Local Lib Dems have reacted to plans by British Telecom to reduce the number of public telephone boxes in use around the country. They have urged Reading Borough Council to take part in a new BT scheme to adopt or sponsor a red phone box in the town.

Warren Swaine, the Lib Dem spokesperson for Culture and Sport, told us: "The loss of these iconic British cultural symbols is is going to hit people disproportionately and we ask the council to act now in the interests of local democracy. Without any 'phone boxes around, where are we going to hold our meeting to elect a new group leader?"

Full Council meeting 

[Mayor Enters]

Peter Jones:                    Now sit down. That's enough f***ing Oxbridge pleasantries.

Chris Harris:                  Those are curse words right?

Peter Jones:                    Kiss my sweaty balls you fat **** and shut it, or I'll hole punch your face.

Pete Ruheman:             I’ve been running this place with kid gloves for years... made with real kids.

Peter Jones                     Sorry Pete, you have got to go. You don't leave your boss spinning in the wind then burst in smelling like a pissed seaside donkey.

Pete Ruhemann:           I’m sorry everyone, the JAR report needed some serious spin by the PR department and I needed to slay that particular dragon before it got out of control.

Jo Lovelock                   I am not a monster!

Tony Page:                    Now, we are moving John Ennis to Children’s  Services which leaves us with a bit of a problem. We’ve run out of competent councillors. So Deborah, Jo wants you to take over housing. It’s an important job so talk to as few people as possible.

Andrew Cumpsty:        Well, I think that this just shows the complete disarray on the Labour benches. I would like to draw everyone’s attention to our one point plan to rescue Children’s Services.

Peter Jones:                    What’s that then you fat f***?

Andrew Cumpsty:        Sack the Tory spokesperson for Children’s Services. Er, is that right? Oh crap, I knew I should have rung Rob for instructions first. Rik help me out here?

Gareth Epps:                 Is there lobster on the menu? I smell bisque.

Tory HQ

[Tory strategy meeting, all present]

Rob  Wilson:                  It was a big part of our election campaign to save the King’s Meadow baths, so we need a carefully orchestrated plan of action to ensure that the blue rinse brigade are fully behind us. We’ve been telling them that the baths are safe in our hands and to vote for us. I’ve got the Kings Meadow campaign petition here. You’ve all signed it haven’t you?

All [in chorus]:               Yes

Rob Wilson:                   Good. Now let’s make sure that we deal the Labour party a bloody nose over this. They’re so desperate for section 106 money that they’ll back any development so we have a great chance to wrong foot them.

Rik Willis:                       Okay who’s on the Culture & Sport scrutiny panel? Tim Harris. Oh bollocks. Who put that little meet-puppet on there? Oh, it was me.

                                         Tim, I shall say this slowly so that you can understand what I am saying. It... is... important... that... you... don’t... let... the... developer... option... win. Got it?

Tim Harris:                    Yes, no problemo. I’ll skim read the documents in the meeting.

Culture & Sport Scrutiny

[Part way through, the vote is poised at 2-1 in favour of Kings Meadow Campaign]

Tim Harris:                    ...and sometimes to make peace you have to climb the mountain of conflict. Er, I’m abstaining because I haven’t read the papers, er, it’s a complicated decision and I’ve forgotten to write down which way Rob told me to vote. Crikey.

[Vote is now 3-2 in favour of Askett-Hawk]

Tom Stanway:              Oh, what the hell. We’ve lost the vote anyway. Go on, pave paradise and put up a two storey parking lot.

Back in Tory HQ

[Tory strategy meeting, all present]

Rob Wilson                    Crap, this is beginning to disentangle itself.  Let’s rework our Kings Meadow  Campaign support documents to fit in with our new position of not supporting it, whilst still pretending that we do. Now if we simply delete all references to support and just leave the caveats, then we should be okay.

Isobel Ballsdon:            You can’t just leave the caveats. It looks like we don’t support it anymore?

Rob Wilson:                   In the land of truth, the man with one fact is king. We’ll just make up the facts to fit our group line.

