Just a quick update on our Reading East fundraising. We have now sold 25 election bonds to cover our £500 deposit -- which every candidate/party has to pay to stand in the general election, you get it back if you get over 5% of the vote -- in Reading East. Thanks to everyone who bought one!

The next challenge is to raise funds to cover the Freepost leaflet. This is the leaflet that the Royal Mail will deliver for free to every house in the constituency -- which is a massive saving on paying to post the leaflet. However, you still have to pay to get the leaflet printed. This will be a really important part of our campaign to spread our message "Fair is worth fighting for!" -- creating jobs, alternatives to cuts and protecting and improving the NHS -- to everyone in the constituency. So the next challenge is to raise £600 to cover this. All donations welcome, you can give via PayPal -- in the right-hand column of the website -- or by posting a cheque payable to Reading Green Party to 22 Cumberland Rd, Reading, RG1 3LB.

I have put a meter in the right-hand bar to show how we are doing and got the ball rolling with a £20 donation.

As someone on a low income I am always interested in ways to save money. A while ago I discovered that you can get a cheap -- £8 -- massage from Thames Valley University's students on Crescent Road who are on a relevant course. It took me a while to try this out, but I got down there earlier this week. After a short assessment, I got a very relaxing massage! Recommended.

In my capacity as Parliamentary candidate for Reading East I have just signed the action for children pledge:

"Early intervention is the best form of child protection and the best way of making sure children thrive. In the UK we spent too much time and money picking up the pieces when it's too late. This has to change and we need your help to make it happen."

This is well and truly at the centre of the Green Party Parliamentary campaign under the slogan "Fair is worth fighting for!". Unfortunately this will be one of the areas which suffers under the "swingeing cuts" being proposed by the three main parties as positive programmes such as Sure Start face cuts to budgets.

Councillor Jon Hartley in Park Ward seems to be in a spot of bother. Allegedly he has been failing to turn up to important meetings and may have misled the Council.

I would say maybe he had not been attending some of the council meetings because he was busy with casework. However as my recent Freedom Of Information Request has shown, at less than one item per month this is not the case.

If it is shown that Councillor Hartley has deliberately misled the Council then he should resign. Otherwise he will need one almighty grovelling apology!

Above Caroline Lucas and below Peter Tatchell at the launch of the Green Party 2010 LGBT manifesto in Brighton.

Our Green Party fund-raiser quiz went well bringing £50 into the campaign. It was an enjoyable evening -- even though I am rubbish at quiz questions! The live fiddle music and singing was especially good.

However, we are still a good £700 short of funds for the Reading East campaign! If you've got any fundraising ideas for us -- and more importantly time to put them into practice -- let me know. Alternatively you can always make a donation and encourage friends and family to do the same via our PayPal donate link on the right.

This year's council tax debate appears to have been another farce.

Apparently the Tories were in the loo or something for a key vote, which meant the Labour Party had a majority in the chamber and could vote through whatever they wanted. However, earlier in the evening when the Tories were in the chamber debating they were calling for a totally unrealistic freeze on Council tax which would have surely meant cuts in local public services.

On the one hand the Labour government has shafted local councils by cutting money given to them. But on the other hand politics is the art of the possible and if you simply say that you are going to freeze Council tax because the government isn't properly funding councils, then you will have no choice but to cut public services, and as always it will be the poor and vulnerable that suffer.

I would usually parcel out some of the blame to the Liberal Democrats saying "if you don't like the Labour budget, then why don't you get together with the Tories and pass your own budget" but with the high levels of incompetency within the Tory ranks I just don't think this would have been possible.

So we have ended up with a council tax rise of 2.2%.

I just got the latest statistics through on councillor activity -- the number of items of work each councillor has put through the system they use to get answers to questions from officers and request repairs for residents. Of particular interest to me is Park Ward, which is where I will be standing in the local elections on May 6. I was amazed to see that for the period July 2009 to February 2010 the local councillors had been so inactive:

Shirley Merriott (Labour) -- 2 (0.25 per month)
Jon Hartley (Labour) -- 4 (0.5 per month)
Wazir Hussain (Tory) -- 26 (3.25 per month)

I looked back through my activity reports and for the same period I have done over 150 items of casework (19 per month) off the back of our year-round doorknocking. I think Jon and Shirley should be handing back their £8,000 each of councillor allowances! In terms of value for money Shirley is receiving £4000 for each item of casework!

For the full results click here.

Please use the comments to tell me what you want us to fight for in Reading East.

At the Green Party national conference last weekend I recorded a short video about myself and the Green Party.

I just had my first filling in 10 years. It wasn't as painful as I feared it might be. No injection needed this time -- which as I remember was the most painful bit last time. Although there was a £40 pain to my wallet.

