SIR – Please give us back our road.
It was with some foreboding that I watched the twin spectacle of removal vans at the DEFRA site at Whittington Road and the County Council putting double yellow lines at the entrance to County Hall and the access road.
For some time now, both car parks at the County Hall site have been full to overflowing with cars spilling out onto Spetchley Road. The situation is the same with parking at Worcester Sixth Form College. The addition of 600 plus extra personnel without anywhere to park is simply ridiculous. Even building site developers have the sense to put infrastructure in place to get material etc. on site. What will County Hall, and in particular our glorious highway engineers, do to resolve this crisis as a matter of urgency? We, the residents of Spetchley Road, are left totally in the dark.
An enquiry at the aforementioned seat of power has revealed that there is a body in place (and remember I am not making this up…) called the Department for Service, Transportation, Property Technology, Strategic Change, and Customer Services in Worcestershire County Council . The boss is one Dr Peter Bishop, Strategic Commissioner. I can ask for a copy of his job description but I rather fear that trying to find a link between car parking and Highways might make me even more depressed at the totally unnecessary destruction of our beautiful residential road.
Mr Richard Bourne, our elected Councillor, declared in one of his election leaflets - and was depicted in Spetchley Road holding the said leaflets - stating he was going to sort it. I have to admit I was less than impressed given I have been trying for years to achieve what he was about to do if elected. My sympathy goes to him at his present demise.
KEITH BURTON
Worcester

Times have changed with our free speech
SIR – Great column from Chris Moncrieff regarding Parliament considering if Donald Trump should be banned from entering this country. I would suggest that such a dialogue is typical of the dictatorship we now live in. I remember, more than 60 years ago, being taken to London and being shown “Speakers Corner.” I was told that in England you could say anything you wanted to say, because we were a free people. How times change.
We English wrote the American Constitution and Bill of Rights. In America Freedom of Speech is constitutionally guaranteed. Sadly we had no constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech, and in my lifetime that right to freedom of speech has been completely destroyed, on the anvil of multiculturalism. 
Now we are legally obliged to keep our mouths firmly shut, and woe betide you if you publicly refuse to obey the tenets of political correctness. A word in the wrong place, a refusal to associate, even flying a flag in your own garden without “permission,” can lead you into very deep waters, especially if you “…cause alarm or distress…” indeed the penalties and “compensation” can be unlimited, as some have discovered to their cost. There are now a multiplicity of organisations and fellow travellers who minutely police our excruciatingly politically correct society, even in Parliament, and in our universities, as we now see. 
Free speech, freedom of opinion, freedom of association, it’s all gone. Those my generation leave behind are welcome to the dictatorship they have spawned. Sooner or later the dam will burst, and the pendulum will swing back the other way. Roll on, but I certainly wouldn’t like to be around when Middle England decides enough is enough because it’s going to be bloody. Dictators never relinquish power voluntarily. Perhaps what Middle England needs is its own “Donald Trump.”
N TAYLOR
Worcester

Councillor cannot have it both ways with taxes
SIR – I write in response to Cllr Neil Laurenson’s letter of February 5, ‘Council tax rise means paying more for less’.  Cllr Laurenson is either wrong or purposefully misleading readers. 
The City Council are, pending approval at the February council meeting, putting up Council Tax by 1.94 per cent, which equates to less that 1p per day, and is in line with our election pledge of last year to keep council tax rises to a minimum.  
As for paying more for less this is simply not true.  There will be no new cuts this year and services in many instances have improved under this administration – no more overgrown cemetery or dirty streets.  
What Cllr Laurenson conveniently fails to mention is that he has repeatedly voted against freezing council tax and voted the Labour group in who wanted to raise it by the maximum amount – he can’t have it both ways. 
CLLR CHRIS MITCHELL
St Clement’s Ward, cabinet member for resources

Some rather strange ideas from contributor
SIR – Your contributor N Taylor seems to have some odd ideas – who are the 18 to 20 million foreigners living here? 
 Perhaps in his book I am one of them? One of my grandfathers was Welsh and the other Scottish?
NEVILL SWANSON
Worcester

Similar breakfast diets
SIR – I eat two bowls of cornflakes (with sugar) most days, but I do eat other grub as well. (Yum yum.) 
GEORGE COWLEY
Worcester