IT'S one in the eye for Labour after Peter Fisher, for 29 years a fully signed-up member of the party, intimated he was backing Green Party candidate Larry Sanders in today's Oxford City Council Lye Valley ward by-election.

Mr Fisher is, of course, the president of the NHS Consultants' Association, while New York City-born Mr Sanders is the chairman of the Keep Our NHS Public campaign.

STEVE Goddard, the Liberal Democrat candidate for the Oxford East constituency and perpetual writer of tenuous press releases, explains in his latest missive that Labour incumbent Andrew Smith is "running scared" of him ahead of the next General Election, which is still probably four years away.

Mr Goddard, seemingly unaware of his own party leader's shortcomings, gloats that the reason Mr Smith had been banging on doors recently and calling for Tony Blair to pack in being Prime Minister was to "save his skin at the next election".

Mr Goddard, you may recall, reduced Mr Smith's majority last year from 10,000 to less than 1,000 but, as you might have gathered, humility is not one of his strong points.

WE ALWAYS thought trying to get information out of Thames Valley Police was rather like trying to extract blood from a stone, but we thought we'd give it a go nevertheless.

Well, we really wish we hadn't bothered.

We asked a relatively simple question concerning the costs for policing every official visit by VIPs and royalty in Oxfordshire in the past two years.

But, somewhat worryingly perhaps, the cops did not seem to keep track of who they are meant to be protecting - well, judging from the response we got.

A spokesman said: "The information requested is not held routinely in a format or at the level you require on ICT systems used by Thames Valley Police."

AT LAST, we have another credible lookalike - Mags Mernagh and Belinda Carlisle. The exotically named Mags is Oxford City Council's new leisure services manager while Carlisle, pictured, is, of course, the leggy US pop singer.

Were they separated at birth, we wonder?

PRESS releases dispatched from the office of Oxfordshire Tory MEP Nirj Deva are usually thrown straight into the recycling box, but this one caught our eye.

In his latest missive Mr Deva appealed for the safe return of Marvin, a Labrador stolen last week in West London.

But why?

Well, apparently it belongs to his niece.

We shall, of course, keep you informed of his progress in tracing Marvin.

Hope he's got time to keep an eye on the Eurocrats of Brussels as well.