Sir – Rather than trade insults with Dan Mitchell (Letters, August 18) who describes those of us troubled by the overcrowding of our city as graceless, arrogant and self-important, might I plead for courteous, rational discussion of the matter. Martin Murphy (Letters, 25 August) makes an entirely reasonable case for council regulation.

As if to strengthen that case, Laura Jones’ article in the same issue of your paper on the abuse of South Park by language school students, is further evidence that the situation is steadily getting out of hand.

I expect that those of us raising concerns about the exploitation of our beautiful city are happy to share it with well supervised student visitors in groups of manageable size. There must, however, be an optimum number of visitors that a city of the character of Oxford can cope with, so that both visitors and citizens can enjoy the place together. That number, whatever it may be, has certainly been exceeded this year.

Would ‘whoever has the brief for tourism in Oxford’ step forward and tell us whether there is a coherent tourism strategy or is it just a matter of ‘laissez-faire’ — let ‘em all come?’ It’s high time for sensible, enforceable regulation.

Tony Cross, Oxford