Sir – The city council have voted to abolish decision-making area committees and replace them with toothless ‘area forums’ with no powers.

They also want to remove the area budgets and give each councillor £1,500 a year to “spend in relation to their ward”. This move by the ruling Labour Party, totally opposed by the Lib-Dems and Greens, is worthy of Colonel Gaddafi, and is couched in best 1984 doublespeak as “Democratic arrangements — Proposed changes” — ie it blatantly abolishes the local democracy we have enjoyed through the area committees for many years.

With a very low profile, no doubt because they want the minimum attention paid to this scam, they are ‘consulting’ on it, via William Reed, styled ‘Democratic Services Manager’ in an Orwellian attempt to conceal that he is presiding over the opposite.

A few paper forms have been sent out, but it’s otherwise only online. The document does not even ask the obvious question — whether we want this change, and the questions it does ask are totally biased towards the change.

We only have until this Friday, March 25, to respond to this consultation, in which there is at least an opportunity to say no to various weasel-worded questions. The online address is http://consultation.oxford.

gov.uk/consult.ti/Decision_making/ consultationHome. I urge everyone to log on and make their views felt.

Anthony Cheke, Oxford