I WAS amazed at the cost to the local tax payer to replace parking machines. Having been recently to Dorset, I found car parking machines both in Weymouth and on Portland have been converted to take the new one pound coins.

The machines there will in fact take both old and new coins.

Why here in Oxford does it have to be such a big deal, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds?

Even Sainsbury’s trollies have had a new gismo fitted many months ago and which accepts both coins.

I noticed that the county council have been around Old Marston bodging up the deeper potholes recently with Tarmac probably left over from a bigger job somewhere.

The workmen have to do the work as they are told because of cost, but if they were allowed to do the job properly and seal around the patch with hot pitch, thus keeping the rain out, then the Tarmac would remain in the hole for a long time. As it’s done now one winter with rain and frost and the hole will reappear.

MIKE CLARKE
Old Marston