Letters | 16 February 2017

Living room

Sir: Sajid Javid is quoted as saying that the biggest constraint on building more houses is the ‘lack of land’ (‘Javid’s home truths’, 11 February). While he is right to call for government intervention, I don’t agree with this view. We may live on a small island in relative terms, but that doesn’t diminish our actual land mass. For argument’s sake, let us say the average house takes up 100 square metres. This means that you could fit 10,000 houses into a single square kilometre. To put that into perspective, the Isle of Wight, with an area of 380 km², has the capacity to accommodate 3,800,000 houses.

Obviously, housing estates require much less land. Singapore (twice the size of the Isle of Wight) can accommodate most of its 5.6 million residents in high-rise flats.

Farmland, amenities and public infra-structure must be accounted for, too. But the UK does not have a shortage of land.
Anne-Marie Baxter
Barnstaple, Devon

Even up the score

Sir: Rod Liddle does a great job lampooning the shady honours system and the over-hyping of David Beckham’s talents (‘The dishonouring of David Beckham’, February 11). However, he is himself guilty of hyping up Golden Balls when he says Beckham’s goal against Greece was a case of ‘clutching victory from defeat’. In fact the game ended 2-2, although the point earned from the draw earned England a World Cup finals place.
James Potts
Penylan, Cardiff

Good knight

Sir: On David Beckham, Rod Liddle utters many a heresy in maintaining that the boy from Chingford is far from worthy of a knighthood. One can understand how Beckham might be miffed when his mate Elton John was fast-tracked to National Treasure status by his own ‘K’. But in the spirit of restoring the honours system, may I suggest that our cricketing supremo Andrew Strauss is as worthy as anyone?

He has been in three Ashes-winning sides, captaining two, with one in Australia (a very rare achievement).