What a red herring Queen Street has become in the Westgate development debate. Either we move the buses to St Aldate’s, as promised by the 1999 Oxford Transport Strategy, and increase the congestion and already illegally high pollution levels there, or we leave them where they are and spread out the burden.

Meanwhile the wider issue of increasing motorised traffic along the also congested and illegally polluted residential streets of Thames Street and Botley and Abingdon roads in order to service and use the proposed new commercial development on public land, and the development of a huge car-park basement adjacent to the floodplain, and the woeful lack of housing on this central accessible site are all but ignored.

It is typical that a smaller side issue is given a huge airing, diverting people from the wider issues of public land being used primarily for massive commercial gain and huge increases in oil-burning traffic all around the site.

Truly the worship of mammon is the leading policy in this city.

Sushila Dhall

Oxfordshire Green Party

Oxford