I see that Theresa May’s advisers are associating her with Joseph Chamberlain (Report, 5 October). Chamberlain’s famous central Birmingham “grand improvement” scheme to demolish the slums started in 1875. It led to the building of Corporation Street and a dramatic decline in the death rate. But by 1888 not one new house had been built on site to replace the slums, prompting the Star newspaper to comment: “’Tis an excellent plan and I’ll tell you for why. Where there’s no person living, no person can die.” Rhetoric and reality.
Brian Lund
Delph, Oldham
• Theresa May’s conference speech was startlingly steeped in Victorian rhetoric (Key points, 6 October). We have a so-called “Great Repeal Act” and the EU referendum imagined as a “quiet revolution” reminiscent of Thomas Macaulay’s image of “noiseless revolutions” for the invisible workings of social history. Unlike May, the Victorian originals were forward-thinking in their time. Have we landed in the 1830s? Or is this just another Thatcherite return to “Victorian values”?
Helen Kingstone
Leeds
• If Amber Rudd insists on the rule that no foreign workers be hired in preference to British-born (Report, 6 October), could she please make sure this applies to our Premier League? And our Olympic teams?
Liz Brandow
Leicester
• Tom Devenish (Letters, 6 October) tells us that foreign buyers of London housing should not be blamed for pricing ordinary Londoners out of a home because they have only bought 3% of residential property. What he fails to tell us is that most of this 3% are the largest and most expensive properties and that this has a massive price-hiking effect right down the capital’s housing market chain.
Peter Robbins
London
• Councils should requisition empty houses as they did after the second world war.
Joyce Blackledge
Formby, Merseyside
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
