IT WAS good to see two of Oxfordshire’s political leaders coming together for the launch of the £75m Oxford Station masterplan last week.

Bob Price, the city council leader, and Ian Hudspeth, the county council leader have been jockeying for position over the issue of who should run Oxfordshire in recent months.

Mr Price claimed that Oxford should be a unitary authority while Mr Hudspeth said he wanted the whole of Oxfordshire to be unitary instead.

But thankfully the two are still happy to work together for the good of Oxford despite the political posturing.

Oxford Mail:

Bob Price and Ian Hudspeth at Oxford Station

  • SPEAKING of Mr Hudspeth, The Insider was interested to note that he was watching the demolition of the Didcot A cooling towers from a vantage point in Great Western Park. 

This is interesting because developer Taylor Wimpey had decided against allowing the public to view the demolition from the site because “the risk that significant amounts of dust might be blown over the area cannot be discounted”. 

Mr Hudspeth quite rightly chose to ignore this “advice” and turn up to Great Western Park bright and early anyway. 

It’s good to see someone showing health and safety bods at nPower exactly what they think of the nonsense rules and regulations.

  • THE Insider noticed a group of officials from the county council and the Environment Agency snooping around Oxford Mail towers recently. 

On further investigation, these visitors to Osney Mead were not plotting the downfall of your favourite local daily paper, but they were travelling along Oxford’s floodplain looking at potential routes for the Western Conveyance flood relief channel. 

This group, which had been ferried around on a county council minibus, had also visited Botley and Redbridge.