SIR – Tom Edwards reported in the Worcester News on January 29 that Worcestershire County Council will soon vote on a council tax rise of nearly four per cent, adding around £42 to the average band D bill.
He also reported that the government expects councils to increase council tax by nearly four per cent for each of the following four years. I recall Conservative councillors at a Worcester City Council meeting criticising the previous administration for suggesting an increase of less than two per cent, which would have amounted to much less than £42. 
How is repeatedly increasing council tax going to help ‘hard-working families’? Why haven’t local councillors done more to campaign against the cuts that are leading to council tax increases? 
At another Worcester City Council meeting on February 25 2014, I proposed a motion calling on the government to support the Robin Hood tax – a financial transaction tax that could ‘reverse on-going shrinkage in central grants to Worcester City Council’. Indeed, it could reverse cuts to the County Council too.
However, to quote Leona Helmsley, it sometimes seems that ‘only the little people pay taxes’. Perhaps ‘the little people’ will demand an end to cuts and paying more for less?
NEIL LAURENSON
Green Party councillor for St Stephen ward

Fear-mongering from Europhiles misleading 
SIR – Have you read the latest litany of misleading fear-mongering of the Europhiles, desperate to keep the UK under the political control of unaccountable and unelected Brussels bureaucrats? It arrived through letterboxes across the region, and is called ‘Europe & You’.
On its front page are a list of ‘Six key facts you need to know’. All of the six “facts”, except for number 4, relate to the advantages of UK trade with the EU, and the estimated 3 million British jobs linked with that.  
The truth they ignore is that there are no reasons any of that trade should cease were Britain to reclaim her independence as a sovereign country.  The UK is the EU’s largest export market, which means the EU could not afford to upset trading relations with us. 
For Britain, an exit would mean a saving of the £55 million a day paid as a membership fee.  It would also mean Britain taking back control of its own borders, so that our own democratically elected government will decide who may come to live and work here, and who will leave.  It would also mean the UK being free to garner trade deals with any and every country in the world.
“Fact” number 4, tells us how much “safer” we are, “thanks to the European Arrest Warrant”. There is absolutely no reason why the UK and the EU could not maintain cross-border cooperation in matters of security and even defence, without having to be politically dominated by unelected foreign bureaucrats.  
If we really want to discuss being “safer”, let’s look no further than the criminals and terror suspects who have arrived in Britain illegally, yet have been able to stay here, putting us all at risk, because of the interference of foreign judges, and the farce of European human rights legislation, which is applied more to criminals than to law-abiding populations they infect. 
Look perhaps at the insanity of open borders, facilitating the mass movement of criminals and the unemployed from eastern Europe to the West. Do you feel “safer” looking at what is happening in France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Norway, or Sweden? 
For the first time in my life, and in most of yours, you will have a vote that will actually stop this nightmare EU experiment in its tracks. For the sake of your kids, and mine, don’t waste it.
WILL RICHARDS
Malvern

Yet to be convinced on drinking battery water 
SIR – You reported on Tuesday that an EasyJet manager announced that “water produced as a waste product from the new type of aeroplane batteries would be absolutely pure and could be used for passenger drinks or flushing toilets”.
This mouthwatering prospect made me think it must have been planned by a technical man, not a marketing man.
And sure enough he is the “head of engineering”.
ROGER JONES
Peopleton

We need to look after our own people first 
SIR – Britain cannot put the weight of the world’s problems – however sad –  on its shoulders at the expense of its own people. There are impoverished, homeless and hungry people in Britain.
Yet the government is considering letting thousands of unaccompanied refugee children into the country. Once here, with human rights laws, their families will soon follow.
GB DIPPER
Leominster

Good news that CAP has been simplified
SIR – The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is far too bureaucratic and the greening measures have tied farmers up in too much red tape.
 It is good news therefore that after lobbying from MEPs, the European Commission has agreed to significantly simplify both the CAP and the greening measures. 
An online consultation which allows farmers to have their say can be accessed at ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/greening-first-year.
 It is vitally important that we get the message across to the Commission on where the CAP is failing farmers. 
DANIEL DALTON 
MEP, West Midlands