Rob "Family Man" Wilson seems to have been particularly busy recently. Must make organising Christmas lunch tricky, no wonder he needs a three bird roast, fnarr fnarr! [Who let Finbar Saunders in? Ed]

But we digress. What is a photocall in Reading without our favourite visiting attic dweller? See if you can spot her!

Tory councillors on the Civic Board have put forward a radical suggestion to solve the problem of how to pay for the new civic offices.

Their planning spokesperson without portfolio told us: "It is clear that the council has not done enough to bring into use other sites owned by them in the town centre before commissioning designs for new offices in Hosier Street. We've had a good look around the town and there are empty council building's all over the place. One in particular has been lying derelict and severly under-utilised for centuries and we owe it to the people of Reading to bring it back into use. There is no reason why with a lick of paint the abbey ruins couldn't be renovated. Just think of the money we'd save on building materials, there's loads just lying around."

Tory plans for the new civic include a serfs entrance, a supplicants gallery for the public to view council meetings and a villeins reception for those late paying their council tax.

The Local Government Association has compiled a banned list of the 200 worst uses of jargon by its members. Ms Eaton of the LGA said: "Why do we have to have 'coterminous, stakeholder engagement' when we could just 'talk to people' instead?"

This outbreak of common sense hasn't gone down well with all officers and the Labour group are said to be unhappy that voters may at last find out what they have been getting up to with their money. However, Reading Borough Council has pledged to remove the offending gobblegook from their reports and documents as part of this year's budget cutting exercise and has said that this alone could halve the amount of paper used and shorten scrutiny meetings by 90 minutes.

The 'banned' words:

Across-the-piece, Actioned, Advocate, Agencies, Ambassador, Area based, Area focused, Autonomous, Baseline, Beacon, Benchmarking, Best Practice, Blue sky thinking, Bottom-Up, CAAs, Can do culture, Capabilities, Capacity, Capacity building, Cascading, Cautiously welcome, Challenge, Champion, Citizen empowerment, Client, Cohesive communities, Cohesiveness, Collaboration, Commissioning, Community engagement, Compact, Conditionality, Consensual, Contestability, Contextual, Core developments, Core Message, Core principles, Core Value, Coterminosity, Coterminous, Cross-cutting, Cross-fertilisation, Customer, Democratic legitimacy, Democratic mandate, Dialogue, Direction of travel, Distorts spending priorities, Double devolution, Downstream, Early Win, Edge-fit, Embedded, Empowerment, Enabler, Engagement, Engaging users, Enhance, Evidence Base, Exemplar, External challenge, Facilitate, Fast-Track, Flex, Flexibilities and Freedoms, Framework, Fulcrum, Functionality, Funding streams, Gateway review, Going forward, Good practice, Governance, Guidelines, Holistic, Holistic governance, Horizon scanning, Improvement levers, Incentivising, Income streams, Indicators, Initiative, Innovative capacity, Inspectorates, Interdepartmental, Interface, Iteration, Joined up, Joint working, LAAs, Level playing field, Lever, Leverage, Localities, Lowlights, MAAs, Mainstreaming, Management capacity, Meaningful consultation, Meaningful dialogue, Mechanisms, Menu of Options, Multi-agency, Multidisciplinary, Municipalities, Network model, Normalising, Outcomes, Outcomes, Output, Outsourced, Overarching, Paradigm, Parameter, Participatory, Partnership working, Partnerships, Pathfinder, Peer challenge, Performance Network, Place shaping, Pooled budgets, Pooled resources, Pooled risk, Populace, Potentialities, Practitioners, Predictors of Beaconicity, Preventative services, Prioritization, Priority, Proactive, Process driven, Procure, Procurement, Promulgate, Proportionality, Protocol, Provider vehicles, Quantum, Quick hit, Quick win, Rationalisation, Rebaselining, Reconfigured, Resource allocation, Revenue Streams, Risk based, Robust, Scaled-back, Scoping, Sector wise, Seedbed, Self-aggrandizement, Service users, Shared priority, Shell developments, Signpost, Single conversations, Single point of contact, Situational, Slippage, Social contracts, Social exclusion, Spatial, Stakeholder, Step change, Strategic, Strategic priorities, Streamlined, Sub-regional, Subsidiarity, Sustainable, Sustainable communities, Symposium ­­, Synergies, Systematics, Taxonomy, Tested for Soundness, Thematic, Thinking outside of the box, Third sector, Toolkit, Top-down, Trajectory, Tranche, Transactional, Transformational, Transparency, Upstream, Upward trend, Utilise, Value-added, Vision ­, Visionary, Welcome, Wellbeing, Worklessness,

