SIR – Your lead story “Why did nobody help me” (Worcester News, January 21) is of course shocking. According to your report, a young mother was left without help when she sustained injuries alighting from a bus in Brickfields Road, Worcester.
The young lady claims the driver failed to assist her by not using “the kneel down”switch as she alighted from the bus, resulting in her pushchair getting caught between the kerb and bus. 
Her 16-month-old daughter was thrown forward on to the pushchair which saved the child from injury, but the mother sustained a large cut on her left leg and bruising. She wonders why nobody stopped to help her other than the driver asking if she was all right.
The manager of First Worcester said the company would be making a full investigation. That’s all very well, but if the driver was aware of the circumstances he should have called the police, who it is hoped by now are aware of the situation.
Most drivers of these buses are always helpful but there is a small minority who let the others down by driving off before all passengers have alighted safely or getting seated before driving away.
PHIL PEGLER
Worcester


Let the people decide our country’s fate
SIR – I have to chuckle reading David Barlow’s letter (January 13), as yet again he attempts to let everyone know they are wrong in having their own views on the EU.
Every time someone suggest something bad, or wanting to leave the EU, Mr Barlow returns fire with just how wrong they are, and has the awe to suggest leaving the EU must be based on reality. Perhaps other people have seen the reality and that is why they have nothing good to say about the EU.
The sooner, or if ever, we have a referendum the better. Everyone has a view, everyone has a vote, so let the people decide once and for all.
GB DIPPER
Leominster

Keeping cats indoors can be sensible option
SIR – I was dismayed to read your report about four cats being poisoned in Malvern (“Cat lover warns others over feline antifreeze poisoning”, Worcester News, January 22) and my heart goes out to Celia Parsons at the sad loss of her beautiful feline friends.
This tragedy should be a reminder, however, that such death and suffering to cats and heartbreak for those who care for them could easily be avoided if the cats were kept as indoor animals and not allowed to roam.
This would not only save the lives of the cats, but also of the many birds and other wild creatures they kill when they are allowed outdoors.
Some may claim that it is not natural to keep cats indoors, but the outside world in this country, with all the traffic, cat-haters and other dangers, is an equally unnatural world for creatures that are not native to this country and originated in the arid lands of the Near East.
I have a number of rescued cats who are perfectly happy living indoors as I provide them with plenty of toys, climbers and several litter trays.
Increasingly, cat welfare organisations are advising people to keep their moggies indoors and I would urge everyone who cares about their cats to heed this advice.
JANE HARGREAVES
Stourport

Involvement of public has got to be good
SIR – Given the many current issues in Worcestershire NHS could the Worcester News give prominent advance notice of the meetings of the bodies involved — the Acute Trust Board, Health and Care Trust Board, the three Clinical Commissioning Groups, the County Council Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee and any others?
The public are often entitled to attend and submit questions, for instance in the case of the next meeting of the Acute Trust Board on February 3. Raising the level of public involvement will surely be in the interests of all.
PETE McNALLY
Chairman, Worcester Trades Union Council
 
Trade with the EU — but nothing more
SIR – While I don’t wish  to go into any length of debate with Mr Brown (if my memory serves me well, was he the ukulele-playing ex-Labour councillor now with another party?), just to put him right Google Churchill speeches. You will find he said: “Our destinies lay across the SEAS”. Regarding Mr Farage and Clegg on the BBC, Nigel Farage humiliated Clegg, as well as at the Oxford Union debates. The Welsh First Minster Carwyn Jones didn’t know whether he was coming or going in a debate with Farage.
That’s why Our Dave will not appear on TV with Mr Farage. I myself wish to leave the cesspit of the EU. If they are saying we must take 90,000 internees in now, what would it be like if this nation was in full time?
Trade with Europe, yes. Take orders from those unelected EU commissars, who are nothing but a lying, self-serving, sociopathic cheating group of people, no. Our Dave will return from the EU, like Neville Chamberlain in 1939, waving a piece of paper claiming an historic and hard-fought victory. Juncker and Merkel will pretend that they have been bludgeoned into submission.
Hollande will forget the script and tell everyone that perfidious Albion who fought for French freedom in the Second World War got nothing. As Cowley would say, Ho Ho Ho. 
JC BUTTERFIELD
Worcester