* BACK in the day, the Oxford Union was graced by the likes of Winston Churchill, Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, and Albert Einstein.

This year, the line-up has been Jordan and Hanson.

That’s Austerity Britain for you.

Does anybody even remember Hanson?

No, not the £40,000-an-appearance Match of the Day man, but brothers Isaac, Taylor, Zac who rose to fame with their 1997 hit MMMBop.

Now what else do you remember about them? Mmm...Nothing?

That’s because MMMBop was their only hit.

They are only famous for MMMBop.

MMMBop will be carved on their gravestones.

Yet when Hanson arrived at Oxford’s fortress of free speech, the Oxford Mail’s reporter was given very strict instructions what she could and could not ask them: “Do not discuss MMMBop. They get bored.”

* ANOTHER week, another Taxpayers’ Alliance press release expressing fury at local authority spending.

The low-tax campaigners have waged war on town hall spending, by exposing mobile phone bills, transport costs, expenses, top salaries, and now trade union funding.

But surely there is another spiralling cost at the nation’s council offices.

The Insider has decided to put in a Freedom of Information Act request to all councils, NHS trusts and police authorities, asking them how much taxpayers’ money is wasted each year answering Freedom of Information Act requests from the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

* TWITTERLAND can be full of the banal, but The Insider wonders why his tax dollar is being wasted by Thames Valley Police with crime-reduction tips for those clearly so stupid it would be debatable they were able to read them in the first place.

Two gems that someone clearly underemployed posted on the force’s numerous Twitter feeds yesterday were: ‘Perfect parking: use your garage if you have one, or try to park in a well-lit location’ and ‘Keep keys safe and out of sight’.

Yes, the force shedding staff over costs is using its public money to stick out this tosh.

The Insider, being a public-spirited sort and wishing to ease this burden on the taxpayer, therefore reminds his readers ‘don’t step out in front of trucks on the motorway’, ‘don’t point a loaded gun at your own head and pull the trigger’ and ‘don’t forget to breathe – failure may cause you to die’.

Mind how you go.

* A BLIND date for Big Bang restaurateur Max Mason, which he volunteered for in The Guardian Weekend magazine, did not go quite as well as he might have hoped.

The national newspaper lined Max up with poet and fundraiser Alice Willington, 37, and they visited the Ashmolean Museum rooftop restaurant and the Randolph Hotel.

But at the end of the date Ms Millington declined to give Max any marks out of 10 and Max rated the date just 2.3 out of 10.

The rather harsh scoreline led to a subsequent letter from Guardian reader Helen Ryan-Atkin who then gave Max a score of 0.3 for “chivalry, gentlemanliness, sensitivity and tact”.