Sir – I am sure that many of your readers will have noticed the tremendous number of curmudgeons thronging the letters page of The Oxford Times this summer.

Several seem to want to set up checkpoints on road and rail routes into Oxford to intercept any young foreigners on their way into the town in order that the city should more resemble a museum, whilst one seems to want to ban cyclists (and presumably any other slower vehicles such as horses or tractors) from A roads so that he can drive his car faster.

Surely the city council should act now against such misanthropy lest it prove contagious.

David Dixon, Oxford