REGARDING Mr Simpkins' letter of Saturday, August 19, it is perhaps the greatest tragedy in our times that local democracy is so unaccountable, and so ignored by the electorate at large, that such a magnificent absurdity as park-and-ride can be instituted by a mere handful of Labour Party drones.

Apart from the Perdiswell Action Group, whose views were ignored, there has been no strong public rejection of park-and-ride. I suggest few really care.

It doesn't matter to Joe Public that £15m of our money is going to be thrown away. It doesn't matter to Joe Public that a million pounds of council taxpayers' money is going to be thrown away in annual losses.

And it doesn't matter to Joe Public that all this money is being thrown away just to bus 2,000 motorists in and out of our city.

Joe Public won't question why all this money should be spent on park-and-ride when it will only remove 2,000 cars from our city's roads - which have 300,000 vehicle movements per day.

Those figures demonstrate how ludicrous is a road-based system of park-and-ride. Yet Joe Public remains silent. Silent on its £15m cost. Silent on yearly losses of a million.

Silent on the fact that those losses would massively make up for the shortage of public money, for the provision of Social Services for the old. Silent on the Green Belt that is being buried so wastefully. Silent on the fact that our city's road network is going to be carved up to provide bus lanes and one-way systems. Silent when more of our money is demanded in council tax.

And silent next year, when the architects of this ludicrous scheme, are re-elected. Forget accountable democracy. Our affairs are managed by the don't cares, don't understand, and can't be bothered.

N TAYLOR,

Worcester.