This got me on to thinking about the dire situation of NHS dentistry. Last time I was looking for somewhere to register I couldn't find any NHS dentists in #rdg who were taking on patients. In the end the Castle Hill Clinic opened up offering a mix of NHS and private dentistry, so I signed up. I've also recommended this practice to a reasonable number of people who were in a similar position of not being able to find an NHS dentist taking on patients close to them.

The Green Party is calling for major improvements to NHS dental care to ensure that everyone has access to basic dentistry. Under Green proposals, expensive dental fees would be scrapped, basic dental care would be free and dentists would be given the resources they need to ensure equal access for all.

Fair is worth fighting for.

Just bought a map from WHSmith. They are now charging 1p a bag. This got me back to thinking about the campaign for Reading to get rid of free plastic bags. Other retailers that I can think of who charge are: True Food Co-op, RISC and Sea Spray. Well done to all of them! Can anyone think of anyone else? Please add as a comment and then we can get them some publicity.

We still don't have the doorstep food and glass collections, or an increase in the range of plastic recycling in Reading that we have been campaigning for. But two small steps forward have recently been made with free electrical goods collections and a waste cooking oil collection point at the Civic Amenity Site .

Yet again Go Green week -- run by the Student's Union at Reading University -- has been a great success. Well done to everyone involved in organising it this year.

I attended the Copenhagen 'where next?' panel debate with other Parliamentary candidates on Thursday and spoke of the need for a broad movement of people from unionists, to church groups, to residents' associations to educate and build the pressure for action on climate change.

On Sunday I attended the community cleanup and litter picked Grange Avenue with students and other volunteers. We produced a good few bags of rubbish and residents commented that we were doing a good job.

Just got this picture through from Green Parliamentary candidate for Reading West Adrian Windisch who is at the AWE blockade protesting against the billions which will be wasted upgrading Trident.

I saw a piece on the television this morning about the Robin Hood Tax and I was thinking how similar it was to the Green Party Tobin Tax policy, when they said they had renamed the tax to one with a more appealing name. Basically, bank transactions not directly involving customers -- a bank to bank transaction for example -- are taxed at a very low rate, 50p per thousand pounds for example to dampen down the global casino economy and raise funds for worthy projects such as ending child poverty at home and abroad.

In my capacity as a school governor at Alfred Sutton school, I visited the school to check out the school meals today. It was roast day so my colleague went for the beef and I tried the vegetarian option, a very tasty lentil loaf, both came with roast potatoes, vegetables, home-made bread and gravy and were followed by a fruit salad. 10 out of 10 for taste and 9 out of 10 for presentation.

Following on from Jamie Oliver's campaign school dinners now taste better and are healthier for you. However, a lot of children bring packed lunches and these often contain a large proportion of sugary, salty, fatty snacks. Changing hats, the Green Party would like to see every child offered a free school meal funded by the government to ensure that each child has at least one healthy meal a day, helping to improve their health and life chances.

Council meetings -- 3
Community meetings and events -- 6
Enquiries and requests for repairs from residents -- 22

Action
-- Lobbied for Council action on the number of people on the council house waiting list.
-- Supported Unison's Million Voices campaign to protect public services.
-- Asked the police and council to look into cars parking on the Wokingham Road pavement.
-- Continued to press for better lighting on the Kennet tow path and at Kennet Mouth.
-- Supported Talfourd Road residents in resolving traffic problems on the road

Results
-- Helped the Jolly Anglers pub get its premises licence back.
-- Got the Council to safeguard the Thames Valley University playing fields by removing them from the Sites Allocation Document.

We are having a fundraiser quiz/social as part of Fairtrade fortnight.

Thursday 25th February 7.15 for 7.30 pm
at RISC (conference hall) 35-39 London Street, Reading, RG1 4PS.

Part of Reading Fair Trade fortnight

We’ll have teams of five, and you can either come in a team or join a team on the night. Bring your friends, relations and work colleagues.

In the interval sit back and be entertained by local musicians and our special guests, folk duo Louisa Davies-Foley and Pete Churchill from Birmingham.

Prizes, raffle, stalls.

Entry costs £5 waged, £2.50 unwaged. Please book in advance – we need an idea of numbers.

Help the local Greens stand three candidates in the General Election.

Support the campaign to get Rob White elected in Park Ward.

To book places and for further information please contact Rob on: bobby.blanc@gmail.com

With the local elections just three months away the LibDem candidate for Park Ward Alex Kirke has appeared on the radar just in time. No doubt as happened in 2008 there will now be a forest's worth of LibDem propaganda claiming to be best placed to win the ward even though their vote has fallen in Park at the last three local elections resulting in them finishing fourth last time.