Andrew Cumpsty:        Why don’t we just keep delaying a decision on King’s Meadow until it falls down. We used it before as our strategy for the new Civic. Then we can call the builders in and look like we’re riding to the rescue.

Rik Willis:                       If it isn't Humpty Numpty sitting on the top of a collapsing wall like some clueless egg c***. This wall story is playing badly, there's a cartoon of you in here [holds copy of Evening Post] as a walrus.

Andrew Cumpsty:        A walrus? I'm not fat and I don't have a moustache. They've given me tusks. Look, we called some builders. They didn't turn up when they said they would.

Rik Willis:                       What did you expect? They're builders. Have you ever seen a film where the hero is a builder? No, because they never turn up in the nick of time. Bat-builder? Spider-builder? It's why you never see a superhero with a hod.

Rob Wilson:                   I'm giving this to someone else.

Labour HQ,  413 Oxford Road

John Howarth:                What have you f***ers been up to in my absence?

Tony Page:                    Well Jon, we’ve been following your plan to the letter. Find a popular cause then do the complete opposite.

John Howarth:                Are you mad? At the end of a war you need some soldiers left, or it looks like you've lost.

David Sutton:                Yeah, or you’ll feel a right tit?

John Howarth:                I thought we weren’t going to mention that again?

David Sutton:                No, we just agreed not to report it to the police.

Martin Salter:                Well, that’s it then. I’m f***ing not standing.  I’ve done everything I could to get the Asian vote short of blacking up and it’s not enough. I’m out of here.

to be continued...

Local Lib Dems have been blamed for the decision by Guardian Media Group to cut back the Reading Evening Post to just two editions per week.

A company statement said: "After the Lib Dems slashed Reading Borough Council's publicity budget for the next year, we had serious doubts on how the paper was going to be able to fill its copy with a drastic reduction on fatuous quotes from lead councillors to print. It makes the whole operation untenable."

A source close to the paper told us: "We'll have our revenge on the Lib Dems. If they thought being relegated to having a 'Second Person' piece on the council tax budget was bad, wait until we start putting all their press releases in 24Seven. No-one reads that!"

Two local Lib Dems have been branded a disgrace and asked to resign after laughing at a well loved grandfather. The duo were accused of a vicious attack on a defenceless old man and of ridiculing him public. Friends and family have asked for them to be disciplined and thrown out of the council chamber.

One senior Labour Party figure told us: "He was just a harmless old man, who never did anyone wrong and he was responsible for bringing a lot of laughter and joy into our lives with his bumbling antics and his funny voice. To laugh at him like that after all those years of bringing a smile to people's faces is a disgrace."

Councillors Warren Swaine and Daisy Benson were however unrepentant: "Look, we went to the Hexagon to see Russell Brand and he did a bit in his show about Andrew Sachs. It was funny, we laughed, we make no apology for that. Some people really have no sense of humour."

Long serving former Lib Dem councillor Bob Green was honoured by Reading after being made a Freeman of the Borough at a ceremony in the council chamber. The political groupings took it in turns to praise the former Lib Dem group leader and tell the same joke about Lib Dem amendments to motions. However, proceedings were livened up when, standing in for Tory leader Andrew Cumpsty, Tom Steele read out a poem to the council:

Roses are red, violets are blue
And apart from Bob Green, Lib Dems are poo.

Bob will now have the right to drive sheep over Caversham Bridge, but he told us: "I won't be exercising that right. I think the Tory Councillors should make their own way to council meetings."

News of Barack Obama's victory in the US Presidential election has lead to tributes being paid by townsfolk desperate to jump on a moving bandwagon. In his July tour of Europe Barack Obama came to within 2 miles of the town as he flew over Reading whilst returning to the States via Heathrow. Such close links with the town presented our features editor Anna Dinn with a headache as she spent the early hours of the morning scrambling around to fill as many column inches with tenuously linked stories as possible.

