EVERY week in the Oxford Mail we see court reports listing accounts of violent assaults resulting in fines of a hundred pounds, community service or conditional discharge.

Last week, at the urging of officers and councillors of Oxfordshire County Council, Lord Justice Mummery saw fit to gaol two elderly men in poor health for a total of 10 months.

Their dastardly crime? Spreading soil to contour their golf course at Waterstock without the necessary permission.

Of course, the council is keen to call this the dumping of waste. This sounds much more serious.

Actually this material is just rubble, mud and clay, left over from the building of the M40 cutting many years earlier. This is material that Waterstock residents and the parish council were quite happy to have piled up in a big heap, for years, across the road from the golf course. Now some of it has been moved a few hundred yards and spread about, covered over with grass, they suddenly see a problem.

The brothers who own the course are convinced that all that was originally put on to the site has now been removed and incidentally put into landfill at OCC’s insistence, despite the council encouraging recycling.

Despite several investigations, the council cannot tell if any matter is still there. Of course not. It would be soil from the surrounding area. Why could the Wyatt brothers not just be given planning permission, as this is not doing any harm to the environment?

Imprisoning elderly men for contouring their golf course with soil seems extremely heavy-handed action, planning issues or not, and I hope Oxfordshire County Council, and the people of Waterstock are thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

COLIN WOODLEY Holland Road Abingdon