YOUR report about building retirement apartments in Wigginton by McCarthy and Stone says concerns are raised about the potential loss of bat roosting areas because of the demolition of houses (April 12).

Well, there are bats about so are you implying they are going to start roosting in the five houses affected which are all occupied and have been for years?

I don't think so.

It was claimed that an elderly ghetto would be created. Do objectors know what a ghetto is?

The dictionary describes it as a slum area. This is an insult to the elderly people of this country and to the Jewish people who were persecuted by the Nazis before and during the Second World War.

They were forced to live in these ghettoes, living a hand-to-mouth existence trying to survive but many did not.

I am not a Jew, but I did live through the Second World War when I first heard the word ghetto and what it meant then. Objectors should pay attention to their choice of words.

I don't think McCarthy and Stone, or the elderly people who would be living in these apartments, would like them to be called a ghetto or, in other words, a slum.

Mrs M I Atkins,

Wigginton,

York.

Updated: 09:38 Tuesday, May 03, 2005