Sir – It is perfectly possible to make many valid points and yet still arrive at the wrong conclusion. In the letter Coalition for progress (January 28) I fear this is what has happened.

It is obviously true that a country needs to pay its way if it is to provide essential services and avoid damaging cuts and, therefore, it requires the kinds of industries that George Smith describes. But it is ironic that he condemns the ‘Need not Greed’ group for not looking beyond the immediate locality to consider the country as a whole when this is exactly what he himself is doing.

These wealth-producing new industries should indeed exist, but be generated somewhere else.

This is not nimbyism but common sense and also, consideration of the needs of others. As he says, many traditional industries such as steel have died or are in decline. Oxford’s own car industry has also shrunk. However, Oxford has weathered that in ways that other parts of the country have not – we have nearly full employment.

If many more jobs were created, as the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) wishes, many more houses would be needed. And as Mr Smith points out, the companies that already exist have trouble housing their staff – so why add to that problem? We are a lively and beautiful city with great advantages, but also problems – lack of affordable housing, traffic congestion and the need to improve our infrastructure. So why not concentrate on solving those problems and allow the ‘new’ industries to go to the north where jobs are vitally needed and housing is much, much cheaper.

The ‘Need not Greed’ alliance can see that those areas have far greater problems than us and therefore we should say enough is enough and sort out the difficulties that our buoyant economy and expansion have created before we go rushing after so-called growth – not a growth, may I suggest, which would lead to improvement of quality of life or happiness.

Glena Chadwick
Charlbury