Letters: New Tory sell-off is a gift to private landlords

These letters appear in the 15th April issue of The Independent

David Cameron has pledged to return to the sale of social housing, emulating the Thatcher government.

The Thatcher policies related to housing and the financial sector were in no small way responsible for the current problems in the housing market. Social housing was sold off and not replaced, reducing the availability of housing for those on low incomes. At the same time, the availability of money for house purchase was increased through the deregulation of banks and building societies, with mortgages offered of five, six or more times income.

Put a lot of money into a market where a product is scarce, and the result is that prices rise. As we all know, this has happened, and house prices are now such that many of our young citizens will never be able to afford a home.

Do we really want to get rid of remaining social housing, exacerbating the shortage of affordable housing, and force people into the hands of private landlords? But maybe that is the Tory plan after all ...

Stanley Tyrer

Bury, Lancashire

In all the fuss concerning the Conservative promise to extend the right to buy, we should be clear about what housing associations are - and thus what a surprising commitment this is from a political party that supports property rights within the law.

Housing associations are not an arm of government: they are independent, not-for-profit bodies - most are charities or have charitable objectives. They are controlled by boards of trustees or directors, often including tenant representatives. They are mostly funded by bank or bond finance and those funders will usually have legal rights over the homes.

Government, therefore, has no more control over housing association assets that it has over my house or your car. To require housing associations by law to sell homes at less than their value is the legal equivalent of requiring the National Trust or Save the Children to similarly dispose of property.

Rather than turn all these financial and legal somersaults, the Conservatives might as well arrange for the Treasury to send cheques direct to aspiring homeowners with a note saying, “Thanks for voting Conservative”. It would be clearer, simpler, and more honest.

Anthony Mason

Edingale, Staffordshire

No one seems to question the morality of the Conservative Party's latest proposal that property up to the value of £1m will be free of death duties.

Imagine two brothers who, in the 1960s, each inherited £10,000. Cautious John put it into a building society account, where it has remained untouched for 50 years. During that time it has earned £125,000 gross interest from which tax of £25,000 has been deducted at source. His children may now inherit £110,000.

His more adventurous brother Tom went to London and used his inheritance to buy a house, which is now worth well over a million pounds. David Cameron must think that it is reasonable that Tom's family may now inherit £1m tax free.

This is clearly inequitable, immoral and unjustifiable.

Mike Stroud

Swansea

Feminist critic of Islam

In his profile of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Rupert Cornwell refers to her and her husband Niall Ferguson as “conservatives with a shared antipathy to soggy liberalism” (11 April). But it is not quite as simple as that.

While it is true that Ferguson is a neocon historian, Hirsi Ali comes from a different perspective. Her first political affiliation was with the Dutch centre-left Labour Party and it was her disillusionment with them that led her to switch to the conservative-liberal Party for Freedom and Democracy before this party also failed her regarding her asylum status.

In her consistent opposition to the conservative, misogynistic aspects of Islam, she is, in fact, a feminist revolutionary. The “soggy liberals” and feminists who should have supported and championed her have, instead, offered apologies or silence for all manner of reactionary, illiberal beliefs and practices emanating from religious-ethnic minorities, especially from Islamists. One egregious example is that of Germaine Greer defending female genital mutilation back in 1999 on the grounds that to outlaw it amounted to “an attack on cultural identity”.

It is hardly surprising then that Hirsi Ali (who was subject to genital mutilation) fled to the US, where she was welcomed with open arms by the American Enterprise Institute.

Rather than Joan of Arc, she is better understood as following in the footsteps of one of the great champions of women's rights, Mary Wollstonecraft, who was brazen in her criticisms of the subordinate position of women in Islam. Alas, though modern feminists warmly embrace Wollstonecraft, on that issue they remain silent.

Accordingly, Hirsi Ali's frustrations and impatience with them and the “soggy liberals” is entirely justified.

Dr Rumy Hasan

Senior Lecturer, Science & Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex

Director was no museum piece

Neil MacGregor has led the British Museum to unprecedented success. But it is unfair to portray his predecessor's tenure in the 1990s as a period of stagnation and torpor, as you do in your news report and editorial of 9 April.

During Robert Anderson's directorship the Great Court scheme was planned, funded and completed. More than 20 galleries were established or revamped. And “cultural diplomacy” was expanded, through exhibitions in India, China, Mexico and elsewhere; there were even cultural missions to North Korea.

This all happened against a backdrop of financial and governmental pressures that were aggravated by the Trustees' principled decision to retain free admission (in contrast to, for instance, the V&A).

We can surely acclaim MacGregor's achievements at the Museum, and nonetheless acknowledge rather than disparage his predecessors.

Martin Rees

Cambridge

Home counties hit back

I am writing to express my anger at the assumptions made by Matthew Norman about people from the Home Counties in his article about Andy Murray on 11 April.

He suggests that Tim Henman is obsequious (“cap-doffing”) because he attended a prep school and that his parents are “glacially reserved”. In other words, people from the Home Counties are lacking in warmth or any kind of emotion.

As a person brought up in the Home Counties (though I do not live in the area any more), I can assure you and him that if you had been sitting opposite me when I read this, as my husband was, you would have seen that I was incandescent rather than “glacial”.

Why is it that no other religious, ethnic or regional group can be stereotyped in this way, but people from the South-east are fair game? I might add in conclusion that it is suggested that Andy and Kim Murray live in Surrey. You can't get much more “Home Counties” than that.

Jane Parsons

Warton, Lancashire

Whose national debt is that?

In berating previous British governments for the size of the national debt, Nicola Sturgeon (13 April) could have noted that a large chunk of debt was incurred in bailing out irresponsible Scottish banks. Or would she have preferred that it had not been done?

John Kennett

Hook, Hampshire

White faces in the blues boat

While Oxford and Cambridge are to be congratulated for letting “girls” have a go at rowing on the Thames after only 160 years, perhaps now is the time to ask them whether they consider black students have the physical prowess to be worthy of representing the elite sport of rowing in the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race? Or do these elite universities find black students lack the intellectual prowess to aspire to their “dreaming spires”?

Henry Harington

Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon

Havana cigars back in the USA

I note that one result of the re-establishment of harmonious relations between the US and Cuba was the permitting by President Obama of the import, by American tourists visiting the island, of up to $100 of tobacco products. Is this the first example of getting close, and receiving a cigar?

Jeremy Redman

London SE6

The worker's champion?

The Conservatives are the party of hard-working people, as David Cameron claims, only as long as these hard workers don't have the temerity to ask for a fairer share of the wealth that they create, or seek to improve their conditions of work. If they do so, the Tories immediately revert to being the bosses' party.

Pete Dorey

Bath