Sir – There’s a good reason why councillor Rodney Rose won’t listen to local opinion on the proposed controlled parking zone in East Oxford. In 2009, when he and councillor Ian Hudspeth, his fellow Tory from another rural backwater, attended a meeting at St Clement’s Family Centre on the CPZ they were hoping to force upon East Oxford, they were given such a drubbing by an angry and well-informed electorate, which wanted no part of their shabby scheme, that they left with their tails between their legs.

Councillor Rose’s sole response to the revelation that CPZs had realised a £110,000 profit in 2010-11 (flatly contradicting his claim that they weren’t about raising revenue) was that it was ‘monumental drivel’. So much for local democracy, Conservative-style. Ever wondered, Mr Rose, why your party has no representation whatsoever within the city?

Peter Lewis, Oxford