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Letters

Wednesday, 30th April 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Anticipating the crash

Sir: Rod Liddle (Liddle Britain, 26 April) welcomes the predicted 25 per cent fall in house prices, and so do I. But comparisons with the last property crash do not take into account the malign effect of the buy-to-let market. Landlords will buy more property as prices fall, renting to more tenants who cannot afford to buy, so limiting price falls.

The 1988 Housing Act removed controls that discouraged residential lettings. The reforms were surely intended to allow the rental of empty flats above shops, the rental of homes where owners were abroad or in care, but not to undermine owner-occupation. The last few years have seen enormous growth in the rental market and now nearly every buy-to-let is a house or flat lost to owner-occupation.

Politicians like to talk about making homes affordable, so it is sad to see that Conservatives, once the party of home-ownership, have missed the connection between an expanding rental market, shrinking home ownership, and our unaffordable house prices.

Ian Thorburn
Brighton

Last call
Sir: Charles Moore asks (The Spectator Notes, 26 April) when the Times might be running a correspondence on ‘the last cuckoo’. Alas, I tried this back in 2001 when, having for several decades noted the arrival date of the first cuckoo, we for the first year ever heard no cuckoos at all in our part of Somerset. I thought this historic moment was worth a mention in the paper which used to glory in its annual letters recording ‘the first cuckoo’. But I fear that ‘the last cuckoo’ wasn’t of interest.

Christopher Booker
Litton, Somerset

The BNP’s purpose

Sir: Trevor Phillips, in his mission to ‘break the ice’ surrounding the immigration debate (Diary, 26 April), is selective in blaming the continuation of Enoch Powell’s belief in the ‘dangerous delusion’ of racial integration on white supremacists alone. The hatred of British society by Islamic supremacists is as prevalent, equally as much to blame, and demonstrably more dangerous in a practical sense. In addition, to dismiss the BNP as outside ‘conventional politics’ is naive and irresponsible. Whether or not one agrees with their politics, and thankfully most don’t, the BNP are democratically mandated (unlike a certain mainstream party leadership) and a relevant part of the British political landscape, if only to act as a warning of public support for their own skewed viewpoint.

Martin Sharman
Newcastle upon Tyne