Go on, give Mary Clarkson a call, she's waiting to hear from you.

There are shades of Superwoman from the Labour city councillor on leaflets that have been appearing on doormats throughout her Marston ward.

On them she says: "It doesn't matter whether it's a noisy pub or a lack of bike racks, Mary Clarkson is happy to take up any of your concerns."

She's on 01865 751493.

The closure of the parking and payments shop in High Street was another bright idea from our friends at Oxford City Council.

Instead of paying council tax bills and other fees at a dedicated one-stop city centre office, they have dispensed with convenience and set up a phone line instead.

It's either that, or the prospect of spending an eternity in a queue to cough up at the nearby St Aldate's post office.

This week the Tories running Oxfordshire County Council announced a further round of cuts to bus services, including the X15 between Witney, Abingdon and Wallingford, which runs through party leader David Cameron's Witney constituency.

The service links the two campuses of Abingdon and Witney College and was initially funded for two years under the Government's Kick Start scheme.

County Hall has refused to continue funding the route now that the Government grant has run out.

Wallingford's Liberal Democrat county councillor Bill Bradshaw said: "So much for new Conservatism. They're still the same bad, old, mean Tories.

"What this council seems most 'excellent' at is robbing the poor, who don't own cars, to benefit those who do."

This week's money-well-spent prize goes to the Banbury-based Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) which, as part of a county-wide Recycle for Oxfordshire campaign, paid £4,000 for mime and comedy artists to spread the recycling message in East Oxford at the weekend.

Why? A city council spokesman said: "We decided to use mime and comedy because this area of Oxford has a high proportion of non-English speakers and this form of entertainment is a perfect complement to the factual information that has already been circulated door to door."

In other words, they didn't know either.

It's a trifle rich of the Tories to keep banging on about Gordon Brown's management of the economy, isn't it?

After all, Conservative leader David Cameron was one of Norman Lamont's key aides during the Black Wednesday crisis, when interest rates soared into double figures in just a few hours.

And - according to some - Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy denied hundreds of thousands of people the opportunity to live in social housing.

Why? Well, councils like Oxford were not allowed to spend the money they received from house sales to build new ones. Hence today's shortage.

Meanwhile, in 2007, the Tories at County Hall continue to stubbornly refuse a review of the Green Belt around the city, which could ease Oxford's homelessness crisis at a stroke. Pots and kettles.