SIR – I thought I would write about school bullying. I have seen a lot of bullying by young girls on to one boy. Sometimes two or three boys onto one young boy. When I was a young girl I was bullied all the time. 
As I walk one of my dogs to the shop to get my paper every day I go down an alley way to give my dogs a longer walk. The children are usually coming out of school about this time and on one particular day on my walk I met a young boy being pushed about by two young girls. 
The boy was about 11 or 12, the two girls a bit older. As I approached the girls ran off laughing. The boy was lying on the floor crying. I asked him if he was okay as I wanted to make sure he was. He was so upset he told me that the girls follow him all the time, they had knocked his pound coin out of his hand and he could not find it. 
I told him to tell his parents or a teacher. I have phoned the Worcester school involved as this bullying must stop and yes I did give the boy a pound.
CAROLE ROBERTS
Worcester

Getting the full picture before EU referendum
SIR – How many migrants from EU countries have come to live and work in Britain in recent years? It is a question of huge importance to which the public has a right to know before deciding how to vote in a referendum.
Since 2011, the department for work and pensions has issued 1.9 million NI numbers to EU nationals. But the official total of EU migrants who settled here in the same period - as published by the office for national statistics is just 751,000. So where are the missing 1.1million? All gone home ?
The surge of net migration is now over 330,000 a year, putting massive strain on housing, school places, hospital beds and other public services. Walk down almost any high street and you wonder which country you’re in. The public have a right to know the full picture of what the future holds.
GB DIPPER
Leominster

Cat let out of the bag on hospital parking
SIR – The response by Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust to parking charges of £1.6m was wholly unconvincing.  This sum is the equivalent of at least 50 full time staff doing jobs like charge collection, maintenance or security. 
Tarmac car parks not used by any heavy vehicles should need little or no maintenance. Car park users should not pay for roads round the hospitals, which would be needed for service vehicles etc even if there were no car parks. 
I have never seen any security staff dedicated to hospital car parks. They are not provided at council car parks and so should not be needed at hospital ones. The cat is let out of the bag by the final statement that the surplus is “put straight back into patient care”. Patient care should be funded via the funds the Trust receives from government, not by back door charges on the sick and their relatives, which undermine the basic NHS principle of patient care being “free at the point of use”. 
KELVIN HARD 
Worcester 

Consequences  of fracking on wildlife
SIR – Well done to Neil Laurenson of the Green Party for opposing fracking (“Fracking vote dismay”, WN, December 18)
Whatever the harm done to humans by this activity, the damage caused to wildlife is likely to be massively greater.
In the USA, where fracking is rife, millions of fish and other aquatic animals have been killed through fracking wastewater getting into rivers and streams.
Fracking turns natural areas into industrial zones, and to build large-scale fracking sites, thousands of acres of land must be cleared, directly threatening the livelihood of whole ecosystems due to increased potential for air and water pollution.
A single drilling station can affect many acres, harming birds and nocturnal species that are highly sensitive to disruption.
Unless we say no to fracking, large numbers of wild animals are going to suffer and die through yet another example of the selfishness, arrogance and stupidity of the human species.
PETER TALBOT 
Worcester

Thanks for helping the shoebox appeal
SIR – Thank you to all the kind-hearted people in Worcester who contributed to this year’s St. Barnabas Church Christmas appeal for shoeboxes containing gifts for homeless people in Worcester. The donors included Churches, the Lions, a WI & many friends.
We were delighted to receive over 250 shoeboxes for adult men & women & 8 boxes for dogs. All were beautifully decorated. They were blessed in St. Barnabas Church & distributed to St. Paul’s Hostel & Maggs Day Centre to be given out on Christmas Day. The boxes for dogs, containing a toy & doggie treats, were for Maggs Day Centre to give out to any dog which visited on Christmas Day!
Thank you again, to all the generous people who have thought of those less fortunate than themselves.’
MARY JAMES
Worcester

Sad stories behind our favourite drink
SIR – What am I do to? I’ve just seen on TV (Our World, BBC One) the terrible conditions tea workers live in, in Assam. As an Englishman, I enjoy tea and coffee. But young kids in the tea fields out East are dying of malnutrition.
GEORGE COWLEY
Worcester