AS our readers already know, The Insider reports from the corridors of power. But we would like to break with tradition and report from corridors which were disturbingly without power.

County Hall was hit by a power failure on Tuesday which left someone stuck in the lift for 20 minutes.

The administration has refused to name the individual who got stuck, so speculation is rife.

One rumour is that it was a desperate attempt to keep certain opposition councillors out of the afternoon’s cabinet meeting.

But a more realistic thought is that someone probably wanted to get out of having to go to the meeting, so arranged for the power to trap them.

If only Southern Electric hadn’t been so quick to respond, maybe the plan would have worked.

CLEARLY director of public health Jonathan McWilliam has some concerns about Government NHS policy he doesn’t really want to share with the electorate.

But while he was presenting a report to Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, Dr McWilliam, right, made his views very clear.

As he was summing up, he made a reference to the “breaking-up of the NHS” being carried out by Government, but quickly corrected himself, and said he had meant “changes”.

I’m not sure if Dr McWilliam got the memo through Conservative colleagues (there are plenty of them at County Hall), but the Government doesn’t particularly want people to find out its plans to break up the NHS.

DRASTIC measures to prevent Oxfordshire’s roads from degenerating were also discussed during Tuesday’s meeting.

Questioning an overspend by the highways department, Labour councillor Nick Hards raised concerns about how harsh winters are affecting our roads.

But in response, newly-crowned cabinet member for finance Arash Fatemian, right, made a rather odd request of Mr Hards.

He said: “If you’re volunteering to build a dome over Oxfordshire to protect us from snow and rainfall, be my guest.”

With budgets spiralling out of control, The Insider wonders whether a dome might actually provide better value for money in the long-term than fixing more and more potholes every year.