Sir – So let’s get this straight: homes and major roads in Oxford are flooded and cut off. Meanwhile, councillors are pushing to cover even more of Oxford with concrete, as in the poorly conceived Northern Gateway scheme, without a proper flood-risk assessment (as reported in The Oxford Times very recently).

Yes, real joined-up thinking, innit?

These grandiose schemes have been rightly excoriated recently by another Letters page correspondent. They truly are lunatic. The mad rush to build over every square inch of the county, all in the name of the false idol ‘growth’, is indeed a throwback to the ignorant 1960s, when politicians and officials had nil grasp of the fundamental concept of sustainability.

At that time, some people were innumerate enough to believe that resources — even land — are infinite.

You would have thought they’d have learned by now. Evidently not.

John Kinory, Steeple Aston