Dear Editor,

I WRITE this letter on behalf of the hard working taxpayers in this country. Oh no, wait, I don’t as that would be presumptuous and inaccurate. The only person I can legitimately speak for is myself.

I attended the protest as a local resident and am not affiliated to any party. Indeed several of the people I met in attendance were simply Epping residents. I went because I wanted to show the asylum seekers that Mr Leppert and his followers do not speak for me. I welcome these people as I would anyone in immediate need of assistance. Mr Leppert’s videos and the comments arising from them are full of inaccuracies that should rightly be challenged.

Mr Holloway is entitled to his opinion and I would not ‘rant’ at him or call him a racist and I certainly would not want to muzzle him. It is vital in fact that we shine a light on this issue and debate it on a factual basis. Mr Holloway claims that he is speaking for the ‘majority of people in this country’. How does he know? Is he even speaking for the majority of people in Epping and immediate towns? Of the 37 people I have spoken to regarding the Bell Hotel residents since seeing the videos, all but 3 have been supportive of their presence. 2 of these had been misled by false information and have since sent me donations to pass on. The 1 remaining is a Walthamstow resident and is citing concerns there. I intend to continue to canvass as I like to establish my own statistics to test the strength of my own opinion and compare numbers to those on other sides of the debate.

I have a met a number of the Bell residents; they are intelligent and friendly people but also terrified and hopeless. The children are beautiful, as all children are. They are human beings. Conflating their desperate needs with the criminals who have abused them is merely a distraction from the real issue. Genuine asylum seekers are fearful for their lives. While they are being assessed, the least we can do in our over privileged country is give them a modicum of comfort and compassion. I am happy for a fraction of my tax to be set aside for this purpose.

Yours Faithfully

C Vickers

Comments

1. Posted recently on HuffPost
   https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/asylum-seekers-refugees-truth_uk_5f520768c5b6946f3eb02f87

A phrase I read recently – The Schrodinger Asylum Seeker: someone who is, at the same time, both here to ‘steal our jobs’ and to ‘live off benifits’.

2. Well said let’s all be a bit kinder to each other. Deb