PITY Mr Dieter Schroeder. He very rightly draws our attention to the clocks that don't work and also the streets of Worcester city centre that are constantly awash with filth?

It takes a stranger to see what we residents of Worcester ignore because it is so commonplace. This in a city that we are told needs to do more for tourists.

What happens? Evening News letter writers shoot the messenger with a vile explosion of xenophobia, particularly directed at the Germans for events which happened nearly 60 years ago.

Many years and two or three generations later, we find your regular correspondent John Hinton, in a particularly repulsive piece of letter writing, drawing a parallel between children in gas chambers and faulty clocks and filth on Worcester's streets.

Mr Hinton's is the sort of language that exhibits a mindset that could make me ashamed to be English. We, of course, never criticise other peoples and countries or their food and cities.

ROB PEACHEY, Worcester.