WE are all for efficiency, but the sight that greeted us in Headington the other day beggared belief.

Traffic enforcers on mopeds. No, seriously.

Patrolling the streets were traffic wardens riding around on bikes – with L-plates on.

We all know that Oxfordshire County Council could do with a extra few bob, but seriously.

THE Oxford Mail’s Giles Sheldrick gets everywhere. We understand he recently ventured up to the Black Boy pub in Old High Street, Headington, probably to get a meal and a few pints on his expenses account.

We only suggest as such because we’ve never heard of ‘Giles Hendrick, Oxford Mail’ – the scribe which the establishment have attributed a slab of purple prose to, on their menu.

THANK heaven for small mercies, one regular correspondent confided in me this week.

County council elections don’t usually proffer this sort of response, so I was eager to find out why this individual was so pleased the once-every-four-year event had come round so quickly.

It transpires that because the elections are on June 4, from now until then councillors are no longer allowed to appear on any County Hall publicity material or press releases.

And that, dear reader, means Keith Mitchell – the leader of Oxfordshire County Council, above – has been forced to suspend his blog, which appears intermittently on the county council website.

SOMEtimes it is difficult to help people to help themselves. A couple of weeks back the rather surprising news broke that Forbes magazine had rated Burford, the leafy Cotswold idyll, as the sixth best place to live in Europe.

What good news. What a boost this could be to local tourism.

Forget Rome, Barcelona and the rest, book up a trip to Burford, right.

Unfortunately when the Oxford Mail tried to get the local tourism representatives to wax lyrical about this unexpected, yet surely welcome, publicity break, there was a little reticence.

‘Who are Forbes?’ was the query that came back.

Well, only a well-respected American business bi-weekly publication founded 92 years ago. Lucky for Burford, the magazine had at least heard of them!