TEN years on, I successfully claimed a £10 wager from my friend and one-time election running-mate, Phill Thomas.

For reasons which seemed obvious, I doubted that York’s former council offices lent themselves to a viable hotel conversion.

The council and developer have now proposed a mixture of über housing… plus cramming extra bijou residences behind.

York’s roads cannot cope with modern traffic density so this Labour administration, like its predecessor a decade ago, believes in coercing us out of our cars and on to the buses. Or to use bikes.

Likely wealthy purchasers of such premium property include families, owning multiple cars, perhaps employing staff requiring their own transport.

Probable owners of premium cars, will they want their Bentleys, BMWs or Range Rovers sitting in a car-park exposed to York’s notorious weekend drinkers? Or demand garages?

The proposed bijou ‘coach houses’ incorporate garages, presumably for their owner’s benefit while, paradoxically, the owners of York’s new grandest properties are expected to leave their vehicles exposed…when not using the bus or on their bikes.

York’s planners need to wake-up, smell the coffee …then deal with reality …not the world as they would like it to be.

Nick Blitz, Wilkinsons Court, Easingwold, York.