THE Government is set to overhaul the benefits system as it continues to target the fraudulent and feckless who have dragged this country to its knees.

While some people are desperate for work, there are others who’d rather live on their £65 a week handout – money our hard working bankers could have invested.

One measure is to make the long term unemployed do unpaid work to teach them for being poor... so the voluntary position of academic assistant monk must have generated some interest at Oxford’s job centre.

If you are interested in the post, at the Oxford Buddha Vihara Trust, it requires a degree related to Buddhist studies, fluency in English, two South East Asian languages, two Buddhist canonical languages and five years of Theravada Buddhist monastic training.

If you have the credentials, it beats picking up litter – but the Insider wonders how long the queue was for this specialist role?

  • Speaking of handouts, the man responsible for improving Oxford’s floundering education system, councillor Michael Waine, is entitled to a council allowance of £20,403.

But we are not speaking of it on a mobile phone – because Mr Waine doesn’t have one.

No matter how much you might want to block out the modern world Mr Waine (and you have your reasons) it really is incumbent on a man responsible for our schools to stay in touch. For one thing, you never know when disaster may strike – such as the failing of an entire generation of children – and you need to call for help.

That councillor allowance of more than £20,000, including ‘special responsibility’ cash for schools improvement, should help pay the bill.

  • Oxford University has been taking its freshers to task this term, as reported by student website Cherwell.org, and dishing out on-the-spot fines for misdemeanours including vandalism, stealing signs, smoking indoors and bringing guests into college.

And quite right too. We can’t have future political leaders and captains of industry thinking they can ride roughshod over the rules.

However, two crimes it seems a little harsh to punish are those of “having vomit in a bin” and “urinating in a bush”.

Top answers aside, the most appropriate places to “have vomit” and urinate are surely these very locations.

In fact, caught-short students could be seen to be merely acting responsibly given the constraints of their predicament.

NB: For any Oxford University students who are unsure of the most appropriate place to vomit or urinate, they are “down the side of daddy’s Mercedes”.

  • It appears Tory councillor Louise Chapman – removed from Witney Town Council for not turning up to enough meetings – has a secret admirer.

Mrs Chapman, who also serves as a district and county councillor, will have been buoyed by the following message posted on chippingnorton.net The anonymous blogger questions the decision to remove her from the town council and adds: “One of the very best local government councillors in the whole of Oxfordshire is a lady called Louise Chapman. I have been a fan of hers for a long time. Louise is highly effective, determined, a ball of energy, absolutely committed to the welfare of youth in the county and (if she will forgive the blatant sexism) quite a looker...”

What with the shock sacking and now this, it seems the daily goings on of local politics in West Oxfordshire is ripe to be serialised – WestEnders perhaps?