I FEEL sorry for the elected politicians and their officials who have had their difficult lives made more difficult by Bishop Selby's interference in the Eckington Romany crisis.

It's easy for the Bishop to sit in a comfortable study in his palace playing Father Christmas to every fashionable ethnic group, while ordinary people have to live with the practical consequences of his generosity with public resources.

If the Bishop seeks credibility, let him live among the poor and see firsthand what havoc his meddling causes on the lives of local people waiting on council housing lists - and if he truly wants to help the Eckington Romanies let him remember that the church owns plenty of green fields and properties of its own.

The cause of Christianity would advance if our Bishop could show an example and house them in his back yard at some inconvenience to himself - for once.

JIM EVANS,

Worcester.