THE INSIDER: A weekly update from the corridors of power (From Oxford Mail)

THE INSIDER: A weekly update from the corridors of power

10:00am Thursday 2nd February 2012 in Columns

‘IN my 10 years as Leader of the Council, I have led an unremitting war against sloppy use of English,” thundered county council leader Keith Mitchell on his Internet blog on Friday.

“I am about to admit defeat as I face the prospect of handing over the leadership without having made a sufficient shift in practice. Goodness knows why our school system has so comprehensively failed to maintain a decent respect for grammatical usage but it certainly has not.”

At least we have the Dear Leader to show us the path to grammatical and orthographical excellence for the next few months.

Well, up to a point, Lord Copper.

Back blogging just a day later, Mr Mitchell spelled “scam” as “skam” twice, talked about companies “seking” rather than “seeking” to levy fines, and offered a rather “altenative” spelling of “alternative”, Footballer Josh McEachran, who grew up in Kirtlington, has got involved in the Premier League’s drive to promote reading among young people.

The Chelsea midfielder, currently on loan at Swansea, has picked out his favourite books for children and grown-ups.

His choices were Mr Messy by Roger Hargreaves and El Diego by Diego Maradona.

For those of you not familiar with these particular titles, one of them is the tale of a small, irritating character who was constantly getting into scrapes and, in Josh’s words, “was always leaving a trail of messiness wherever he has been”.

The other was a fictional character for children, later made into a popular TV series narrated by Arthur Lowe.

We at Insider Towers always love this annual Premier League literary ritual – we’re just waiting for Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany to reveal that he is a big Stephen King fan, so we can see the headline ‘Kompany loves Misery’.

WANTAGE MP and Culture Minister Ed Vaizey leapt to the defence of BBC presenter and former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil when Mid Bedfordshire MP Nadine Dorries launched a House of Commons tirade against him last week, accusing Mr Neil of being “sexist” and “aggressive” on his weekly TV politics show This Week.

Mr Neil was, she said, “an ageing, overweight, orange toupee-wearing has-been”.

“Almost all those adjectives probably apply to me,” replied Mr Vaizey.

IT SEEMS that the rivalry between Oxford and Swindon has spilled off the football pitch and is starting to affect people’s health in the Wiltshire town.

Swindon GP Dr Sharon Shmueli has claimed that her town’s negative image makes it difficult to recruit new doctors.

Dr Shmueli said that for newly-qualified doctors looking for somewhere to live and work when they begin their career, Swindon would not be a popular choice.

“I think it would be at the bottom of your list. I think it is unfair to say that but I think people do have the wrong idea about Swindon,” she said.

“I think Swindon needs to change, it has a bad image, a bad centre and shopping.

“In Oxford, Swindon has a bad reputation anyway, and other places as well.”