Our intrepid reporter drove into the wilds of Tilehurst after a tip-off that the notoriously secret Liberal Club were planning a meeting. This secret "club" is a complete unknown apart from their registered details at Companies House which names several prominent local Lib Dems and in their articles of association refers to the sinister objective of "advancing Liberal Democracy".

This major doner to the local Lib Dems has come under close scrutiny because they do not get funds from people with money in off-shore tax accounts in the Cayman Islands, use front companies to funnel money in from central American republics or receive monies from executives in major banks implicated in the sub-prime mortgage scandals or major accountancy and consultancy firms. This is just not the way politics is done in this country and has raised serious suspicions amongst seasoned political watchers.

Our reporter believes he has discovered the source of their funding after attending a "Chinese Evening". Clearly a large source of their funds is channeled to the party through Chinese resturants and is bona fide evidence of these loony lefties being financed by a communist plot. He saw delivery of many foil containers taken out from cool boxes, the contents of which we can only hazard a guess at. We suspect it was funding provided by the Chinese state in a bid to undermine the British electoral system which being based on wealth and patronage is anathema to their communist masters. But it could have been sweet and sour pork. We may never know.

Also seen during this secretive gathering were bizarre rituals involving handing over money for small coloured and numbered pieces of paper took place and members of the club were seen to be offered bribes in the form of prizes in exchange for some of these these pieces of paper.

Present at the event was Gareth Epps who we believe to be the mysterious "Group Leader". Dressed in what we believe to be his ritual outfit which he referred to as a "Welsh rubgy shirt", he was heard to thank the assembled for their continued support. His speech was met with rapturous applause from this unaccountable body and proof that they are plotting to overthrow the current regime through that discredited democratic device, the ballot box.

Our next planned report is on the local Tory party finances, but Lord Ashcroft says he's not telling us anything so that's that then.

Plans by Ricky Gervaise to turn his experiences of Reading into another hit have been dashed by the Prudential after they refused him permission to use their name. Gervais, the former Ashmead School pupil who has not set foot in the town since scraping together enough money for a train ticket out of the place, announced plans last year to make a feature film and sitcom called "The Men From The Pru".

Ricky told us about the news: "It's a shame. I think making a film about staff at the Pru has plenty of comedy potential. Loses because of investing in mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations and trying to build houses on a floodplain are just too funny for words and just two of the ideas that Stephen and I were exploring.

"It also goes without saying that after Slumdog Millionaire's success, everyone now wants to make films based in India: it's become today's new Holocaust movie as far as the Oscars go. The life of two men in the Pru's call centre would be painfully hilarious as they pretend to be John from Manchester."

Local Labour Party officials have denied reports that Alistair Darling snubbed a meeting with local Labour Parliamentary campaigner Anneliese Dodds during his vist to Reading and have released a picture of her talking about the credit crunch with the Chancellor to prove it.

Lib Dem leader Gareth Epps has denied falling victim to triumphalism after the Lib Dem budget was passed by Reading Borough Council.

Speaking at the Retreat public house, he told the assembled press: "Kier Hardy! Neil Kinnock! Harold Wilson! Jim Callaghan! Clement Attlee! Aneurin Bevan! Tony Blair! Gordon Brown - can you hear me, Gordon Brown! Your boys took one hell of a beating! Your boys took one hell of a beating!"