SIR – Thank you to Tom Edwards, in The Source column (Worcester News, June 19) for highlighting the contradictions in Worcestershire County Council’s approach to the tobacco industry.
The cabinet member for health has a responsibility to help smokers to quit. His actions are not credible while the county council pension fund has £22m invested in tobacco companies and profits from smoking addiction.
The new Conservative government has the same equivocal approach to the nation’s health and best interests. The Department of Health is responsible for the ‘Tobacco Control Plan for England’. However, George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, is proposing to cut £200m, in year, from health ‘non-NHS’ spending. What this actually means is that Councillor Hart may have 7.4 per cent less in his public health budget for 15/16 than he planned to spend. So there will be less support for our local smoking cessation services, school nursing and cancer screening programmes, for example, than expected.
These cuts to local public health initiatives will have long-term consequences for people’s health and well being and lead to increased future demands on the NHS.
LYNN DENHAM
Worcester

Why are we still paying a licence fee?
SIR – Is it time to rescind the BBC TV licence fee?
In this day and age, failing to own a BBC TV licence under penalty of jail, and or a £1,000 fine is ridiculous. How is it that this one TV broadcaster has the nerve to insist on this sweeping penalty, no matter whether you watch their programmes or not? It is Draconian, and totally out of keeping with the modern world.
A television is a window on the world and denying someone the right to peer through that window freely and without being criminalised is incomprehensible.
The BBC is also failing badly to comply with its remit to be unbiased; it is a Left-wing, unashamedly-biased quango that did everything in its power to get the Labour party elected into government recently. Latest figures show that the BBC spent £2.4 billion out of £5.1 billion on programmes in the year to April 2014 – less than half of its budget. For a broadcaster to spend over £2.5 billion on its bloated administration is obscene.
If the BBC insists on paying outlandish salaries to an army of leeches on the public purse, then why not offer its service on a subscription basis instead? Isn’t that how the modern world operates?
Mr YOUNG
Worcester

The loss of this pool would be a tragedy
SIR – Hot tub loss at Lower Wick pool.
A millionaire Italian gentleman has a lot to answer for, by the name of Mr Giuseppe Jacuzzi. It’s a part that he designed that has failed at Lower Wick Swimming Pool and made their Spa Pool inoperable.
The Spa Pool needs replacing, at a cost of some £25,000. Without this sum the whole Health Hydro will have to close. I see that the City Council has a surplus this year of £376,000.
Question – How can the management at the pool be persuaded to ask the City Council for some financial help to overcome this problem?
If this closure goes ahead, and it appears inevitable, will its passing reduce the income sufficiently to jeopardise the Swimming Pool itself? If that failed, a dozen or so schools would lose their swimming lessons. Let alone the ‘Public’ swimming, and Lifesaving Club. We can’t let that happen.
Many local people use the Health Hydro regularly, it’s the only ‘public’ one in the City. The older generation especially deprive a lot of pleasure from its therapeutic benefit to their tired muscles.
This is one case where I hope the City Council will ‘take the lead’ and propose a solution to the Pool Management.
GODFREY HARVEY
Worcester

Anniversary show hugely entertaining
SIR – I would like to congratulate all who took part in the 50th Anniversary Show at the Swan Theatre on Saturday evening. The audience were admirably entertained by representatives of many of the Swan user groups who produced short clips from many and varied shows past, present and future.
The evening was compared with style and wit by Ben Humphrey and the whole was a showcase of the huge amount of talent that is in and around this area. Well done to everyone both behind and in front of the curtain who gave their time to produce some wonderful entertainment.
With entertainment in mind, this may be the time to say that whilst the Friends do not have a show at the Swan Theatre this year, the Variety Show will be back in September 2016.
JAN VALE
Chairman of the Friends of the Swan Theatre Worcester

You could give it to other worthy causes
SIR – Tom Edwards reports on the pending 10 per cent pay rise for MPs,despite a petition signed by 376,000 people labelling it unfair and unjust.
Some MPs are saying they will give some, if not all to charity, which just goes to show it is too much. How pleased local government workers,nurses and others would relish such a windfall! yet they are lucky to get 1 per cent, if any at all.
PHIL PEGLER
Worcester

Why not let him go – and not come back
SIR – Why oh why all the controversy about this Asian man, Tolka Asmal, just seventeen, if he wants to go to Syria to join Islamic State, or any Asian if it comes to that, for God’s sake let them go – if that’s the life they want, who are we to stop them.
But when and if they want to return to this country, it’s a big sorry but no. This man picked the easy way out, he knew what would happen, yet we are supposed to feel sorry for his family.
I do apologise for airing my views like this, but attempts to murder innocent people make my blood boil.
L PRESLEY
Bransford

Riverside muggers should be careful...
SIR – I wonder if others have heard the story of an elderly gent walking the riverside in Worcester who was mugged by two youths?
They ended up in the river with their matrimonial prospects seriously compromised – the elderly gent was a retired SAS instructor!
NEVILL SWANSON
Worcester