IS W Taylor’s letter in Monday’s Oxford Mail, the best that the pro-waste incineration lobby can come up with?

Let us examine his arguments. Firstly, it is claimed that those opposed to an incinerator are a minority.

An Oxfordshire County Council survey conducted in 2006 found that 97 per cent of respondents were against waste incineration.

Further surveys conducted recently in South Oxfordshire have found that 95 per cent of households are against waste incineration, with only two per cent in favour.

Secondly, it is claimed that waste incineration is clean, safe and efficient. It is none of these. Bear in mind the mounds of rotting stinking waste at Allington in Kent; the scientifically-identified relationship between incinerators, infant mortality, cancers and cardiovascular disease; the fact that more electricity is used to make plastic bags than is produced by burning them; and that in the UK little use is made of the heat produced. Thirdly, it is suggested that campaigners want bigger, deeper landfills. This is risible.

Large landfill sites already exist at the proposed incineration sites. In Sutton Courtenay waste is imported from a large area, including Oxford and London, and that is set to continue until 2030.

Residents suffer sickening smells and plagues of flies. Campaigners have frequently proposed the use of alternatives to both landfill and incineration, which are used elsewhere, providing information on these. Finally your contributor seems to think it is all about house prices, which says more about his attitudes than the campaigners’. A house is only worth something if someone needs to move.

Campaigners do not want to leave their homes – they, like most, want a safe pleasant environment in which to live, even if, for them, it has to be alongside existing landfill.

However a 300,000 tonne incinerator is not an acceptable addition or alternative.

Pauline Amos-Wilson, Milton Road, Sutton Courtenay