• Some people have all the luck don't they? One such person, it would appear, is Oxford's Lord Mayor John Tanner, who came up trumps in a recent raffle not once, not twice, but three times.

    Mr Tanner's golden touch came during an Oxford-Leiden twinning dinner at Witney Lakes where his pink strip netted him a basket of fruit, a packet of Dutch biscuits and an oriental bag. The lucky man.

    You don't happen to know this week's Lottery numbers do you, John?

  • What Ed Vaizey knows about football could easily be written on the back of a postage stamp... or could it?

    Oddly, the Didcot Football Club president and Wantage MP wished England could be more like Scotland when it came to the beautiful game.

    Eh? Is this the same Scotland that lost on Euro 2008 qualification on Saturday?

    Mr Vaizey said: "The English are mildly ambivalent about Scotland at the moment, to put it mildly.

    "With a Scottish PM, a Nationalist parliament and a regular diet of stories about subsidies and sneering from north of the border, one could be forgiven for hoping Scotland would crash out of Europe.

    "Actually, my feelings were entirely the opposite. If only England could be more like Scotland - at least as far as football is concerned."

  • The revelation that not one single celebrity - from either the A or Z lists - had been approached to turn on this year's Christmas lights in Oxford has become something of a talking point in the city.

    Oxford City Council's grand switch on will be performed on Saturday by, er, the aforementioned Mr Tanner.

    However, one wag who visited the Oxford Mail's website - www.oxfordmail.co.uk - suggested that Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, who is due to speak at the Oxford Union on Monday, could do the honours.

    We think the correspondent was joking.

  • After the Oxford Mail revealed that just one of Oxfordshire County Council's 10-strong cabinet had bothered to visit a working academy school, tensions flared at Tuesday's fortnightly snooozeathon (the council's cabinet meeting).

    The decision-makers are set to allow Peers School, in Oxford, to be turned into an academy without knowing what a working one looks like.

    Rattled by the revelation, irate Michael Waine - the member for schools improvement - blasted the Press for not turning up to meetings - only to be told the press bench behind him was packed.

  • With house prices sky-high in Oxfordshire we are not convinced by the latest crime prevention drive by police.

    Brownies in Bicester studying for their crime prevention badge were paid a visit by Thames Valley Police crime reduction adviser David Campbell, who took them through the dos and don'ts of keeping their homes safe and secure.

    He said: "It's a time of year when opportunist burglars are out and about during the day and the evening searching for unlocked doors and open windows.

    "So I stressed this point, confident in the knowledge they will go home and pass the advice on to the rest of the family."