Local Lib Dems welcomed Obama's victory and pledged to carry on supporting his campaign for 2012 by telling their former Kentwood candidate to 'not come back' from his stint manning the phone banks.

The Conservatives, for their part, sent over the former leader of Wokingham council who offered his services if ever the President-Elect had a controversial planning application on green belt land that he'd like help promote against the wishes of the local population.

The local Labour Party were a little more cautious in their praise with Martin Salter telling our reporter: "This is a bad day for democracy. John McCain was quite right to denounce this left wing redistributor of wealth, I thought socialism was a discredited policy that had been stamped out across the world. It certainly has been in the Labour Party."

Bet Tickner has ridiculed the chair of Safer Reading, Lib Dem Daisy Benson for her amateurish approach to community safety and campaigning.

She told the Evening Post letters page: "A true professional politician, like myself, knows that whilst head of the Licensing Committee you should give garages a 24 hour licence, and then go out and spend the rest of your time collecting names on a petition to stop street drinking caused by giving a licence to a 24 hour garage. Until she learns to be completely two-faced about these things, she'll get nowhere in local politics."

Wokingham Conservatives have hit out at local Lib Dems after the party held their South Central regional conference at the Oakwood Centre in Woodley.

Local Tory councillor Keith Baker complained to the local press: "How dare they hire out a venue for the day and put up posters advertising it? I went down there to remonstrate with them about this abuse of their own funds and they had the cheek to kick me out for not having a Lib Dem membership.

"Then they have the audacity to invite their party leader to answer questions from members of the public in Reading Civic Centre that same evening. Heaven forbid that people should now expect a Tory leader to answer questions on policy unscripted. Conservatives firmly believe that when party leaders visit town they should be whisked away to private meetings with local multi-millionaires who are the only people who really understand the plight of ordinary citizens and kept as far away from the hoi polloi as possible. Once again the Lib Dems show that they don't really understand politics in this town."

Reading Conservatives have accused the Lib Dems of actively taking part in party politics. The vicious slur was delivered during a heated debate in the council chamber when local Conservatives repeatedly propped up the beleaguered Labour minority administration.

"It's a bloody disgrace," said Tory group leader Andrew Cumpsty. "Those bloody Lib Dems come in here and propose motions asking for things to be done during a political meeting. That's not how we do it around here. And it is outrageous that they should go out and talk to people, send out press releases and deliver leaflets, is that what politics has come to? Rubbish, politics is about using parliamentary allowances for political purposes and rich donors to spread lies on glossy paper whilst doing absolutely nothing that involves making a decision."

"If the Lib Dems weren't so naive they would know that the correct procedure is to refer all items back to the CCEA scrutiny panel where David Stevens will roll over, waggle his arms and legs in the air and vote with the Labour Party. That's the Tory way."

Former Reading Borough Council chief executive Tricia Haines has hit out at Lib Dem plans to make public servants earning more than £100,000 re-apply for their jobs. She told the Local Government Chronicle: "I'm not going to do all that work for no extra money. The pay scales for chief execs are the same as for everybody else. My pay went up 2.4% just like everybody else."

Council employees in Worcestershire are now hoping that as their chief executive is feeling their pain over such a miserly increase that this will mean that their salaries will also go up by 2.4% of £160,000 for the purpose of equatability.

As students flock back to town, new students starting at Reading University have been warned to beware of shady characters trading on their naïveté as the Freshers Fayre takes place in the Students' Union.

nuGay and nuLesbian Labour, Gay and Lesbian Tories Against the Whale and for the Bomb, the Far Too Damn Liberal If You Ask Me Democrats and the Greens will be fighting to prove to the new intake which one is the looniest party left in town. Already the Development and External Affairs Office has warned students to avoid the Lib Dems for holding an monthly 'Liberal Drinks' session which has been blamed on a spate of students knocking on doors over the past year.

The Highways Agency has also been preparing for the return of students by rushing through the last of the summer's road repair schemes before cone hunting season starts in Earnest, a small village to the south of the Whiteknights Campus.