How I agree with May Ashcroft (Letters, May 29) about people's snobbish, supercilious, prejudiced attitudes towards beggars and travellers.

Many people feel, like Noah Claypole - the charity boy towards Oliver Twist, the workhouse boy - that here, in beggars, is someone "the meanest can point a finger at" but when these same beggars try to do some honest work, such as selling the Big Issue (an excellent publication) or washing windscreens at traffic lights, everyone moans.

In fact, demands have been made that Brighton and Hove City Council stops the windscreen washing.

As for mess left by travellers, may I draw attention to the latest craze among house-dwellers.

For some reason, they are averse to using their dustbins and have taken to dumping their rubbish in flimsy polythene bags along the kerb or outside their houses. Frequently, these bags are split when carrying them out and the rubbish is spilled all over the road.

This is unsightly. The roads look like the worst inner-city slum. Mount Drive and Saltdean Vale are the worst of a bad lot. It is also a health hazard and danger to any blind or partially sighted person walking by.

I have seen many travellers' camps. They would have too much self-respect to turn even temporary homes into rubbish dumps in this way.

-David Ellis, Brambletyne Avenue, Saltdean