More scaremongering over the planned eco town at Weston-on-the-Green has emerged this week, this time over transport.

According to calculations by Oxfordshire County Council and Cherwell District Council, those who drive in and out of the 15,000-home town near Bicester — if it ever built — would have to pay more than £7,500 a year to do so at peak times.

That’s almost £20 a day.

These seemingly back-of-a-fag-packet calculations were contained in a missive dispatched from County Hall’s publicity department, which contained no explanation as to how County Hall had arrived at the figure.

When we called, a minion scurried away to find out.

He later said: “The figure of around £7,000 represents a theoretical annual cost.

“The figure is based on a toll of £15 proposed for car journeys made during peak hours (two journeys a day=£30, one week=£150, 50 weeks=£7,500, etc).

We all know that some councillors would attend the opening of an envelope, but Cowley Marsh Labour city councillor Saj Malik should get this week’s prize for publicity-hunting, judging by this picture of him craning his neck to get in the picture, right, when Home Secretary Jacqui Smith visited Oxford on Monday to meet police officers and find out about efforts to cut form-filling.

Given the controversy surrounding her £116,000 Commons expenses, we would have thought that Mr Malik might have done his best to be out of shot when this picture was taken.

Thank the Lord for small mercies. The Insider understands that, as yet, no one has had the courage to confront Ed Turner with evidence of a Government department having to make £4.5m of savings.

During Monday night’s heated budget-setting meeting at the Town Hall Mr Turner, who represents Rose Hill & Iffley, promised to “swim naked in the River Isis”, if anyone could present him with proof of any such cost-cutting drive in the light of the city council having to prepare a budget in these hard times.

Be careful with propositions of this sort, Ed — it’s very cold out there at the moment.

You could almost hear the howls of delight on Monday when it emerged there would be two fewer full city council meetings in 2009-10.

You would have thought everyone would be happy. You would be wrong.

None was more upset than Green councillor Nuala Young. She said: “I’m concerned, because the executive board is now composed of just one party, which only represents half of Oxford.

“Our chance to put motions to council has been seriously reduced and some of us would like to have more input into what’s going on.”

Translated, she meant it was less time for councillors to emit hot air.

theinsider@oxfordmail.co.uk