SIR – I am writing to ‘tap into’ the support that your readers have already shown for the homeless, particularly rough sleepers, living on the streets of Worcester this winter.
St Paul’s, in partnership with Maggs Day centre, will once again be running a night shelter specifically to provide warmth, food and accommodation for those with nowhere else to sleep during the coldest nights of the year.
We would really appreciate any donations from the public of tinned food, sleeping bags, toiletries, blankets – and anything else that will help us to do this.
Donations can be delivered either to our hostel on Tallow Hill, or to Maggs Day Centre in Deansway. Further details about what we need, and about the work that we do, can be found on our website stpaulshostel.co.uk
I know we’ll have a big response; Worcester people are famous for their big-hearted generosity at this time of year!
ROBBIE PORTER
Chairman, St Paul’s Hostel

Cameron must tread carefully over Syria
SIR – I imagine I am not alone in believing that it would be dangerous and unethical to bomb Syria as Mr Cameron thinks would be the best solution to the problem of IS (Islamic State) terrorism whilst cutting public service budgets here. It seems common sense that such action is likely to inflame matters and put British citizens at greater risk of violence, as was seen with Iraq. 
Mr Corbyn has told his fellow MPs to vote with their consciences. Labour has polled 107,000 members and found that 75 per cent were against bombing. Labour leaders in Worcester City say it is far more important to increase our security and our intelligence. They believe Mr. Cameron has not fully made the argument.  
 It is to be hoped that he does not ‘do a Blair’ over Syria and risk being described as the unpleasant face of Toryism.
WENDY HANDS
Upton-on-Severn

Trade agreement is a green issue too
SIR – With reference to John Phillpott’s Worcester News column on November 28 – I’m pleased that he agrees with the Green Party that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal being negotiated by the EU with the US is wrong in principle and practice. The TTIP agreement could see our government being sued if we bring failing privatised services back under public control and could lead to lowering hard-fought environmental and social standards to bring them ‘into line with the US’. It would see private corporate business gaining a ‘legal right’ to have access to tax revenues being spent on government services without any accountability to the taxpayers – only an obligation to shareholders to maximise profits.
The Green Party is against EU sanctioning big business measures like TTIP. However, the answer is not to ‘take our ball home’ because we don’t agree with what has been reportedly agreed to date by Brussels. Instead, we prefer to keep the pressure on sympathetic MEPs to oppose TTIP, and to stay and fight for a fairer and more just society, not just here in the UK, but also in Europe and internationally too.
NEIL LAURENSON
Worcester Green Party

We are not in the EU, we are the EU
SIR – David Barlow demonstrates (Worcester News, December 3) a mastery of understatement and denial, not to mention error.
He claims our country shares ‘a bit of sovereignty’ with the EU, whilst in reality it is being utterly absorbed into it. 
‘The open sea’ that Winston Churchill spoke of is denied the UK as a consequence. He wanted to be a good neighbour to continental Europe, not to drown in a political union.
To demonstrate our national impotence, one needs only to look at the following examples (selected from many):
l The UK’s meaningless ‘observer’ status on the World Trade Organisation. Trade agreements are conducted on our behalf by an EU-appointed bureaucrat. 
l  Our common-law tradition supplanted by European Napoleonic Code via the ECJ. Three quarters of our law emanates from the unelected European Commission via regulation, directive, decision and statutory instrument. 
l Recently the EU demanded the UK and France relinquish longstanding seats on the UN Security Council and transfer them to the EU. 
The Lisbon Treaty, signed so eagerly by the last Labour government (traitors all) was a European Constitution. It was designed to take us down the train tracks to a fully federal European state, made up of ‘Regions’. Our Parliament is a glorified local council. There is an EU central bank, a single currency, a flag and an anthem. How long before an EU police force and armed forces?  
We do not ‘share a bit of sovereignty’. We see the dissolution of our nation state. 
JAMES GOAD
UKIP Worcester

Oh, for the wings of a dove – a collar dove
SIR – Coo! Got that wrong!. The birds on page 15 of today’s paper are collar doves, not turtle doves.  Both doves are practically the same shape, but different colouring.  Collar doves stay here all year, turtle doves are summer visitors. Must try harder! 
FREDA DUTTON
Worcester