Sir – The 02 Academy, home to ‘Fuzzy Ducks’ and other attractions for the young, has applied for extended opening hours: 6pm-2am Monday-Thursday; 6pm-4am Friday and Saturday; noon-midnight on Sundays (but to 4am on Sundays before Bank Holidays) and all night every April 30/May morning.

We’d remind the council that the 02 Academy is not one of the city’s educational establishments but that already it seems to absorb disproportionately large amounts of student grant monies — judging by the noise of drunken revelry on our East Oxford streets some 30 minutes following their current closing times. With Government initiatives to prevent binge-drinking, it seems perverse to encourage it at inflated nightclub bar prices.

There is also a finite number of students. Allowing the Carling Academy free rein to fleece them virtually 24/7 is to the detriment of other places of student entertainment. As in nature, diversity is vital.

If all were to concentrate at the 02, Park End and George Streets would become cultural deserts, plaguing the lives and streets of East Oxford’s rate-paying citizens with seven-days-a-week early hours shouting, shrieking (the strident female equivalent of the mindless howling of drunken males of a certain age), banging, taxis hooting, styrofoam junk food containers, underwear and pools of sick.

The disruption apart, as students are exempt rates, we have to pay to clean this up — not the dons of the 02 Academy.

Hugh McManners, St Clements