HAVING grown up in a city famed the world over for learning, discovery and inspirational thought, I’m amazed that those responsible for actually running the place don’t appear to possess an ounce of good old common sense between them.

Do any of those responsible actually go and stand on the street and physically look and listen at, or to, what is going on around them?

Who in their right mind would decide to both close and ‘refurbish’ the toilets in Market Street just before the busiest period of the year for the traders and customers in the Covered Market?

The workers now can’t even finish because it seems the organiser hadn’t first acquired the parts to do the job before actually permitting the work to start.

The Portakabin loos being used as a replacement leave much to be desired – what sort of an image this paints to visitors and guests to our great city can only be imagined. The ‘sign’ hastily made from duct tape spelling out the word ‘Toilets’ demonstrates there was no expense spent on this little shambles.

The replacement loos take up seven delivery vehicle spaces, which are highly prized on any normal working day, let alone running up to Christmas. I sometimes wonder if someone at the town hall is deliberately doing things to make the Covered Market and its traders fail.

Books and flowers in toilets, along with this ill-thought-out scheme, must rate highly as some of the daftest ideas ever put into motion in this city’s history, even worse when it’s done at a time when both the traders and general public are constantly asking for better, sensibly priced parking and easier access to shops in the city centre. What we have now is dreadful.

I think it’s the book of Samuel that has the story of Saul and his sword? If so, a few at the top of St Aldate’s might be well advised to take its message on board in the near future.

DAVID WILLIAMS David Walter Close Oxford