SIR – Mr Bushill-Matthews’ love of free speech and informed democracy could be our means to learn a lot more about the EU about which we hear nothing but gloom about from the redoubtable Mark Starr and others.

In 2009 we shall have a chance to vote in a European parliamentary election and I challenge the Worcester News to break the British media’s code of silence about Europe and make Worcester people the first properly informed British electorate over the intervening few months.

Who are our MEPs? What do they do? What does European citizenship offer and cost us? Do we know that Mr Blair and Mr Mandelson were behind pushing through things like the Nice Treaty which gave 500 million people across Europe what amounts to British citizenship and free market reforms that closed the post offices?

Let’s have a real informed debate about Europe and free ourselves from the extremists on both sides of the current mystery which surrounds the EU.

JIM EVANS, Worcester.