dave knew that was rubbish, and told me so, but other family members did not know, and Dave stayed quiet for the sake of family peace.  I hope Salter is proud of himself for that.

Thank you Dave for being a friend and for giving me the privilege of working with you, and learning from you, as a ward councillor.  I hope you get the civic farewell you should get, and that the members of the Labour Group who treated you and others sso aboinably findd a path to penitence at last.

His Master's voice subs - a new triumph

here is a headline of theirs:

"Reading Heathrow rail-link benefits can't be underestimated"


I don't think that's quite what they meant, hein?
 
but still, it's in the Reading Evening Post, so it must be true.

the uninvited guest

there was a bit of a do in Reading a few days ago, for soldiers returning from Afghanistan. A Homecoming Parade, held at Brock Barracks. Very dignified and fitting it was too, I am told by some who were there. Many dignitaries, the Mayor of Reading in pride of position, but many other mayors and important people in the VIP enclosure. And a very good thing too, say I. I do not believe councillors were invited qua councillors unless they had a particular connection to the military.  But what's this?  A swish car hums to a halt, and out leaps Derek Plews, former spinner for the military, and now Head of Communications at Reading Borough Council.  The charming Mrs Plews is at his side!  They hustle their way into the VIP enclosure, prompting some of the more elderly be-chained dignitaries to ask each other, "Who is this bespectacled northern oik?"  The more tuned-in of the dignitaries spot the hunched figure being smuggled in between the two Plews (singly would they each be a Plew?) out of lens-reach of the snapping paparazzi, and once in the enclosure that figure draws itself up to its full height, shakes out its poodle perm in the watery sunlight, and commences a rousing discourse, the returning heroes forgotten.  Yes!  Councillor Josephine Lovelock is amongst us!  Three soldiers faint, but the speech continues.  A veil must, from charity, be drawn over what follows.

vote!

in the poll here - I am doing rather well in the stakes for Reading's next elected mayor!  Well, if my people need me...

may I have your attention please?

OK blogsters, listen up.  I have been thinking lately - when I retired from Parliament I thought to myself, I am still young enough to do another job and make some progress, and so it has been, with nearly five years in an international institution being an editor and helping lawyers to express themselves in English.  It's all been great fun, and the international life has been good.  But the call of dear old Blighty has become stronger as the years advance, and so I have got myself a little property to live in for my declining years, where I can eat pork pies to my heart's content, drink Proper Tea and go to Proper Pubs.  The weather might not be great, but it is better in southern England than it is in Alsace, where you freeze for four months of the year, boil for two months, and get rained on the rest of the time.  Yes, I am coming back to the place where I left a piece of my heart, dear old Reading.  I expect to get involved in community activism, so you political chaps will be seeing a bit more of me.  Be seein' ya!

racist? you decide

His Master's Voice has this on the tribunal at which the applicant is Sudhana Singh, the former head teacher of Moorlands School inTilehurst, Reading.  Racism, she says.  No racists in Tilehurst though, hein?

Haze, where's yer mates?

His Master's Voice has published a piece about a visit to Reading by former Cabinet minister and Labour MP Hazel Blears.  It shows Ms Blears with a former victim of stalking and harassment, who is from Reading, and campaigners for a change in the law to protect women, and others, from such treatment.  The government is minded to run a trial of a protection scheme, but not, yet, in Reading.  Hazel went to Reading to support bringing the scheme to the town.  There she is, with the campaigners - and no politicians.  Haze, did you ask the Labour council if they supported you?  Did they say no?  You'd think, with local elections coming up, there would be candidates who would like to lend their names to such a worthy cause.  Were they asked?  Or was it Reading Labour Party which, in its time-honoured fashion, refused to have anything to do with Ms Blears?  I think it was.  Here is His Master's Voice's delightful Hilary Scott on the subject of Hazel:
the odious Hazel Blears (I’ve always thought she was loathsome – that ghastly auburn hair, the fixed sickly smile, the sausage-legged motorbike leathers)
Lovely, hein?

btw dead iPad and travelling a lot recently has meant no posts.  This situation will not continue.

