SIR – It is good news that Robin Walker has made a direct plea to the Secretary of State over Middle Battenhall Farm and Miller Homes’ bid to develop 200 homes on the ancient beauty spot.
The land is earmarked for green fields in the emerging South Worcester Development Plan (SWDP),and it is time that local feeling ought to be considered.
A £100,000 bill could be facing the losing side,but with over 1,000 objectors, also the planning committee and now Worcester’s MP being united against the plan,surely it is time that local feeling should be considered.
After all who but Miller Homes wants this site to be desecrated by yet another 200 more homes?
PHIL PEGLER
Worcester

Migrants have made this nation great
SIR – In reply to the letter from Wendy Mason (Worcester News, August 26, she asked if I would be saying the same when the next wave comes”.
The answer is an unequivocal yes. Over successive generations this nation has been made great by the influx of immigrants and what they have contributed. In stating this I should declare an interest as I am partially of Irish descent.
In my lifetime we have had influxes of Ugandan Asians, and look at the businesses and the jobs they created and the contribution that has been made to our economy. I could carry on naming other refugee groups but space wouldn’t permit it.
 It is worth Wendy Mason remembering that we are signatories to the 1951 UN charter on refugees and are thereby obliged to as far as the Syrian situation is concerned to do our bit in rehoming them.
 To conclude on a lighter but positive note where would we get our Friday night curry without the influx of Bangladeshis a generation ago. It’s worth remembering that the curry houses are under pressure as a great number of the next generation have gone on to universities and qualified as doctors etc. rather than learn the trade in the kitchens of their families businesses but making a worthwhile contribution our national fabric in the course of bettering themselves.
CLIVE SMITH
Malvern


Offering a home for Labour refugees
SIR – It seems that the Labour Party embarked on an American style primary in order to allow the general public a voice in selecting Labour’s leader.
In a demonstration of stupefying unawareness, the Labour leadership discovered that Labour supporters in the general public, far from being the ultra-moderates that they had hoped for, turned out instead to be socialists in large numbers. There could be no greater demonstration of how out of touch the Labour leadership and most of their MPs are. The candidate who could only muster 20 nominations among Labour MPs originally, turned out to be very much in touch with his party members and supporters to the shock and chagrin of the party elite.
 The electorate for the leadership election swelled to 600,000. The ensuing panic among the right sought to either disqualify as many as they could of those who had joined in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn or to abandon the whole process altogether.
What the heirs of Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson have not considered is that the socialists in the party and their supporters won’t just evaporate even if Jeremy Corbyn is stopped by fair or foul means. The socialists will remain, demanding change with the same force and conviction that New Labour demanded when they neutered the internal democracy of the Labour Party in the 1990s.
Some polls state that Jeremy Corbyn has more support than his three rivals put together. That is because Andy Burnham, Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper are seen as clones of the Oxbridge elite stereotype, offering the same again. The Labour Party will either have to adjust its members’ aspirations or see itself suffering the same fate in England and Wales as it did in Scotland.
There is only one democratic party that could attract Labour socialists to its membership in England and Wales, and that is the Green Party. What is more, they would be made welcome, not eyed with suspicion.
PETER NIELSEN
Worcester

Who is in charge of this country?
SIR – Who is in charge of this country? David Cameron and his government, or human rights judges? Why do we allow foreign courts to rule on appeals by criminals for the right to stay in our country?
If we deem it fit for these criminals not to live in our society, we shouldn’t be asking other countries to approve or disapprove. It comes as no surprise that a third of those that have won against Britain at the European court of human rights are terrorists, prisoners or criminals! Cameron has done nothing... it was a big part of his manifesto , to rip this up, and replace it with a british rights, which im sure influenced many a voter..
GB DIPPER
Leominster

Drugs are not the only problem in sport
SIR – I completely agree with Bill Jay’s letter about drugs in sport but I should also add that any sportsman who bets on fixing games for money should be banned for life as well.
JASPER FARR
Worcester