SIR - With reference to the saga at Valley Parade. The PFA says contracts will have to be honoured and all wages paid. How can you pay someone when you have nothing to pay? Do the players want to bankrupt Bradford City?

Chairman Geoffrey Richmond gave the players contracts when we were a Premiership team assuming that they were good enough. Well, they failed miserably then, and again last season, and they still have the nerve to expect contracts to be honoured.

Wake up! If they had put the effort in in the first instance, Bradford City wouldn't be in the situation they are now.

A lot of faith was shown by Mr Richmond and the board in those heady days and just look how it was repaid: relegation and only just escaping again this season.

Doesn't your heart bleed for these overpaid prima donnas. They should get a real job and join the real world instead of griping about how hard done by they are.

David Wilde, Kingsley Avenue, Bradford 2.

SIR - I am so proud to be part of a xenophobic country in which the idea of welcoming other communities with open arms is so obviously disliked (Letters, May 21).

When Ghurka troops are representing this country in Sierra Leone and Fijians seconded to the British Army being stationed all over the world in the name of Her Majesty's Government, don't we all feel proud of our selfish attitudes towards people not from Britain? I am a New Zealander and no-one has ever questioned my right to live here.

If someone is eligible to stay in the UK, then their educational needs should be catered for, no questions asked. To have the gall to say let them sink or swim just shows how people's narrow-minded attitudes allow the Right wing to grow and be nourished in a modern democracy.

Martyn Connell, Cartwright Gardens, Huddersfield.

SIR - On May 18-19, three things came together in an unusual display of symmetry:

1. An Anglican lay-reader from the Dales preaching at a local chapel by invitation reminded us that, while huge crowds turned out to hear John Wesley preach when he visited the West Riding, average attendances on other Sundays was so low that a congregation of 30 would have been seen as a resurgence in church attendance.

2. I found the centenary booklet (1974) of Mornington Road Methodist Church, Bingley, which quotes the Methodist Conference Handbook of 1927: "Our Mornington Road chapel is one of the most handsome Gothic sanctuaries in the Connection.... People of affluence, and others in honourable yet humble walks of life, have long shared a fraternity (in Methodism) that overleapt the class barriers."

3. Demolition of the magnificent broach spire of the former Mornington Road Methodist Church began.

E E Dodd, the historian, described the building of Mornington Road Chapel as "marking the social and spiritual arrival of Methodism in Bingley."

As a former organist and choirmaster of that church, I deeply regret having to witness the social and spiritual demise of Methodism in Bingley.

Keith Thompson, Priestthorpe road, Bingley.

SIR - The encouraging news that Patrick O'Donoghue, Catholic Bishop of Lancaster, has decided to give up his expensive palace and the associated trimmings of luxury to devote resources to the more valid cause of caring for the less fortunate will, no doubt, please your readers.

Can we look forward to others in similar privileged positions in the established church and, indeed, the Royal Family following suit in this special year to show that they are moving with the times?

Sid Brown, Glenhurst Road, Shipley.

SIR - As we are now preparing for the Queen's Jubilee, fireworks are on the agenda.

I should hope these will be put on only in official displays otherwise some animal or human will suffer simply because the hooligans have no respect.

There are plenty of parks where displays could be put on with everyone enjoying them and no casualties.

D Burnett, Great Horton Road, Great Horton.