not long now

till Labour select in Reading West I mean. Have been in Macedonia, Kosovo and briefly in Serbia, some connection difficulties meant limited posting. But I see from my poll that Nasty Naz is still in the lead, but that there has been something of a surge (ooh er missus) for Denise Headley, who would of course be excellent from what I know of her. But she's not a white bloke.

More seriously, I have a friend who is in a coma and I am going to speak to him this afternoon, not of course knowing whether he will be able to hear me, or if any of this helps. If anyone reading this has experience of this situation and could advise that would be great.

a rare appearance

in the House for Mr Salter - he managed to tear himself away from presenting himself as Mr Clean on expenses (hah!) in the TV studios of the nation for long enough to interrupt a question to the Leader of the House on Equitable Life, an issue you would think he would care about as it affected so many of his constituents (and Reading East ones too given that he prefers them to his own) - but no. Communications allowance was what he wanted to talk about. Was it fab or was it very fab? Very fab, said Harriet Harman. Here it is - note other members' reaction:

Mr. Speaker: Martin Salter.
Martin Salter rose—
Hon. Members: Not again!
Martin Salter: This had better be good! Thank you for calling me, Mr. Speaker, for the third time and I hope for many more. Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the use of the £35 million Short money that the Opposition have received since 1997? That debate should be seen in the light of yesterday’s posturing by the Leader of the Opposition about the MPs’ communications allowance, which he and 90 per cent. of all Conservative MPs have claimed but now want abolished.

oh by the way - the Reading Borough Council Bill came back to the House yesterday. Thrown out again. Not a word from Mr Salter.

expenses

oh yes, I was always going to get there sooner or later

Mr Salter is all over the media being Mr Clean. Not the cleverest thing. Given that he claimed £1000 a month from 1997 until the rules changed in 2001 for a non-existent London property. How is that better than Elliot Morley's mortgage payments? The House of Commons authorities say that records from before 2001 have been destroyed, I have been told - but no organisation destroys its payroll records. Ever. And I still have my payslips, which show ACA (Additional Costs Allowance, as second home money was known then), so they still have Salter's. So sooner or later the fraud will be exposed. Most of those currently "disgraced" were acting entirely within the rules. Not so Mr Salter during those years. I showed him how to fill in the forms and advised him to get a place in London in order to comply with them. You would have done better to keep quiet Mr Salter. You took the money and went fishing in India with Reading solicitor Mike Robinson, bragging to him and others that the "grand a month" was paying for it. Don't you wish you hadn't?

Here is Mike Robinson by the way. You will notice that he mentions his fishing holidays in India.

the house mates are gathering in Reading West

you have to read this post out loud in a Geordie accent for it to work, OK Mr Howarth|?

Nasty Naz is ahead of course, but who are his friends in the house?

Dangerous Denise is coming up on the side, she is a hard worker, in fact she is hard full stop, do not mess with her - but she is having a laugh with the girls we hear

Paul "PG Tips" Gittings is trying to get what is happening, but he doesn't. The other house mates are trying to persuade him to dress up in a cat suit, but it isn't working.

Dick Willy from Southampton has told the other house mates "I'm from Southampton".

Nasty Naz to the diary room...

we have always been at war with Eurasia...

letter published in His Master's Voice from Cllr Ruhemann, informing us how he and Mr Salter have always campaigned against building on the Kennet Meadows. Except when they haven't of course. Just a few years ago. they told us - and Salter went on Meridian TV and I think Ruhemann did too, they were both certainly in HMV obviously, saying the place had to be built on. They were both doing so at the instruction of Dictatorship Dave Sutton, then the leader of Reading Borough Council.

at last we hear their voices!

the Gurkhas I mean - or do we? the turn of phrase is spookily similar to that on Mr Salter's website, hein*? I did wonder why we never heard from Gurkhas in Reading, East or West, before. And I have to say I am a little offended that the author of this letter took no issue with my blog. Whatever. Abstaining on the vote is not only OK but Even Better than voting with the Gurkhas, it says here. Hmmm. Anyway, this was "star letter" in His Master's Voice, my correspondent informs me.

* notice also that the wording on the website has been changed since yesterday, to acknowledge that Mr S actually did not vote on the Gurkha motion - took a bit long to learn the lesson of the lies on the Iraq vote, hein?

I am writing this on behalf of myself, Madan K. Gurung, Chandra Burathoki and Gyanraj Rai. All of us are Reading base-based former British Army Gurkhas.

As retired Gurkha soldiers living in Reading, we are surprised at the letters that have been published from Adrian Windisch and David Akroyd concerning Martin Salter’s abstention in the recent vote on the Lib Dem motion for Gurkhas (Post, Wednesday, May 6).

Their letters demonstrate not only their welcomed commitment to the Gurkha Justice cause but unfortunately, also their ignorance of the background to recent events.

It is also disappointing that Adrian and David seem to be making party political mileage out of what is a non-party political issue.

We are grateful to all our supporters but we recognise that the Parliamentary vote was won not just by the Labour MPs who voted with us but also by the far larger number of Labour MPs who refused to vote against Gurkhas and demonstrated this by withholding their votes.

Martin Salter was instrumental in persuading all those Labour MPs to support Gurkhas. We cannot think of a politician who has done more for the Gurkhas’ cause than Martin Salter, since he espoused the cause and was elected as chairman of the all party Gurkha Rights Group, a group he helped form.

We steadfastly believe that no Gurkha will say anything against Martin Salter and that nobody who is aware of what has actually been happening would doubt his motives and actions on Gurkhas.

Martin Salter remains in a unique position to help Gurkhas and we continue to rely on him in the settlement debate.

Martin Salter has in the past few days continued to demonstrate his genuine and serious commitment to Gurkhas by taking the Veterans Minister Kevan Jones to task in the Home Affairs Select Committee and also by continuing to attack the wholly fictitious arguments the Ministry of Defence is trying to push on the Government. We think he deserves praise not criticism.

Laxmi Prasad Sharma,

Madan Kumar Gurung

Chandra Budhathoki,

Gyanraj Rai,

London Street,

Reading

.

well well

Rik Willis informs us about the new Reading LibDem leadership - they have let GIRLS do it this time, but perhaps more important than gender is whether they will work in coalition - I suspect they will, and in my view the sooner the better. I think they just text Rik from the meeting, as he always has it first.

Have been a little distracted lately as helping to look after a colleague and friend who has cancer, and this is kind of a new experience for me. Today I collected his prescriptions for him, which included a walking stick. Imagine. The rest of it was high-calorie food drinks to help him put on weight. You can be too thin.

Another, and much more trivial, distraction has been my attempts to book tickets on the Serbian Railways night train from Belgrade to Skopje (as you do) on Sunday night, and back again on Wednesday next. Cannot be done. Not electronically. After much struggle I discover this. My command of Serbian is limited but useful such as it is, as the Serbian language parts of the website (most of it) give far more information than the English does. Ho hum. We shall have to turn up in Belgrade on Sunday (germanwings from Stuttgart, excellent low cost airline, knocks the vile Ryanair into a cocked hat) not knowing how we are going to spend that night. Worse things happen at sea.

update: a very nice lady at Serbian Railways has just sent me the following email:

Dear Jane,
You can not reservation your tickets on our website or by telephone. You can reservation tickets 24 hours before travel to e-mail predrez@srbrail.rs Greeting!

Serbia has had a bad press. My brief visit to Belgrade in February showed me that.

Go Serbia!