It was my sad duty to say goodbye to a much loved figure in Tilehurst and West Berkshire this week. On Monday I attended the funeral of Brian Dowding, the former Westwood councillor. Brian was elected to the old Newbury District Council in 1973 as an Independent, later joining the Liberal Democrats and becoming their group leader for a while. He was an active member of Tilehurst Parish Council and was personally responsible for the creation of the Calcot recreation ground which would be blighted forever if the dreadful Blue Living proposals were approved at Pincents Hill by West Berkshire Council. Brian was a man of great humour, integrity and energy who put far more back into life than he ever took out. He was someone who went into politics for all the right reasons and who will be sorely missed.

It’s been a fairly hectic period, notwithstanding the very welcome May Bank Holiday weekend which saw my beloved Reading Royals fail to take advantage of a wonderful opportunity to get back into the Premiership without suffering the vagaries of the playoffs. Last Monday saw me raising the issue of Labour’s expansion of nursery provision in Reading and Berkshire on the floor of the House, on Tuesday I was at Home Affairs Committee hearing powerful evidence from the mother of murdered London teenager Stephen Lawrence, before chairing a meeting of environmental organisations concerned about water quality in Britain.

This being Budget week there’s half a chance that Westminster will actually get back to discussing policies rather than personalities. I am heartily sick of getting phone calls from national journalists inviting me to slag-off my fellow MPs for claiming for a second home when they represent constituencies closer to the House of Commons than Reading West. I’ve also been disgusted by the depths to which people in all political parties are now prepared to sink in order to smear their opponents. In my view the advent of political blogging has been a major factor in dragging politics further into the gutter as it has become a licence for some to smear and libel those they disagree with or dislike with impunity. I look forward to the day when some of these self-appointed supremos of the political blogosphere have to justify themselves and the lies and rumours they spread in a court of law.

The battle to save Naomi House Hospice in neighbouring Hampshire has stepped up a gear. In fact, I’ve been undertaking the Parliamentary equivalent of a war on all fronts in an effort to get the Government to agree to establish a hardship fund to assist Naomi House following the freeze of £5.7 million assets due to the Icelandic banking collapse. Last week I led a cross-party delegation of MPs to put the case to charities Minister Kevin Brennan who seems supportive of the idea, but stressed that we’d have to get it past the Treasury.

Wednesday

Thank you Keith for your kind words and for asking me to host this historic visit of the Revd Jackson to my constituency here in Reading West.

I’m not one of Parliament’s regular foreign travellers but last Wednesday, due to bad diary planning, my carbon footprint expanded alarmingly. I woke up in Prague - an even more lovely city than Reading - as part of a Home Affairs Committee delegation ready to meet with the Czech parliamentarians and voluntary organisations concerned with the trafficking of young women and drugs across Europe.

Apologies for “going missing” for the last couple of issues but Tackle and Guns had some space problems and I lamentably failed to meet a copy deadline. This column will now be bi-monthly so hopefully I will still be able to keep T&G readers up to speed with developments in Parliament which affect shooting and fishing.

It’s a funny old job, being an MP. One moment I’m getting the mickey taken out of me for my sometimes base and fruity use of the English language in all its glorious Anglo-Saxon forms and the next I find myself invited to become a patron of the Campaign for Courtesy!

I would like to start by thanking people for the hundreds of letters and emails that I’ve had from right across Reading wishing me well following my announcement that I would be stepping down at the next election after 25 years of public life in Reading.