SIR - The headings of two small items of news in your paper caught my eye as they were next to each other - £6,000 party' and Poverty trap.' I felt a feeling of despair on reading that taxpayers were funding this farewell party for Lord Levy, right, at such a cost and that in the next item one-in-ten families were too poor to afford the cost of medicines and food and had had to go without.

The cost of the party is the amount that many families spend on food for the year.

How is it that we ordinary people fund our own retirement parties and yet someone like Lord Levy, who can well afford to, has his paid for the by the taxpayers?

I think it shows the widening gap between those in power and the rest of us.

Mrs E M Baxter, Hoyle Court Road, Baildon