Brazen self-publicist in the LibDems shock

And it's not an MP I'm talking about. No, I see that my ward colleague, Stephen Tall, has entered into the festive spirit by sticking up his own poll on his blog. I'm not sure quite when he latched on to the idea of pulchritudinous LibDems -- while reading the Executive papers for Oxford City Council, perhaps? -- but it's an intriguing send-off to a year with more than its fair share of salacious headlines proving we are the party for partying. And I'm not yet clear what psephological insight he is attempting to gain from it, unless it is counting how many times his adoring readers complain he is too modest to list himself. But it sure enough ensures that he ends 2006 on a high of blog-hits: is he trying for some sort of po-mo Christmas no. 1?

Personally, I can't bring myself to vote. After all, it's not by STV. But you've got the link just in case you haven't seen it already (and how likely is that?).

I'm cheap at half the price

Or, this could be titled: the time the journo missed a trick. Our local roving political commentator, Giles Sheldrick, can whiff a good story a mile off and, with the national news about MPs' expenses, he must have thought it was a smart move to dig out last year's councillor allowances for the City and County. It was headline news in the local paper.

My own allowance will be higher this municipal year than last, as I'm now Deputy Leader and as the independent remuneration panel decided allowances were too low. Good value or not? I'll leave that to the people of Headington to decide.

One thing I will say is that I use my allowance to cover travel expenses -- but not so some others. And here's what Giles missed: allowance, being set independently, are not really under the control of councillors. But there are other columns listed in the official records -- 'carers' and 'travel / subsistence.' That is more in the remit of individual councillors to decide how much they claim -- and there's a huge difference between the nought pounds some have claimed and the £10,000 (yes, all those zeros should be there) at the other end of the scale. Now, there's a story.

Is Keith secretly in favour of a unitary Oxford?

For those beyond the confines of this city and its hinterland, Keith is Oxfordshire's Tory county councillor. Cllr Mitchell is single-handedly running County Hall (with a little help from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). But he doesn't, as I've explained before, get any help from the city, where 'Conservative' is a term rarely seen beyond the caption to an exhibit in the Natural History Museum, in the display cabinet just beyond the dodo.

Many see a logic to having a unitary council for Oxford. But up to now, Keith has shook his gory locks and suggested the gravediggers would be burying him before that happened. So, who is this appearing on the comments section of the Oxford Times website, where there are complaints about the fact that the Tory county council wants an above-inflation increase in the unfair council tax? A certain 'Keith' berates the people of Oxford for not electing Tory councillors (apparently that would help keep down our council tax -- go figure). And Keith also boldly announces his earnest hope that 'as soon as Oxford City Council becomes a unitary authority the better'. Apparently, we in the city are bloodsuckers, leeches on the wholesome countryside dwellers (forcing them to come to hospitals in the city and to gain employment in the county's capital; we're nasty like that). Might it be that Keith Mitchell has had a belated conversion to the cause of unitaries? As a fan of the Iron Mrs, one would assume that Mr Mitchell is not for turning. But, with a high-tax Tory Council, profligate with our money, perhaps we should revise all preconceptions. As they say, will the true Tory Keith stand up.

Berlusconi, once again

He doesn't really deserve all the attention he's getting. But at least I'm not alone in giving Sig. Berlusconi's little health difficulties space on the web. My favourite Italian newspaper*, Il Corriere, has collected references to his collapse from international websites. I particularly like the last of the five that they present -- great headline.

*My favourite, except I feel I should apologise if your eyes are diverted to other parts of the screen when checking this link. They do seem to feel high-class journalism and a fascination with a certain sort of calendar are entirely compatible. And they would find our distaste yet another symptom of Anglo-Saxon puritanical hypocrisy.

And now he's back from the dead

After the crisis (or excitement) of yesterday, we are reassured that Silvio Berlusconi is well again. He tells us so himself - and we know to believe him.

The mayor of Catania goes further and says that Berlusconi is immortal. He should hope so, as the mayor, who was the first to the stage to catch the collapsing Cavaliere, was once Berlusconi's personal doctor. Nepotism is a word which we inherit from the Latin language.

It took Jesus Christ three days to rise again. Does Berlusconi see that as a record to beat?

Is this the end of Berlusconi?

The news has just broken in the last half hour of Berlusconi collapsing while giving a speech to his youth movement. The video could not be more dramatic, as he slumps on the rostrum and his bodyguards try to lift him away shouting 'Let go' as he clutches to the podium as if his life depended on it.

Romano Prodi has wished the man they call the cavaliere a speedy recovery, which is perhaps a graciousness beyond the call of duty in the usual mud-garden of Italian politics. Presumably, Berlusconi will recover shortly -- his spokesman promises he'll be back by 2nd December (a long convalescence if it is just, as is claimed, a case of being overcome by heat and emotion).

But the immediate thought is that this is a politician who has always had the whiff of Dorian Gray about him. There's no silver hair on Silvio but he is 70 and older than his rival, Prodi, though he looks a decade younger. He has built his reputation on being the anti-politician's politician, the man who stood outside the murky cabal of aged, male Christian Democrats who dominated Italian politics before the Nineties and whose henchmen have their role to play in the engrossing film Romanzo Criminale (go see, not least for its implicit criticism of Berlusconi replacing a one-party regime with, effectively, a no-party state). The cavaliere's permatan may stay, but his aura of youthfulness has collapsed. No doubt, he will survive -- but survive politically?

Cemeteries open all hours?

Congratulations to my colleague, Altaf Khan, for his campaign to get Oxford City Council to recognise the needs of the city's diverse communities in the burial service it provides. It is an issue that was raised a year ago, in the bad old days -- now there'll be a change of policy to allow the possibility of weekend burials. And it doesn't matter whether the change is necessary in law: the point is that it's the right thing to do, anyway.

But, having said all that, some people's comments in reaction are, to be blunt, dead depressing.