Why were police so unhelpful?

SIR - In response to your recent report on police cutting down on car crime, I would like to inform readers of what the police did not do when our car was stolen on February 11.

We were visiting relatives in Thornton and were parked outside for less than 24 hours when our car was taken. We informed the police immediately.

Luckily my brother spotted the car a quarter of a mile away on his way to school. Once again we notified the police and were told that someone would be sent out but they could not tell us a time "as this is a regular thing".

After a long wait I rang up to see how long they would be, to be told that "no-one was coming" as the car had not been stored in a garage after it was recovered. Even though the thieves had got away with £200 of CDs, £100 of Christmas and birthday presents and £150 of damage was done to the car, the police were not willing to pursue this crime.

Eventually I persuaded them to send someone out to look at the car. By this time it was in the garage being repaired and they were unable to lift any fingerprints.

I do hope whoever took our car put our well-earned money to good use, as none of my family received any Christmas presents and we spent our holiday money replacing my brother's birthday presents to fix this situation as best we could, and fixing our car so we could get home.

Mark Packer, Queensway, Newton Abbot, Devon.

City of the future

SIR - How can anyone say that Leeds is an exciting retail centre. It is exactly the same as the majority of centres throughout the county, impersonal.

Bradford has character. The shop assistants are so helpful and really seem to care. I arrive home feeling as though I have spent time with friends.

Spend an afternoon wandering in and out of the shops. Everything you could ever want is there.

Walk up the steep streets and see how much of old Bradford remains. The city fathers in the past have sadly decimated many fine old buildings. No more.

Bradford is a city of the future with a wonderful stake in the past. Let us treasure it.

Susan Longstaffe, Whitlam Street, Saltaire.

Lacks endurance

SIR - Your report on the proposal for a glass high-rise building near the city centre (T&A February 17) confirmed the fact that I don't understand architects. The proposal to make it elliptical in a corner of the city dominated by rectangular stone-built buildings of substance and character is the architectural equivalent of body-piercing and as with all fashions lacks endurance.

Buildings need to be sensitive rather than setting out to shock. I fear that the energy used in its construction, its materials, and in the need to provide air-conditioning for part of the year will make a considerable contribution to the climate-change carbon produced in Bradford, and there is much to be said for a building using local material, coal-measure sandstone, and design-led energy efficiency.

Keith Thomson, Heights Lane, Bradford.

Vigilante fears

SIR - Has anyone noticed a difficulty with the election promises on immigration unveiled by Robert Kilroy-Silk's Veritas party? One promise is that "Veritas will enforce the law and use dedicated task forces to remove all illegal residents."

However, he also claims that he will dismantle "the whole expensive asylum operation of detention centres, advisory centres, Courts, appeals, Legal Aid and the rest."

So how's he going to carry out his enforcement plans?

Could it be that we will see Bradford vigilantes rounding up people whose appearance seems "alien"? Is the Party of Truth seriously planning to abandon the first principles of British justice?

Veritas's vision of our future and the way we should treat immigrants is reminiscent of another European state that "removed" undesirables to an uncertain fate in 1942.

So is Veritas to be like Vichy? Seems like "Kill-joy" Silk is seeking a new bandwagon, having fallen off the last one.

John S Murray, Moorside Road, Honley, Holmfirth.

Disgusting mess

SIR - I read in the T&A this week that there are going to be fines for people dropping litter in Bradford city centre. Another waste of time. They should be walking round the streets like Curzon Street and Fitzroy Road in Bradford Moor. I have the pleasure of driving down them every week.

What a disgusting mess most of the front and back yards are as well as the streets. If they fined the litter louts in this area they would make a fortune. Wishful thinking on my part, I suppose.

Mrs A Boyd-Stenson, Summerfield Drive, Baildon.

Rusting away...

SIR - As a daily walker in Northcliffe playing fields and woods, Shipley, I have recently become very concerned about the run-down state of the paths, the grates (which are full to the top so that rain water just runs over them helping to erode the said paths) and most of all about the condition of the fine main gates. These are rusting away for the sake of a lick of paint.

I understand that it is all a question of finance. Apparently an estimate for painting and renovating the gates was obtained recently but was turned down by the Council as being too expensive. Surely this is very short-sighted, as left in their present condition they will just rust away altogether.

Northcliffe was left to the people of Shipley in perpetuity by our former MP, Sir Norman Rae, in the first half of the last century. As a Shipley resident I have made use of this wonderful gift all my life and it saddens me to see its decline.

When our town had its own Urban District Council this estate was kept in good order but it seems to me that Bradford Council is only interested in the city centre at the expense of the former West Riding areas.

Norman Hanby, Moorhhead Crescent, Shipley.

l John Scholefield, principal parks and landscape manager, Bradford Council, said: "The Parks and Landscape Service share Mr Hanby's wish for Northcliffe Park to be maintained to a high standard and that is why it's currently one of only four parks in the district that actually have their own dedicated staff.

"We began a rolling programme to resurface the paths last year and the main gates are due to be repainted during the summer. Over the next six weeks we will be completing the repairs to the tennis pavilion, which was vandalised recently, and cleaning the gullies."

Rigorous rules

SIR - In reply to the letter "Say no to sex shop" (February 15). The whole purpose of an "adult" shop is to sell "adult" products to adults. The letter from Michael Maguire, objecting to one shop on Tong Street becoming a "magnet" for "perverts" and "working girls", is absolute rubbish!

Mr Maguire only has to venture to his nearest Sunday car boot sale to witness unlicensed selling of adult DVDs and videos to under-age teenagers.

The Pulse and Cocktails shop on Tong Street will have to stick to rigorous rules, laid down by the Council, and I am sure the owners would be quick to spot under-age teenagers trying to buy adult videos and toys.

At the very least, sex shops have the responsibility and sense not to sell goods to under-age teenagers.

The peddlers of adult films at boot sales don't care how old their customers are. They just want to make money!

L Graham, Beverly Street, Tyersal.

Protecting trees

SIR - You rightly comment on the need for the Council to sort out how it is going to treat trees (T&A, February 16).

It would be reasonable to view them as all having merit as they absorb carbon and help reduce the greenhouse gases that we humans produce with gusto.

Indeed it is not only the mature trees that need protecting with preservation orders but young ones take up carbon at a faster rate and so have real value.

A positive Bradford vision would be to double the tree cover to ten per cent of the district in the next ten years and a start would be to respect those that are already growing.

Keith Thomson, Heights Lane, Bradford.