I find it very strange how many people who don’t live in Basildon or Wickford are pro gipsies and travellers.

My advice to them would be to come and live near them before they give an opinion. I own a property between the two major sites, this devalues my home.

Ruth Barnett, from London, commented travellers are just as human as ourselves (June 16).

She should try putting up with the aggravation we get.

In fairness, they are not all bad, but from living nearby for so many years I feel the bad outweigh the good threefold.

I wonder if people from outside our district only want us to keep the travellers so they don’t get them as neighbours themselves.

Margaret West
Nevendon Road
Wickford

...I suggest Ruth Barnett, is looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

It is not the local residents who should adapt themselves to the lifestyles of the incoming travellers, but that the travellers who should conform with the local social environment.

W H Diment
Church Road
Laindon

...People like Ruth Barnett, represent what is wrong in this day and age.

Too much focus on human rights and not enough on what is good for this country. They are too busy poking their noses in other people’s business when it doesn’t affect them.

She lives in London and has the gall to say the people of Basildon and Billericay should get to know the local travellers.

How on earth can a traveller be local? They travel, or so the name traveller would imply, only the socalled travellers at Dale Farm want to make permanent homes there, so they are no longer travellers.

Therefore, they should pay all their council taxes like the rest of us.

G Bull
Fairfax Drive
Westcliff