Having helped vanquish the Liberal Democrats from office at Town Hall, the city council's waste chief John Tanner has got his sights focused on ridding Oxford of another form of pest — rats.

The board member for a cleaner, greener Oxford is introducing a new £40,000 waste hit squad which residents can call out in order to clear up fly-tipping, overflowing bins and side waste during University term-time.

It is hoped the scheme will eliminate some of the food that rats are feeding on and help reduce the vermin population.

In announcing the scheme Mr Tanner dubbed himself the city's 'Mr Clean' but refused to label himself the Pied Piper of Oxford. I think most residents would be just as happy if Oxford's student population could be lured away with a magical pipe, rather than just the rats.

Council chiefs might well be tucking into a few more dinners in St Aldate's after Oxford City Council voted to bring the Town Hall catering contract back in-house.

Earlier this year there were complaints that parties of visitors from cities twinned with Oxford could not afford the prices being charged by the Bristol-based firm Fosters Event Catering.

Since Fosters took over the contract in May 2006, Oxford International Links Committee has said some visiting parties from towns including Bonn in Germany; Leiden in the Netherlands; Leon in Nicaragua; and Grenoble in France have had to be hosted at other locations, such as the North Oxford Community Centre.

In what is another example of public sector outsourcing gone wrong it must have been a source of great embarrassment that foreign dignitaries had to be shifted off to less salubrious locations.

When the council takes back control of the catering in November perhaps they should serve up some humble pie for the Town Hall bureaucrats who decided to outsource the contract in the first place.

Last week the Oxford Mail revealed that the city council had asked the Boundary Committee to look at enlarging the city's boundaries in order to help build 4,000 homes south of the city.

A day later it was announced that Oxfordshire had had its gloomiest summer since official weather records began in 1929.

Perhaps planning chiefs could help bring some much-needed sunshine to Oxford by requesting the city's boundaries be extended to Grenada, rather than just beyond Grenoble Road.