• GREEN councillors were accused of wrecking a Labour stalwart’s beauty sleep as he tried to get some shut-eye at a council meeting.

During a budget debate spanning more than three hours at the Town Hall on Monday, John Tanner, the council’s waste and toilet tsar, allegedly took a short doze to pass the time.

It wasn’t until Green councillor Craig Simmons began to outline his party’s draft budget that Mr Tanner, right, awoke with a start and began to heckle.

Mr Simmons said he was “sorry” to have woken Mr Tanner up, prompting roars in the chamber.

Maybe Mr Tanner had lost sleep recently, or maybe he knows like many of us that budget debates often turn out to be a bit of a yawn.

  • ON the subject of budgets, The Insider was intrigued to hear that at least three Lib Dem county councillors used their response time at Tuesday’s county council meeting to criticise the Oxford Mail.

They claimed our coverage of their proposed amendments to the county budget, which included a £50k handout for tea parties for the elderly, trivialised their efforts to spend a bit more cash on those in need.

However, if they had spent less time pointing fingers at the press benches they may not have run out of time to have their say on a budget of more than £900m.

  • THE Tories’ aforementioned budget was eventually voted through on Tuesday, but by a smaller majority than you might expect.

A total of 52 Conservatives currently sit on the county council, yet the proposals were carried by 38 votes to 19.

Those 38 votes came from 37 Tories and independent Lynda Atkins, right, so The Insider wonders where the other 15 councillors were.

Maybe a reduced majority after the May elections might make them all show up every month for a change...