Sir – I have recently spent a fortnight in Oxford caring for my elderly parents. My mother was in the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre for 11 days. My parents live in a controlled parking area and my sister lives in a different controlled parking area.

There are parking restrictions at the Hospital. Nearly every lamp post in Headington has at least one sign displaying some restriction or prohibition. There are, in addition, signs to prohibit dog fouling, driving on grass verges, walking on grass verges.

When I ventured into the city centre, there were no less prohibitions — in fact they just varied, so as to prohibit cycles being parked on lamp posts etc. On the bus there are large notices telling passengers that there are a number of things they are prohibited to do.

The piece de resistance is the small area at the rear of the Nuffield Hospital car park which totally bans dogs as it is a ‘play area for children’. If you were to allow your children to play there you ought to be reported to the social services. It’s an overgrown grass area with a large wooden rubbish bin which is overflowing with rubbish and has remained so for the past two weeks.

You don’t need to prohibit me taking my dog there because I would choose not to do so. I cannot allow my dog to foul in the park, yet the two football pitches are strewn with garbage including cans, drinks bottles and takeway food remains.

As I prepare to return to Southampton I now have to work out which dustbin and which collection day is appropriate for the mountain of various parking scratchcards that have accumulated in my car over the past two weeks. I am delighted that I can breathe in Oxford without a restriction — or are we soon to have restrictions on times and places, together with an appropriately ‘scratched’ card?

Incidentally, whilst everything else produced by the council and local government is multilingual, why are the parking, dog fouling and cycle signs, and the prohibition signs on the buses only in English? Is this discriminatory?

Roger Hopgood, Southampton