Spectator letters: Kensington answers back to Sebastian Faulks

Pirates and Tories

Sir: Daniel Hannan is himself a pirate, masquerading as a Conservative MEP (‘Here come the pirates!’, 4 January). Oddly, since he’s fighting an election against it in May, he found nothing to criticise in Ukip, while attacking the European People’s Party, who are not standing in the south-east of England. He’s certainly right that we should not lump all protest parties in Europe together, though on weak ground in suggesting there are no differences between the mainstream EU parties. What did surprise me, though, was his description of the Front National as ‘essentially constitutional’. So he’d be confident that, were the Front National to gain power in France, subsequent elections would proceed smoothly?
Andrew Marshall
London NW3

Basement bargaining

Sir: I fear that Sebastian Faulks has lost the plot over basements in Kensington and Chelsea (Diary, 14–28 December). He calls the council ‘supine’ but then concurs that national planning law is indiscriminate, ineffective, permissive, and deaf to the impact of the particular disruption and inconvenience to others caused by the current fashion for troglodyte living in this most densely populated of boroughs. The council does indeed want to see tougher controls, but it does not have the power to make up its own rules. We are proposing significant limitations, but these will need to be approved by a national planning inspector and will be hotly opposed by developers with little interest in the disruption they cause to others. I would urge Mr Faulks to support greater local discretion in planning matters if he wants to be sure that this story has a happy outcome.
Cllr Nicholas Paget-Brown
Leader of the Council, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, London W8