SIR – What the hell is going on with the muppets at Worcester County Council? They want to spend £20 million-plus of taxpayers’ money on a station that that a private company already wants to do at no expense to the ratepayers of Worcestershire. 
If WCC go ahead with this stupid idea, then in my mind it will constitute a misuse of public funds. 
WCC should be bending over backwards to assist the current holders of the rights in completing this project. Why are they so determined to take over this project? Where is the money coming from? Another private enterprise loan that WE will never finish paying for. There was mention that it would be paid for in 20 years. Yeah, right. 
What are they trying to do, bankrupt the county so no money would ever be available to complete the ring road? 
JEFF BAKEWELL
Worcester

Time for the Tory grass roots to rise up
SIR – I refer to the Worcester News article, “Walker: I won’t rule out campaigning to quit EU” (February 3). To me such a headline almost certainly means our MP will follow the herd. Cameron has been stomping on the anti EU conservative MPs for months, and has been able to gag the gutless. 
 It may well be that Cameron will get his way over Europe, but if he does it could be at the cost of his party. Europe is reviled by most of the Tory foot soldiers. If Cameron wins the referendum to stay in Europe, via the votes of millions of foreigners who have migrated here, those foot soldiers will desert in droves. 
And with Cameron telling Tory MP’s to ignore grass roots opinion, Cameron might just have lit the match that lights off a grass roots revolution. Such a revolution is well overdue! 
It’s about time the Tory grass roots found some backbone and told Cameron he is their servant: not their master. After all, haven’t the Tory grass roots been referred to as “swivel-eyed loons” by one member of the Conservative Establishment?
N TAYLOR 
Worcester

Compensation for traffic may be risky
SIR  – I am in utter disbelief, Robin Walker telling the government to act over gridlock on the M5. Don’t throw stones in glass houses, Pot kettle black springs to mind. If he opens the floodgates for compensation to be awarded to the people stuck on the M5, what about Worcester, Mr Walker – gridlock every day, and all because, for some unknown reason, you and County Hall refuse to discuss the only blatantly obvious way to solve our own traffic issues, which is to finish the ring road.
Why Mr Walker, did County Hall not block the slip roads onto the motorway islands at junctions 6 and 7? I think Mr. Walker should be very careful when talking about compensation for people stuck in traffic.
JOHN MATTHEWS
Worcester

EU is our best hope for a better world
SIR – Greens, liberals, socialists, social democrats,  human rights defenders, and many other progressive parties and organisations all over the European Union do not want this country to leave the EU. 
There are some in Britain who believe that the EU is capitalist to the core. I had some sympathy for that in 1975, but I don’t see how an independent Britain is any less wedded to the free market than the EU. We experienced the worst of unregulated capitalism in 2008 under a Labour government led by Gordon Brown which opposed any attempt by the EU to impose regulation on the banks. The EU was right and New Labour and the Tories were wrong.
The EU faces serious challenges such as refugees and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) under which publicly owned and run services are threatened by private corporations seeking to shut them down. Environmental degradation and organised crime respect no borders. We can’t just walk away from these problems and pull up the drawbridge.
The EU is not perfect, far from it. But I believe the EU is our best hope for a better world and must be defended and supported by those progressive forces within its member countries.  
PETER NIELSEN
Worcester Green Party

Anybody remember emergency hospital?
SIR – I am seeking the help of readers, who may be willing to share memories of Barn-sley Hall Emergency Hospital, Bromsgrove, or Lea Hospital, as it later became known.
My late father was in the employ of Barnsley Hall Mental Asylum from 1918 to 1959. He started there first as an electrician’s apprentice, rising through the ranks to become the chief engineer and clerk of works. When he died in 1989, amongst his papers we found an autobiographical account of his experiences, but he had missed out the Second World War years and made no mention of the hutted emergency hospital that I knew had been built in the grounds when war broke out.
I took over responsibility for the publication of the manuscript, because I knew I was probably one of the few living people with any knowledge of the missing years, Now 90 per cent of the work is complete, but I desperately need your readers’ help to provide recollections of the hutted emergency hospital, particularly towards the end of its life when the huts were used to accommodate Lea Hospital for mentally and physically disadvantaged children.
bill.holden@wjhassociates.co.uk