SIR – On February 18, I planned a trip with my grandson to Birmingham New Street for the afternoon to show him the new Grand Central building, do a bit of shopping and visit a cafe.
We planned to take the train from Foregate Street at 12.24pm. The two coach train arrived about two thirds full. There were many people on the platform and the train filled up. I complained to a staff member that there was nowhere to sit. I am 74 and my grandson is five and we did not intend to stand all the way to Birmingham. We got off the train and I obtained a refund on our tickets from the travel office, and later submitted a formal complaint in writing for spoiling our day.
Two days earlier I had taken the same trip with my granddaughter and we had managed to find a pair of seats though the train became overcrowded at Droitwich and Bromsgrove. On the return from New Street, we again managed to find a pair of seats by arriving at the train 25 minutes before it was due to leave. By leaving time, the train was shockingly overcrowded with people having to sit on tables, and mothers sitting on the floor with their small children.
The growing popularity of train travel should be good news for getting people out of their cars and all that implies for environmental, financial and psychological issues. Instead, it seems that the train operators regard it as a bonanza through the naked exploitation of people by barefaced profiteering, all for the want of another coach.
PETER NIELSEN
Worcester

There’s always something we can do
SIR – You report (Worcester News, February 8) a senior Lib Dem county councillor saying about services to older and more vulnerable people that “If the council provided a Rolls Royce service in the past, it might have to be a Reliant Robin one in the future.” He then goes on to describe the £10 million cuts to services as “inevitable” because of government funding cuts.
Well, Worcester Trades Union Council does not accept such hand-wringing about service cuts to the elderly and vulnerable who can least look after themselves. These cuts are a direct result of the Chancellor’s so-called Austerity approach and they can and will be changed if enough people tell our MP’s that they must be.
We are told there is no money for our old people and yet it was quickly found for the banks who have proved less than grateful. It was found to give income tax cuts to the better off. It was found so that the likes of Google could have sweetheart deals to pay very little tax.
Some £4 million will be found to prop up the care system in Worcestershire, not from taxation but by increasing the council tax. But unlike income tax, council tax is rigged in such a way that the poor pay disproportionately more than the rich.
Worcester Trades Union Council rejects such unfairness and the suggestion there is nothing we can do. There is. Tell your MP’s and councillors that our old, frail and less well off must not be treated so unfairly.
BRYN GRIFFITHS
Secretary, Worcester Trades Union Council

How are we supposed to get our money?
SIR – The Worcester News article “Couples are missing out on tax relief” (February 15) made my blood boil, especially Ruth Owen, director general, personal tax saying, “Show your spouse you love them by applying for marriage allowance.”
Naturally you have to do this online. If you’re not online you’re out of luck (I guess). This is a typical piece of bureaucratic nonsense. Why on earth have our MP’s legislated that applications have to be made “online?” 
This is nothing more than a tax code change. Why then can’t the Inland Revenues computers do the calculation and pay us the money? 
Is it because our penniless politicians want to hang on to the £114m this measure will cost them?
Online you will need your partner’s national insurance numbers. You will need to prove your identity with the last four digits of the account the government pays your money into, or details from your P60, all of which the Inland Revenue has.
Why then have 267,000 people go to go through he rigmarole of applying personally to an agency that is now renowned for not answering its mail, not answering the phone, and very probably not responding online?
If our MPs want to use their comment column for something useful let them tell us when they are going to instruct the Inland Revenue to pay us all out forthwith. It’s our money give it to us. Treat us as if we were Google. 
And tell us how 70 and 80-year-olds with no access to or knowledge of the internet are going to get their money.
N TAYLOR
Worcester

The solution is slash the population
SIR – N Taylor’s letter (February 16) advocates “only one solution. to slash our population”.
Mr Taylor will, no doubt, have read Mein Kampf. Its author had a (Final) Solution, namely, “Our object must be to bring our territory into harmony with the numbers of our population”. 
GERRY TAGGART
Powick

Two columns for the price of one
SIR – Space on this page being finite, I must express my thanks to Wendy Hands (Letters, February 17) for re-quoting most of my earlier contribution and thus facilitating two columns for the price of one, as it were.
DAVID BARLOW
Worcester