IT might be said that Councillor Melinda Tilley has a rare gift (School bus activists fume at councillor’s ‘personal attack’, Oxford Mail, January 14) in her misunderstanding of the importance of dissent to the health of a modern democracy, perhaps learnt from that old master Keith Mitchell.

In saying that Sue Moon and her colleagues in the Oxon Schools Bus Action Group (OSBAG) “should listen to what real parents say they will do” and then going on to dismiss OSBAG as being a “facade” of “three or four T-shirt- wearing ‘usual suspects’ who have benefited from generous media coverage” is cheap and the language of a tin pot tyrant, for which Mrs Tilley should apologise forthwith. Of course she won’t and therein lies a tale.

As for the ‘usual suspects’, Mrs Tilley might want to view again the film Casablanca for a better appreciation of what this meant and means. As for “real parents”...

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH Bowness Avenue Headington Oxford