It isn’t just young people relying on inheritance as a way to get on the property ladder

Yes, inheritance is the best opportunity for young people to own their own home. But not just the young. I’ve just inherited mine and I’m 66.

Mary Strode
Tring

Housebuilding comes at the expense of our natural habits

I consider myself to be a relatively positive person. However, lately all I can think about is how our actions are detrimental to our world’s natural places.

Pollution: litter, oil, building, chemicals, plastic. This is the first example of how we are causing harm to the environment.

Building, I am aware, is a risky subject to bring up, but I confess was the main reason for my letter. I live in rural Devon and have done so my entire life, being born and raised there. Over the years I have suffered in seeing the natural spaces I hold so dear to me being unruly destroyed by housing estates popping up next to the beautifully wild habitats that sit opposite rivers.

I do not mean this in any elitist way, for I understand that many people are still suffering without homes and more affordable homes are still needed. But the homes I see being built every day in the area I was so privileged to grow up in, are by no normal citizen’s means, affordable. Most homes start at £250,000 and prove the building to be driven by money, not in response to the housing crises.

I am aware that Devon is considered a highly desirable place to live, but let me tell you that if all these areas are to be developed as quickly as they currently are being, Devon will not be a desirable place to live at all. There’s no time for excuses. Now is the time to find solutions to the problems and protect our wildlife.

Eve Sanders
Devon

Mob rule

Damian Hinds’ article on mob-grazing of cattle as a way to lock carbon into the soil is probably irrelevant as a possible method of combatting climate change. Not – for all my stupendous ignorance on the subject – that I have any issue with mob-grazing, nor with eating meat.

The point I wish to make is that in-vitro or “clean” meat is far more likely to save the planet by rendering large-scale livestock farming as we know it redundant. By “clean” meat, I mean cultured, edible muscle tissue grown from painless cell biopsies taken from small numbers of pampered animals.

Because this will use in the order of 90 per cent less acreage, water and energy, it will release land for either food plant production or reversion to nature. Fewer farm animals mean the elimination of livestock transport and less cruelty generally, methane produced by cows halted, and razing of rainforests for soy or beef financially bankrupting.

It’s just a matter of time and economics, and when it arrives I’ll still happily tuck into the occasional, rather pricey mob-grazed steak. Will the scientists now move on to thinking about “clean” palm oil, please?

Patrick Cosgrove
Shropshire

A guard against gun crime

The gun culture in the US is based on the second amendment to the US constitution.

The first sentence, and in my opinion the most important, says: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State.”

Guns should only be sold to members of the National Guard.

Martin Oakes
Tewkesbury

Love

Congratulations to Roger Federer for becoming the game’s oldest number one ranked player, 14 years after he first topped tennis rankings. His drive to regain primacy is an inspiration. Federer is a stimulus to professionals in all fields who are pursuing excellence, not merely in sports.

He is also a perfect gentleman on and off the tennis courts, with his exemplary manners, politeness and decency. Despite his monumental achievements, he continues to be very humble and unassuming. He is my role model, even though I am in the management profession and cannot even hold a tennis racquet.

Rajendra Aneja
India