Sir – Your leader (June 20) and Reg Little’s accompanying article on the development of the Osney Lock hydro power scheme seems designed to promote discord over this development.

There is little doubt that the project commands overwhelming support locally. That is why the share offer was massively oversubscribed in days, and by people who live in the immediate vicinity of the project.

Yet your article makes great play of the concerns of a local estate agent worried about the impact on house prices (nothing new there then) and someone who worries about a blackbird’s nest.

I don’t live on Osney Island, or anywhere near it, but if this is all the opposition you can drag up, it sounds like a remarkably united community to me.

Perhaps The Oxford Times has a less than evenhanded approach to this kind of important community initiative.

After all, on the page facing Reg Little’s article is one about an extra 59 student flats right by a primary school and overlooking a low-rise close off Cowley Road — a bit more of an impact that a lost tree. But no thunderous leading article about that. Why not?

Martin Stott, Oxford