Letter: Too big a slice of the pie for London

From Mr Michael Paraskos

Sir: It is a novel argument Terence Conran uses to justify all this spending of National Lottery money in London ("London deserves to get lucky", 1 November). While he is concerned for the poor, the largest contributors to the Lottery's funds, his solution is to spend the money in the richest part of the country, apparently to benefit mainly foreign businessmen and tourists. Otherwise they might mistake London for Frankfurt!

While we clearly have a duty to help such geographically-challenged visitors to our country, we need to remember also that our "national culture" is precisely that - national. Concentrating the monuments to this culture in such a rarefied space as London does not, as Conran claims, make them accessible, rather it deprives the majority of people of what is rightly theirs.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Paraskos

Head of History of Art

University College Scarborough

The University of York

Scarborough