POLITICS is a fickle business, and so Oxfordshire County Council leader Ian Hudspeth may well be preparing for life after voters decide they are fed up with him.

Mr Hudspeth has been spotted all over the country scouting for public transport ideas he can import here, particularly trams and monorails. He seems to really like them.

Recently his tour of Britain has taken him to Birmingham – the second city. The Tory was spotted at the helm of a tram while visiting the Midlands last week – however, he seemed a bit bemused by the lack of a steering wheel.

Maybe we will see him one day jovially steering a packed monorail into a traffic-free Oxford.

That wasn’t a pig that just flew over, was it?

  • SUMMER brings the quite appalling sight of politicians pretending to look like normal human beings, usually dressed in things like shorts and trendy T-shirts. Ugh.

Fortunately, while council leaders such as Oxford City Council's Bob Price have gone on holiday, The Insider has been spared pictures of him idly gawping at fish. It also means Oxford Mail readers will not be subjected to long articles which examine our politicians’ choice of summerwear.

Elsewhere, though, the people of West Oxfordshire know only too well what their MP’s holiday wardrobe looks like. And what his favourite type of fish is.

  • OXFORD’S Labour Party appears to be a little unhappy with the national party’s policy offering.

In a submission to the party’s national policy review on its Your Britain website, the Oxford East and Oxford West and Abingdon Constituency Labour Parties have said the party’s economic offering is “wishy-washy” and “contains anodyne general statements that mean little in practice”.

With Labour struggling to maintain a consistent lead in the polls over the Conservatives, the party will surely need its grassroots on side as campaign fever ratchets up.

The Insider looks forward to seeing how enthusiastically Oxford’s Labour councillors pound the streets in the coming months if the party’s policy doesn’t budge.

  • LOOKING after the inmates of HMP Bullingdon, near Bicester, must require a lot of attention to detail.

So The Insider was unnerved to find out that a man who admitted to voyeurism had his sentencing adjourned because prison officers spelt his name wrong.

Philip Harper, 45, of Edinburgh Way, Banbury, pleaded guilty to one count of the offence and breaching his Asbo on August 17 last year.

But he was not brought to Oxford Crown Court this week because prison officers could only find a Phillip Harper and thought they couldn’t possibly be the same person.

Thank God they’re prison officers, not detectives.