Traffic trouble 
Madam,
In Stourport as in many towns, houses are being built left, right, and centre, without, it appears thought for the infrastructure! Years ago we were promised an extra bridge to cross the Severn at Stourport.  
The new Medical Centre is a prime example, of the chaos caused by traffic crossing the river bridge and back again,  the new houses being built off Pearl lane, when complete adding to the queues of traffic struggling to get through the town centre.
 Is this the town to attract holiday  visitors ?  or should we advice them to bring a mask with them, if not for COVID, but to protect them from toxic EXHAUST FUMES!!! 
Jenny Bechelli  

Health concerns
Madam
Thank you for reporting the concerns of Dr Marina Romanello about fossil fuel subsidies (Governments ‘still favour fossil fuels’, Shuttle, 3 November 2022), which persuaded me to email her at University College to ask if Lancet Countdown has examined the link between changes in exposure to industrial PM2.5 emissions and changes in rates of infant mortality.
My email included: “I’ve used ONS data at Council level to see how infant mortality rates (IMRs) change after major point-sources of industrial PM2.5 emissions either start-up or close down.
The pattern has been the same in the forty or so locations I’ve checked data, i.e. a rise in IMRs after start-up and a fall after shut-down.”
The importance of the above pattern is that it’s wrong to brush aside higher rates of infant deaths by blaming deprivation, ethnicity and low socio-economic status.
Dr William Brend, barrister and medically-qualified doctor, proved beyond any reasonable doubt that poverty couldn’t be blamed for high infant mortality and that air pollution must be the dominant cause. (Health and The State, Constable, 1917)
Shuttle readers will recall concerns about a proposed incinerator in Kidderminster and the one built at Hartlebury. The official line is that emissions from incinerators don’t adversely affect infant death rates, but ONS data doesn’t correspond with that rhetoric and the sudden post-incinerator rises in infant mortality in Councils exposed to emissions show that deprivation, ethnicity and low socio-economic status can’t be blamed.
Michael Ryan

Not that happy
Madam,
I received the latest ‘Foley Park & Hoobrook Matters’ and read the councillor’s report that the completion of the new pedestrian crossing on Sutton Park Road has ‘delghted local residents’. 
I would be very interested to know how many residents would be equally delighted (if not more so) to see improvements at the other end of this road, at the junction with Bewdley Hill?
This is an extremely busy junction and surely requires very urgent attention?
Incidentally, the bollards there have been destroyed and lying flat on the road for months.When will they be replaced?
Jan Sprason

A matter of trust
Madam,
After listening to the new prime minister giving his speech in which he states that he is going to gain the trust of the people. If he stops pensioners getting the rise, they are due next April he will lose that trust not only from pensioners but all people.
When he was chancellor, he suspended the triple lock and then promised it would be restored and not touched again, if he suspends it again not only is he untrustworthy but he is putting pensioners lives at risk because for a lot of pensioners the biggest proportion of their pension goes on heating and food and the current rises are already causing them to switch off heating or cut out meals.
Paul Dakin