TOMORROW sees the arrival of the beleaguered French president in our county. Francois Hollande, pictured, will be coming to Oxfordshire for a summit with Prime Minister David Cameron.

To be honest, after days of press coverage about his love life, he could do with something else to focus on. Clearly, he needs some down time – and perhaps Mr Cameron can help.

But will the Witney MP be taking him to see some of the delights of his constituency, such as Burford High Street or Blenheim Palace? Non, is the answer.

Instead the summit will be taking place in the serious and relatively unlovely RAF Brize Norton.

Perhaps Mr Cameron wants to make a show of military strength. If so, we can only hope that the good servicemen and women of Brize are busy polishing their Hercules.

And while M. Hollande is in Carterton, he can pick up some reasonably priced alcohol at Aldi to take back to his partner. Whoops...

 

SPEAKING of our Prime Minister, this week it emerged engineers from a power company were called to his house in Dean after a power cut.

It was reported that two Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution engineers said they were carrying out emergency repairs in the village of Kirtlington when they were called to Dean and Mr Cameron, pictured, was given preferential treatment.

But whether or not that was the case, perhaps the most scandalous aspect of this was that the engineers were called to the Witney MP’s house to flip the trip-switch on his fuse box.

The Prime Minister may have gone to Eton, but basic electricity obviously wasn’t on the curriculum.

 

TODAY’S paper features the news that Oxford’s City Deal has been signed, promising £1.2bn of investment across the county. This can only be good news, but here at Oxford Mail towers we think that perhaps a bit more co-ordination would have been nice.

News that the City Deal had been signed filtered this way earlier in the week on the proviso that it was a strict secret until today.

But on Tuesday, Chancellor George Osborne, pictured, visited Begbroke to announce the “centrepiece” of the City Deal – £67m of funding.

This left a certain amount of confusion about whether the City Deal had been revealed or not. Do the people in power speak to each other?

Then Wantage MP and culture minister Ed Vaizey came to Milton Park to announce more funding, with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg coming today to officially sign the deal.

Someone somewhere must know what’s going on...