SCURRILOUS schemers are telling us that we must lose the trees in the High Street, along with the food vans, the hair braiders, Big Issue sellers, buskers and the odd Evangelist (if you'll pardon the pun).

These machinations are surely part of the corpulent corporation's plan to sterilise and standardise life itself.

A vibrant living city needs diversity and colour and difference, and it certainly needs trees, both aesthetically and ecologically. I even like Elgar's occasional, jaunty bollard hat.

PAUL JEFFERY

St John's, Worcester