SIR – Recently my daughter asked me if I would like to visit Worcester, as she had to go there on business. Not having been to the city for many, many years, I naturally accepted her invitation.

Oh dear! What a disappointment! While the number of ‘disabled parking space’ far exceeded those I have found in many other towns/cities, what really spoilt our little outing together was the total lack of public seating! I suffer from painful osteoarthritis of the lumbar spine, as well as mild angina – so, for me to be able to visit and enjoy going to places I have not seen for many years, I find that I cannot cope unless I can sit down and have a short break, every so often. That was not possible in Worcester city centre.

Admittedly there were lots of cafes dotted about, with plenty of seats, but who want to waste precious time drinking coffee/tea? (especially if, like me, you are getting on in years, I am 85-and-a-half years old).

Perhaps Worcester City Council should take a leaf out of Loughborough’s book and provide at least the occasional seat for the less able members of society. On a recent trip to the Leicestershire town, my daughter and I were most impressed by the layout of seating throughout the pedestrian precincts in Loughborough.

MRS DG BRADBURY

Leamington Spa

Don’t let EU erode our sovereignty

SIR – All those overpaid and largely anonymous foreign bureaucrats at the top of the tree in the EU experiment have decided that they will not release their plans to establish an EU army, until after the referendum. One wonders why?

An EU army will replace and consume all independent national armies, and will mean that just like we currently suffer, with unelected EU bureaucrats dictating how we operate our borders and trade, they will remove yet more of our disappearing independence, identity, and sovereignty, until we are so weak that we truly become dependent entirely on the EU, and in just a generation or two, our children will have little idea of their own proud and independent heritage. The only winners in this are all those eastern European countries our hard-earned money is bailing out, and all those highly paid foreign bureaucrats and former national politicians like Cameron and his astonishingly pro EU friends, who will be in line for highly paid jobs that will render them safe from the inconvenience of democratic elections, because the last thing the EU monster is, is democratic!

Vote leave, before it’s too late, and while your vote still counts!

Will Richards

Malvern

Bureaucrat gripe just doesn’t add up

SIR – The two May 31 letters on the EU presented a most telling contrast.

First we had Will Richards dragging up the usual old one about the scourge of the “bureaucrats”, so I thought that a few real numbers might be helpful. Pre-devolution, we actually had more of them running our UK Scottish Office than were in Brussels administering the EU! Overall, the number of EU civil servants today is about one-tenth of the UK’s (recently much-reduced) total, and amounts to less than one half of the number in our DWP alone.

Then we had the refreshing contribution from Derek Fearnside, one in which he set out some of the nuances (i.e. not black-&-white simplistics) of the sovereignty issue that is causing some folk to become quite hot under the collar. I wouldn’t change a word of it, but would simply add that, as well as the globalisation of trade, industry and finance which he highlights, none of us can be sovereign, in the historic sense of the word, in the face of climate change and population growth (both, arguably, present and future drivers of large-scale migration).

David Barlow

Worcester

No free gym access for benefit claimants

SIR – I was a bit surprised by the article in the Worcester News regarding the recent report into physical activity. We did NOT recommended that people on benefits should receive free access to gyms, this would be unaffordable. Our recommendation was worded as follows: “Learning from successful practice elsewhere: “Recommendation 14: The County Council should fully investigate successful work undertaken in other local authorities, such as Camden Council, in order to identify good practice that might be transferable to Worcestershire.” We simply want the county council to look at what other local authorities do to promote physical activity, learn from them and where appropriate transfer ideas into Worcestershire. Alongside many other recommendations we would like to see doctors use social prescribing to refer their patients to sports clubs and to groups such as the Ramblers Association, something we do believe is affordable and achievable.

Richard Udall

Chair of Overview and Scrutiny Worcestershire County Council

Radio heaven

SIR – I’m spending the next two hours listening to lovely Jane Jones on Classic FM.

I spend 80 per cent of my time happily alone in my flat.

GEORGE COWLEY

Worcester