DISEASE-free animals tipped into Throckmorton clay pits, despite local citizens' fears, had to go somewhere said councillor Tucker.

In the good old days an EEC beef mountain was fragmented free to Vale senior citizens. Could not Throckmorton British farm standard meats, conventionally butchered, have been distributed from Army lorries in market places, free to citizens whose taxes have bought them? I imagine pensioners jumping like spring lambs and stampeding hot foot and drooling to fill stomachs and freezers with bonanza manna. Public institutions eg Long Lartin and Windsor Castle, could banquet like lords and reduce their charge upon the public purse.

When it seems that officialdom's shilly-shallying collective mind is bemused by mathematical models' predictions as offbeat as those of Nostradamus and Old Moore, when its feet seem mired in logistical lias clays, when its reactions seem paralysed by red tape, when its language is blue to match its mood and the very air it breaths upon us, then consumers and taxpayers may be fearful not only of pyres and pits but also of yet again feeling ultimate sufferers, bamboozled and fleeced.

ROBERT THOULD, Hawthorn Road, Evesham.