Sir – Mr Emlyn-Jones (Endless whingeing, January 1) is rightly concerned about the potential catastrophe facing the world in the form of irreversible climate change.
At the same time he is “sick to the back teeth” hearing about the Castle Mill fiasco, involving Oxford University and Oxford City Council.
Perhaps he would understand more about the Castle Mill problem and the depth of feeling expressed by ordinary citizens and local organisations if he gave thought to the concept of corporate social responsibility and its many ramifications.
He might detect a connection between world climate change and Castle Mill.
In both scenarios, one global and the other local, a central dynamic has corporate entities — multinational giants and sovereign states in a global context, and Oxford University and Oxford City Council in a local setting — clearly failing to meet their responsibilities — moral, and in many cases explicit legal — to their host environments and the legitimate concerns of their communities.
Variations of scale do not alter basic principles.
No corporate entity can operate above the democratically established law, or be given licence to write its own version of established rules.
Howard Williams, Oxford
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