To Reading this morning for South Central Regional Conference at the wonderful, if somewhat seriously cramped, Oakwood Centre in Woodley. The first, opening, speaker was Sandra Gidley, MP for Romsey. The "Romsey Redhead" herself. She seemed to devote most of her speech to having a go at the Lib Dem parliamentary press operation for watering down anything any MP want to press release so it says nothing at all preferably by the sound of it, but certainly nothing "spikey".

Now, as a defence against charges that our MPs are invisible, even to us, that's one thing, but frankly I don't want to hear that sort of excuse even if it is correct. If it is correct then we should be getting new press officers perhaps. Or not constraining them as much. But it is none of our, South Central ordinary members', business. The Parliamentary Party has to sort this out, not us.

But then she said something that somewhat let the side down - that we should "stop banging on about Site Value Rating and Constitutional Reform" and speak about things that matter to real people. Huh? When last did you ever see a parliamentary party press release about PR, less still LVT/SVR?

I very much suspect that the last press release on SVR was one of Herbert Asquith's.

And frankly, since it is, though I say so myself, the single most important step towards economic and social freedom we could take, perhaps we should be talking about it in press releases. At least it would differentiate us from the anodyne bull turds coming from the red-blue parties.

But to suggest that we do too much of that and too little responding to other issues is just fantasy Sandra.