DOES anyone else's heart sink with despair on hearing Christmas songs a good month-and-a-half before the actual event?

This year's award for premature celebration goes to Sports World, in Cowley, for preposterously pumping out Noddy Holder and company on the in-store sound system during the weekend just gone.

Our politicians should create a law against such practices.

THE fireworks display in Oxford's South Park on Saturday night was generally a reasonable affair, but for the £6 entry fee the thousands of people who braved the cold had a right to expect a little more for their money.

Granted, the fireworks lasted 20 minutes or so, but why wasn't the display set to music, for example?

No parade, no whipping the crowd into a frenzy, no fire until everyone had left...

And aside from a disappointing funfair, there was little else in the way of entertainment. Let's hope for better organisation next year.

CITY council chief executive Caroline Bull, just two months before she quits Oxford Town Hall, looks increasingly tired and as if she can't wait to get shot of leader John Goddard.

It's one of the worst kept secrets inside the Town Hall that the pair don't exactly see eye-to-eye, but boy, oh boy, the body language on Monday - at one of her last executive meetings - was cold to say the least.

FINANCE chief at the city council, Mark Luntley, could be forgiven for exploring new ways of digging up a few quid for the skint authority, but has he taken the hint literally?

The Insider only asks because he declared an interest during a meeting this week at which he revealed he was an allotment holder in Botley.

Clearly no-one has told him there is no such thing as a buried pot of gold.

TURNCOAT Labour city councillor Sajjad Malik's first executive board meeting was a big occasion.

The former Liberal Democrat councillor, who switched sides earlier this year, joined the big boys on Monday, but perhaps nerves got the better of him.

Our correspondent observed that his only notable contribution to proceedings was to munch his way through a couple of biscuits.

CONGRATULATIONS to Bernie Sanders - brother of Oxfordshire County Council's Green group leader Larry - who became the first independent socialist ever to be elected as a member of the United States Senate on Tuesday.

Bernie, 65, who represents the north-east US state of Vermont, now joins other luminaries in the pantheon of great socialists, alongside the likes of Fidel Castro and Karl Marx.

THAT Oxford City council is one of the highest spending district authorities (see Page 2) in the country may come as little surprise to some taxpayers, but consider this.

The authority is generally accepted to be hard-up, but all the while it is splashing out £110,000 a year to collect cash from car parks and leisure centres.

Go figure.