Sir, It is utterly outrageous to charge the residents of Blackbird Leys and Littlemore for their match-day parking scheme. The scheme was an inherent part of the development of the stadium. Similarly in Headington, the scheme is to allow the development of the hospital.

Oxford is a major destination, both for work and for entertainment. It is business that benefits from the parking schemes, and they who would pay for parking control. Oxford is different. It works in a different way to the county towns, and those who wish to govern the city need to know that, understand it and abide by it.

The current county administration is particularly bad; they seem only to see Oxford from behind their windscreens.

But previous administrations have also struggled to achieve a sensible balance between city and hinterland. Unitary government is obviously needed.

But it can't sensibly be done using existing authority boundaries. If we are to resolve the city/hinterland disputes, then we can't just have a unitary for the city. But the county is too big. If we start afresh with the city and include its main travel-to-work area, we would have a sensible unit of Government, with 50-70 per cent of the county's population.This would be a coherent authority with minimal border issues. We would still have the arguments, but we'd resolve them using democracy, and accept the result.

But what of the rest of the county? Banbury should be a small unitary. It might logically join forces with adjacent small towns in neighbouring counties, but it could probably function reasonably well on its own. Henley and the Chilterns should join forces with Wokingham and Twyford; all three are small towns on Reading's periphery. Thame is marginally nearer Aylesbury than Oxford.

Enough of this fighting. Residents' parking charges are taxation without representation. It is time Greater Oxford governed itself.

Richard Mann, Oxford