Wait... what’s this? Could 2010 be the year of the political comeback? After a barren few years in the political wilderness, news reaches The Insider that former Labour Oxfordshire county councillor Mick McAndrews is eyeing May as the date for a much-hyped return.

But will he be representing his former party?

Not very likely.

We understand that Scottish Mick is considering standing in the forthcoming city elections as an Independent, such is his fury over the Government’s bail out of the banks.

You heard it here first, folks.

A wrong street sign put up by Oxford City Council cost £126 to rectify, we learn. The Insider discovered the Town Hall had a Kenilworth Road sign made up instead of one for Kenilworth Avenue in East Oxford. Oops!

And that got us thinking.

What about St Giles or St Aldate’s – apostrophe or no apostrophe?

Walk into the latter from one end of the town and there is an apostrophe on the street sign, but approach the famous street from the opposite direction and it’s missing.

Where’s the sense in that?

Oxford City Council’s crunch budget setting meeting has been put back until Monday, February 22 while the authority eagerly awaits news on whether it will get back money lost in the Icelandic banking crisis.

The Labour-run council is expecting a £1.2m reimbursement for cash it lost in the Glitnir chaos and hopes news will arrive before the meeting.

If not, there is something of a sizeable hole to be filled.

Council tax increases, anyone?

You would have thought that if you had rubbish to get rid of, one of the best places to find yourself would be at Oxford City Council’s city works depot in Marsh Road, Cowley.

Well, not if this sign is anything to go by.

The Insider, desperate to offload a pocketful of waste, was left a little miffed when he spotted this sign inside the waste collection service’s headquarters.

Rather bafflingly it read: ‘Customer bins. Do not put rubbish in these bins.’ The Insider bumped into a rather rushed Oxford Lord Mayor Mary Clarkson near St Joseph’s Primary School in Headley Way, Headington, last week. And boy was she a woman on a mission.

Dressed in a fetching dayglo jacket and on her bike, we rather suspect she had left the school run a trifle too late.

Barely pausing for breath she said: “I’d better go – or my children will end up being taken into care.”