HOW jolly to know Andrew Adonis can take pride in his few years of highly-paid work “as the Government’s infrastructure adviser”, which included proposals for the OxfordCambridge expressway (Pride in ‘brain belt’: Oxford Mail, January 2).

In his resignation letter to Theresa May, Lord Adonis applauds the potential for “transformational housing growth on the Oxford-Milton KeynesCambridge corridor”.

In the Adonis view of the world, this would require not just a re-established Oxford-Cambridge “Varsity Line” but also an Oxford to Cambridge expressway along which up to one million homes will bloom.

This has echoes of the Major Government’s “roads-forprosperity” east-west route proposals of the mid-90s, Felixstowe to Fishguard, to which Andrew Adonis and his succession of (SDP-Lib Dem-Labour) of political parties were opposed.

Is Andrew Adonis, as a now sometime servant of a Conservative Government, an advocate of convoys of lorries grinding across the country?

In his letter to the Prime Minister, Andrew Adonis quotes Edmund Burke: “People will not look forward to prosperity who do not look backwards to their ancestors.”

He might have added these words of Jeremy Bentham: “Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.”

For what it’s worth against a visionary Adonis, people on the ground in Oxfordshire and beyond say “yes to rail; no to road!" 

Anybody listening?

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH

Bowness Avenue, Headington