SIR – Once again we have people complaining about the treatment of circus animals. The circus comes to town and sets up in a local field to entertain the working classes.

The members from higher up the social scale (who wouldn’t be seen dead in a circus tent) complain about the treatment of the animals, although they don’t attend the circus.

These same complainers then go to the races and cheer as the horses are savagely whipped all the way down the finishing straight so that their rich owners can enter the winner’s enclosure.

I have never seen any ill-treatment of animals in a circus, but seen it happen at every horse race that I have ever seen. If horses don’t feel any pain when being whipped when racing, why do they feel pain if whipped in a circus?

I will gladly sign a petition to ban animals in circuses on circumstantial evidence when horse racing is banned completely. This will never happen of course, because there is one law for the rich and another for the poor.

Keith Rayner, Laburnum Drive, Baildon