If it wasn’t for a furious Thames barbel on the end of my fishing rod, I probably wouldn’t have spent 13 years as Labour MP. Let me explain…

The last speech that I made as a Member of the House of Commons came at the end of what some have called the Manure Parliament, at a time when the stench of corruption and personal greed has overwhelmed the good that MPs of all parties try to do and the reasons why the vast majority of us came into politics in the first place.

Labour’s angling spokesman Martin Salter, who is standing down at the General Election, has made a final call for better controls on numbers of otters and cormorants to ensure “a sustainable balance between predators and prey”.

MPs from opposite sides of the House of Commons have joined forces this week to call upon the Government to drop plans for the £23 billion Severn Barrage on environmental grounds. Labour MP Martin Salter (Reading West) and Conservative MP Charles Walker (Broxbourne) have published a detailed 90 page report covering the history and background to the barrage project with an examination of less damaging alternatives.

Reading West MP Martin Salter made his final Commons speech on Wednesday 7th April 2010, the day before Parliament was prorogued for the 6th May General Election. Mr Salter thanked Reading and District Labour Party for choosing him as a candidate on no fewer than seven occasions for both the Parliamentary and Reading Borough Council seats. He was successful in six of the seven contests and leaves a notional Labour majority of nearly 5,000 in his constituency.

There have been many casualties of last year’s MPs’ expenses scandal, from those who employed family members in non-jobs, to those who aspired to palatial living quarters for their mallards and hankered after a new wide-screen TV on the taxpayer.

Perhaps it’s because I’m neither a candidate nor an organiser for the first time in over 20 years that this seems to me to be the bleakest and most uninspiring contest yet. Public disenchantment with the two main parties is at a record high, and both sides are offering a prospectus of massive cuts to tackle the budget deficit leaving themselves very little wriggle room to paint the picture of the glad, confident, yes-we-can, morning of hope and promise to woo the voters to their cause.