SIR – Faster London journey times from Worcester and the projected Worcester(shire) Parkway Station can be achieved without threatening withdrawal of stops at other key county stations such as Evesham and Pershore, the two largest towns between Worcester and Oxford.
The chief priorities must remain to improve Cotswold Line reliability, reduce the number of cancelled and delayed trains,upgrade the frequency of service which has gaps in service at peak times of up to 90 minutes as well as to improve the infrastructure so that Worcester is no longer the bottleneck it currently is.
Redoubling of most of the Cotswold Line at great expense four years ago could – and indeed should – have led to an hourly service on the line serving existing stations including Pershore, Evesham and Honeybourne. In fact west of Moreton the line gained just one extra train each way and latest timing/service improvements have been achieved at the expense of existing stations such as Pershore.
Faster journey times could also have been achieved then but the current timetable is unfortunately stuck in pre-redoubling mode which has inbuilt delays waiting for trains of up to 10 minutes at Evesham – and/or in the middle of the attractive Oxfordshire countryside! In fact the vast majority of journeys are now longer than they were just 10 years ago with some trains taking as much as 160 minutes for a 126 mile journey!
One exception is an early evening service which takes just two hours and eight minutes from Worcester to London – and this calls at all three Vale of Evesham stations as well as Hanborough in Oxfordshire. Take out the unloved Slough stop with one or two minor timing improvements and hey presto you have a two hour timing to London.
During a previous Parkway revival back in the 1980’s and in conversation with the then director Inter-City he said Worcester Parkway would not become reality until there was reliable and frequent – at least hourly – service to and from London.
We should clearly be putting the interests of the Cotswold Line horse before the 40 year old Worcester Parkway cart!
JULIAN PALFREY
Pershore

Tories just want to aid their rich friends
SIR – It is scandalous that the Tory Government has caved in to NFU pressure and given permission for some farmers to use banned pesticides that have been shown to harm our precious bees. It is probably confined to East Anglia and hopefully will not affect Worcestershire, but the locations are being kept secret!
Ever more scientific evidence shows just how dangerous these chemicals are to bees and other pollinators – they should have no place in our fields and gardens.
The NFU’s campaign to undermine the pesticides ban has given an impression of large crop losses nationwide, but this is not supported by the scientific evidence or harvest figures.
It is completely unacceptable for the Government to refuse to make the NFU’s application publicly available – and it even asked its own independent advisers not to publish the minutes and agenda of key meetings. The secrecy around this application will only fuel the public’s mistrust of Tory government.
DEFRA had fully applied the ban on the use of neonicotinoids introduced by the EU, and this caving-in under NFU pressure means that even a petition containing 473,000 signatures from a worried public is being ignored, while the chemical giants and NFU are appeased.
This Conservative government are intent on aiding their rich friends at the expense of the rest of us, regardless of the consequences.
Mr M YOUNG
Worcester

Many are falling for this powerful scam
SIR – I am gratified that Francis Lankester (Letters, July 24) finds my letters “interesting and valuable”. It is with regret that I am not able to reciprocate. His letter suffers from an apparent lack of intellectual rigour, and studiously avoids response or reaction to a single substantive point in my earlier one. Instead, he simply harrumphs and bombasts, inaccurately and down new largely irrelevant by-ways.
The core of the economics and politics around the global financial crisis of 2007-’08 and its aftermath is that it started in the private sector banks of the USA, and that the Tories have been very successful at obscuring this truth and using a cynical untruth as cover for what they always long to do: impose “austerity” in order to reduce the size of the state and to cut back on the essential services which government should be providing for us.
It almost becomes possible to understand why Labour, including three of its present Leadership candidates, have run so scared of tackling this problem: there are many more like Francis Lankester who have fallen for this powerful scam, and the task is therefore a hard, but absolutely necessary one.
DAVID BARLOW
Worcester

Let’s learn from our mistakes over island
SIR – I see three scapegoats have been suspended over the ketch Island fiasco. Their punishment is, take the rest of the summer off on full pay funded by us, the tax payer.
Typical county council incompetence. This is who the majority of the public voted for. Please lets learn from our mistakes.
JOHN MATTHEWS
Worcester

We live in terrible times for the innocent
SIR, Hearty congratulations to USA for killing Muslim terrorist (breaking news). I only hope (and pray) that no innocent Muslims were killed in “collateral damage.” We live in terrible times.
GEORGE COWLEY
Worcester