thanks Josie babes

for the plug  - free publicity is always good.  Comes to something when there is wrangling in the council chamber in Reading over an item on my blog revealing what is widely known in Reading, that Jon Fatboy Hartley was the source of the leak of information about the Labour Group's trashing of the council chief executive for having integrity cost-saving reasons.  Thanks for reading, Josie babes, good to know you get your information about Reading from someone who lives 600 km away and has not lived in Reading since 2005.  A little suggestion to the Labour Group - focus on Reading and not on Strasbourg if you want to control the council instead of just pretending to as you are at present.  Oh and Josie - don't eat quite so many pies, and keep the vino intake down to a couple of bottles a day -  there's no speaking to you in the mornings, and it takes half a bottle to kill the hangover enough for you to function, so a respected council officer told me just the other day.

when you're in a hole...

stop digging, of course.  Cllr Matt Rodda (Lab, Katesgrove) said he had lobbied the Planning Inspectorate over a local planning issue.  Cllr Warren Swaine (LD, Katesgrove, defeated Dictatorship Dave "moronic members of the public" Sutton) did a FoI request which indicated that he hadn't.  Cllr Rodda had, of course, done plenty of media, including the hackneyed "open a bottle of champagne on the site", which I remember doing in 1993, and not since.  Caught lying to the electorate, Cllr Rodda sprang into action.  His Master's Voice faithfully copied out Cllr Rodda's protestations that the dog had eaten the emails he said he'd sent, thusly:

His Master's Voice

the Chronicle actually talked to both sides:

Chronicle

notice two things here: (1) Cllr Rodda expresses "sadness" that Cllr Swaine would stoop so low as to "criticise a local councillor".  Diddums.  That's politics, matey.  It's not all champagne and Martin Salter's bottom and hagiographic pieces in the Reading Evening Post.

(2) the person actually standing for election for Labour in Katesgrove ward is Rose Williams, a fine person in my view and a former Mayor of Reading, one of the best.  She is nowhere to be seen in all this.  In her place I wouldn't be, either.  But why did Cllr Rodda, in his creepy little stunt based on lies, never mention Rose or include her?  He must have thought the whole thing was a good idea to have gone to the bother of making up a story that he had lobbied for local people, so why not try to give the candidate a boost?  She's a girl, after all, and Reading Labour have got some ground to make up on misogyny.

Oh.

who will be queen o'the may

local elections of course, dummies, what did you think I was talking about?  Personally I shall be rather more focused on the presidential election here in France, the first round of which is I believe is on 22nd April, and I will be very surprised if there is not a second round (one candidate has to get over 50% for that to happen).  Angela Merkel was here yesterday campaigning for Sarko for talks about the eurozone and the economy.  Francois Hollande (Parti Socialiste) is high in the polls,, and the third placed, Marine Le Pen, Front National, is currently struggling to get the 500 nominations she needs from elected individuals.  She is coming to Strasbourg on Sunday - a great deal of Front National support is in Alsace, fortunately not in the city of Strasbourg, but in the villages.  She ought to speak to them in Alsatian, but I bet she can't.  Even I can manage a little.  Even Miss France (who is from these parts) spoke the language when she was crowned.  The fourth placed is Francois Bayrou, who is some kind of LibDem and thus doesn't count.  And then there is the Front de Gauche, supported by the communists and by the unions.  Only 7% of the French workforce belongs to a union.  Currently the airlines are on strike.  And the Greens, who will do quite well.  I like Eva Joly of their ilk, who is blonde, wears red glasses and is Norwegian.

Anyway, readers, what will happen in Reading?  Labour of course have a minority administration.  I can make better predictions for the wards in the Reading East constituency than for the West.  Because, er, you know,  constituency boundaries matter, in democratic terms.  Don't they?  Oh, please yourselves.

 Grn gain Park from Lab.  Lab gain Redlands from LD.  Lab gain Katesgrove from LD.  Con hold Church.  Con hold Caversham.  Con gain Tilehurst from LD.

The Katesgrove result is not a certain one, because Cllr Matt Rodda (Lab) was caught lying to the public a while ago, and the electorate don't like that kind of malarkey.  But it seems the LibDems are demoralised.  There's still time for them to grow a backbone though.

Minster?  Others?  Dunno.  Give me your predictions, readers.  Surprised to see so little on Facebook from Reading, other parties around the country have a great presence there.  I would single out Plymouth in this respect.