With only a few days to go before the deadline for comments to the Vale on Doric’s plans for the Botley centre, 427 responses have been posted.

I’m certain the number will increase by the time the guillotine falls. This blows out of the water the previous record in this district. I have read many of them (I’ve not had time to read them all), and I can truthfully say that, of the dozens I have read, only one has been in favour.

A vital criterion for the granting of planning permission is that the development should be at an appropriate scale and in keeping with the area.

This is a subjective judgment; sometimes there might be grey areas where some would say one thing and others disagree. Every single one of the objections I have read refers vehemently to the excessive scale of this development.

It would be difficult to think of many other subjective judgments over which such unanimity could be found. Is Venice beautiful? Is Casablanca a great film? By definition, if a subjective statement is deemed by all, or nearly all, to be true, then it is true.

The case is now proven that the Doric plans are for a development that is out of scale and character with its setting. Any contrary conclusion by the planning committee would be perverse and will be remembered as such at local election time by the hundreds of voters who took the trouble to comment on the application.

Jan Kowal Hurst Rise Road Oxford