SIR – Your July 26 front page story, so aptly headlined “Bitter Loss”, actually highlights two lamentable issues which have and will continue to blight our city.

The first, despite a barrage of informed comment and criticism from local and national amenity bodies, the city council supported the wholesale clearance of the then newly enlarged Vinegar Works Conservation Area – leaving a few token relics (in the main because they were Listed Buildings) to remind us of what had been the “greatest and most important” vinegar works in the world. The current, proposed demolition of the street frontage sheds is merely a sad postscript to this ill-informed saga of needless loss.

The demolition will facilitate the redevelopment of the site and this leads to the second issue, one of even great moment and consequence. The artist’s impression has been commissioned to show the scheme in its most positive light – and even this hammers home how the building will utterly dominate the frontage of the former Graingers China Works (that tiny building to its right).

Curiously, there are no images to show how the redevelopment will dominate the skyline or the City Walls area. Even if this was a masterpiece of modern design (and personally I do not think so) it would still totally dominate all around – an overbearing visual intrusion impossible to disguise, hide or ignore.

So the city continues to ignore the lessons from its tragic past – Elgar House, the recently built flats at Sidbury – and now this! Until we have a council where officers and councillors are prepared to stand up for the highest architectural and planning standards, with a vision for an exciting yet sensitive urban landscape, we will continue to blight our city with bland architectural carbuncles, out of sympathy, out of scale, out of context – what a tragic legacy for future generations!

Dr Malcolm Nixon

Worcester

We have a right to know

SIR – I understand with some horror that the government is allowing lorries containing nuclear material to pass through Birmingham on the M6 six times a year from its base in Scotland to be refurbished in Berkshire.

These lorries pass schools, hospitals and homes. The Ministry of Defence (where Harriet Baldwin is now ensconced) is certain that the shipments are necessary and that there have been no incidents in the past 50 years. However, citizens have a democratic right to be aware of such activity. What might happen if a nuclear bomb hit Birmingham? More than 800,000 people would be killed. If it went off at ground level the Bullring shopping centre would be destroyed and radiation would be spread over an area of six square kilometres.

Wendy Hands

Upton-upon-Severn

Don’t get so worked up

SIR – Not much comment is necessary in reply to Andy Roberts’ letter published in the Worcester News (July 25) other than to express my dismay that, with everything else going on in the world, people can get so worked up about a mask.

Given that he made the effort to write to the paper about the Iraq war, he could have mentioned that the “small undisciplined group” he observed has been vindicated by the Chilcot Report, whereas many MPs who supported the war – an example of preventive war, “the supreme crime condemned at Nuremberg” – appear untainted by ridicule.

Neil Laurenson

Worcester