GP Dr John Montgomery asserts that the current housing crisis is a direct result of the Thatcher years, in that it allowed tenants who had been paying rent for years to buy their council house ("'A lot can be traced back to Thatcher': Why the housing crisis is making us sick", The Herald, July 12).

This has been mooted in many articles and opinions of late and of course is complete nonsense. That social housing tenants should be able to own their property is a fundamental right that Margaret Thatcher recognised and empowered. The real problem was that councils were forbidden to utilise the funds they received from those house sales to build replacement properties and thus continue the cycle.

I concede that some of the Thatcher policies were open to question but allowing hard-working people to buy and take pride in their council houses was certainly not one of them.

James Martin, Bearsden.

Use higher rates to help

YOU are to be commended for your Charter for Housing campaign ("Charter for action launched by The Herald and charities", The Herald, July 13) which fills a vacuum left by our political leadership. It is appropriate that it focuses on practical measures to improve the situations of those worst affected and avoids the error of believing that the crisis can be solved by building ever more unaffordable private housing.

Here is an idea: what about hypothecating the extra income tax revenues generated by higher Scottish rates to alleviating this shameful crisis?

It is to be hoped that your campaign may embarrass Scottish ministers into action.

Alistair Stewart, Kirkcaldy.

READ MORE: Time to end the single occupancy council tax reduction

READ MORE: Holyrood must introduce metropolitan authorities, now

Planning attack is unfair

I WAS deeply disappointed to read Michael Kelly’s cheap shot at the Glasgow Planning Applications Committee (PAC) claiming that we’d brusquely rejected an application and with ignorance of the detail of the application (Letters, July 12). All applications are meticulously prepared by our planning officers and presented to the PAC for their consideration. If the PAC decides to refuse planning consent this is done with regard to the Local Development Plan and if refused there will be good reasons for refusal. To accuse the PAC of a whimsical approach to the decision process is unworthy of Dr Kelly and in the absence of any actual detail of the application and the developer should be treated with a high degree of scepticism.

There is a wider point in play here and I’m becoming increasingly alarmed around the view that the reason for the complete failure of the housing market is down to those pesky planners and their PACs. Local Development Plans are developed over a number of years and regularly updated. LDPs are developed with regards to housing need and the wider societal benefits good applications can bring. To sweep away this sensible and rigorous approach risks producing the slums of the future, an outcome I’m sure most of us would wish to avoid.

Councillor Ken Andrew, PAC Convenor, Glasgow.

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Do councils know what they're doing?

NO ONE appears to have learned the painful lessons from Glasgow's low emission zone.

Large numbers of fines have now been issued to motorists in Aberdeen. City centres throughout Scotland are being decimated by the very authorities who run them. Boarded-up shops are becoming the norm. The economy in Scotland is being hit by higher than necessary taxation, little relief for businesses and now more pain for motorists.

City centre parking has become extortionate for those who can actually drive their car there. Air quality is unlikely to be much better and local transport options are patchy or non-existent. Do any of Scotland's city councils actually know what they are doing?

Dr Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.

Glasgow's LEZGlasgow's LEZ (Image: Newsquest)

Unison claims unrealistic

I NOTE that the trade union Unison is to ballot thousands of school staff in Scotland for strike action while a ballot of its members who are employed in waste and recycling services closes on July 17 ("Unison to ballot thousands of Scots school staff ", The Herald, July 12).There is therefore a real prospect of our children’s education being adversely affected again and mounds of rubbish, with attendant health issues, starting to appear on our streets. How much more disruption are the Scottish people expected to bear in addition to, for example, the problems in the NHS, with the cost of living, with the lack of and expense of housing and curtailed rail services?

Where is the funding for an increased wage increase, which compensates for previous below-inflation pay increases for local government workers, to come from, given the budgets of local councils are already under such profound pressure? Perhaps there is a belief within Unison and its membership that Cosla and its member councils have been nurturing on the side some kind of money tree, which can be resorted to on a particular rainy day.

Ian W Thomson, Lenzie.

Anthem is not anti-English

I AM disappointed that Matthew Lindsay repeats the calumny that Flower of Scotland is anti-English (“Scots need to grow up about England if they are to rise and be a nation again”, Herald Sport, July 13). The song makes no mention of England or the English, but focuses on the Anglo-Norman King of England, who might have spoken a smidgeon of English (most of his nobles would not have) but whose language de jure would have been French.

In any country in Europe the repelling of a foreign invading army would be a reason for patriotic joy, not suggestions that the invader should somehow be commiserated with. Edward's army, while mainly English, was also composed of soldiers from Gascony, Wales and Ireland as well as a contingent from Scotland. So is the song also anti-Welsh and anti-Irish? Anti-Scottish?

GR Weir, Ochiltree.

Bang go the gongs

WHAT'S that noise I hear from south of the Border; a sort of whoosh with an accompanying bang?

Oh, it's the King's dubbing sword going back in the scabbard and the MBE drawer getting slammed shut.

No knighthood for Mr Southgate and MBEs for the team, or is it?

Ken Mackay, Glasgow.

Presidential talk

DAVID Fernandez (Letters, July 13) caused head-scratching by his use of POTUS. I now know that if the President of the United States is married, his spouse is the FLOTUS. Flattering?

On my forthcoming visit, I shall ask my Scrabble-playing brother and his wife whether or not the aforementioned acronyms are acceptable in that context.

David Miller, Milngavie.