THE labyrinth that is local government in Oxford - and the most convincing argument we have yet heard for a city unitary authority - is best conveyed in this missive from a correspondent who contacted The Insider this week.

He said: "If you were given a short measure in an Oxford pub, you would go and see trading standards at the county council, but if you were poisoned eating a sandwich in the same place, you would have to go and see environmental health at the city council - it's utter madness."

You said it.

TALKING of which, Oxfordshire County Council leader Keith Mitchell finds himself increasingly under fire from an unlikely alliance of the Liberal Democrat, Labour and Green parties.

The trio have teamed up to show a united front in Oxford City Council's ever-convincing push for unitary status, the outcome of which will be known in the new year.

All three group leaders, including Lib Dem John Goddard, put their names to a letter that said: "This is an opportunity we must not let pass us by, for the sake of the current and future inhabitants of our fair city."

Earlier this year, Mr Mitchell's Tories were likened to an "occupying force" in Oxford.

Their time might now be up.

A NEW study - written not a million miles from here - has claimed Whitehall policy is actually loaded in favour of the region, contrary to what the burghers of County Hall would have us believe.

James Simmie, professor of innovation and urban competitiveness at Oxford Brookes University, said: "Too many cities in Britain do not perform well enough when compared with their European, North American and Asian counterparts.

"A major cause of the economic divide is policy decisions made by central Government.

"Even in areas of policy where the Government seeks to distribute funding according to need, there is a definite bias towards London and the South East."

WOKING. Hardly a venue to set pulses racing at the best of times, but that is where the so-called Battle for the South East is taking place at the moment.

The HG Wells Suite, inspired by the fictional book War of the Worlds, written by the Surrey town's most famous resident (aside from Paul Weller), is the setting for the rip-roaring South East Plan examination in public.

In layman's terms, the inquiry will determine whether places like Oxford can build on Green Belt land to ease their chronic housing shortages.

Many opponents of increased housebuilding - including some of those at County Hall - already own one, perhaps two, homes and want their vistas to remain unspoiled.

Will those interests be declared at the inquiry?

Stranger than fiction, isn't it?