people of Woodley!

you may have missed the recent gems penned by former Labour councillor, former lead councillor for transport in Reading and now recipient of fat contracts from Reading Borough Council for, er, transport, yes I mean J. Howarth Esq. prop. Public Impact Ltd (remember "Your Better Off With Labour"?) - so while he portrays himself these days as non-party-political, he is clearly not.  He has chosen to mention Woodley in one of the sudden rash of blogposts which have appeared in recent days, and he describes it in the following way:

Woodley, an eastern suburb

Oh dear.  Oh dear oh dear.  He doesn't know Woodley, that man, does he?  When you vote on Thursday, people of Woodley, remember that.

prediction

from The Times, widely reproduced around the blogs:

has Lib Dems in a very distant second place for Reading East with a 15% chance of winning the seat. Labour are third with a 5% chance and the Tories are a near certainty with a 77% chance of winning.
In Reading West, Labour are a bit stronger, and the Tories and Lib Dems a bit weaker, but the Tories are still ahead with a 65% chance of winning the seat.
Labour look like facing almost complete wipe-out in the South of England outside of London. If you draw a line from the Wash to the Bristol Channel, or indeed anywhere below Coventry, and look south of it, it looks like the will hold onto Luton North, Slough, two seats in Southampton, two seats in Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth Moor View, and only three of those look like safe seats.


Why is Labour "a bit stronger" in Reading West than East?  Anyone?  Perhaps more interestingly, in terms of the council elections in Reading, why has Labour got nothing positive to say despite more than 20 years of controlling the council and for 13 of those years having an MP as the paid lobbyist for Reading Borough Council?  Why do they just put out false propaganda about their opponents, especially in Abbey Ward, where Tory Tickner may not save her seat by pretending, as she has for years now, to be the Tory she is inside.  Incidentally, if anyone meets her on the street in the next few days they may wish to ask her to back up the claim she made, in an email to me, that the "rapaciousness of African men" is the cause of the high incidence of HIV in much of Africa.
All this, and Basher puts a picture of Mr D.P. Singh and other Sikh men up on his website, so I had to look (becomes thoughtful) and then informs us that on Saturday afternoon he went canvassing with Anneliese.  Canvassing?  Five days before polling day?  Canvassing?  What precisely were they going to do with any data gained from that?  Five days before polling day canvassing is finished.  Has to be.  Literature is going out, last-minute blitzing of PEOPLE YOU KNOW ABOUT is being organised.  They have lost it.

In the name of God, go.

we will bury you

I wasn't going to post this, which is from Ben at Harry's Place (look away now, Anonymous 1129 previously, the poster might be one of DA JOOZ, not that you would know from its content) but now I have.  It is about the Guardian.

Tory Tickner pants on fire

 Was posts the following quote from a Reading Labour "Abbey Matters":

Beware - Resident's parking Under Threat from Reading Tories and Liberals

We know it is  Reading Labour because of the mistake in it (apostrophe, people, apostrophe, what, are we all greengrocers on this blog?)


I know this is a lie and I do not live in Reading.  Neither of those parties has that policy.  Was says he is minded to sue.  Well, I hope someone does.

liberal interventionism

we know what that is, don't we people?  Norm says he is voting Labour, and this is one of the reasons he gives:

Labour is the party most closely associated with the doctrine of liberal interventionism, a doctrine which should be supported.

Hallelujah.  Yes they are and yes it should.  The alternative is - democracy, human rights and the rule of law just for white folks who read the Guardian, which is an obscenity.  So, if you are minded to vote Tory on Thursday, ask your candidate what they think about liberal interventionism.  How would they have voted on Iraq for example if they had been in the House in 2003, or how did they vote if they were.  Expect them to tell you the truth, and hold them to it.

my sentiments exactly

As so often, Oliver Kamm puts my views better than I can.  Here he is on Gordon Brown and next week's election:

This is a feeble, unimaginative, incompetent and intellectually incurious Prime Minister, whose hapless, cynical and dysfunctional government has debased the notion of public service, coarsened public life and forfeited any claim to public respect, and I shall be voting for its return to office next Thursday. 


My reason for voting Labour (in fact I already have, by post), is, apart from the fact that Kate Hoey is an excellent MP with a commendably independent turn of mind and is one of the very few on the Labour benches to speak out about the atrocities in Zimbabwe, that a Tory government would keep Britain out of the euro.  This is similar to Oliver Kamm's view, though I would not presume to speak for him.  I doubt that this view is shared by many UK voters however.  And yes, I know that no party, including the LibDems, has pledged to take the UK into the eurozone. 

electioneering by His Master's Voice

published yesterday in His Master's Voice, though not visible today on their website.  This "story" features the former MP Martin Salter and the former leader of Reading Borough Council, Dictatorship Dave "moronic members of the public" Sutton and some schoolchildren, who say they would like to have summer camps for Whitley children.  But there is no story.  They campaigned for these camps last year.  They have not yet got them.  The only reason to publish this picture is to get their precious boy into the paper.  If Mr Salter held some actual position in the community there might be some justification for printing a picture of him, though even then it would  be questionable in the middle of a general election campaign.  But he does not.  In his final message to constituents he thanks the Reading Evening Post for all their support, as well he might.  Mr Murrill found it easier than journalism.  Now tell us Murrill why you published this in mid-election campaign.