Flat broke

Sir: John Power’s article on the property squeeze (‘Flatlined’, 18 April) identifies a symptom of a deeper problem, the overregulation of property. Buyers are deterred by spiralling service charges, which are themselves driven by layers of legislation, insurance premium hikes and rocketing labour costs. Those still willing to take the plunge are then hit by a tax system that actively discourages transactions.

In the absence of buy-to-let demand, it is no surprise values are dropping. The solution is obvious. Stamp duty, with its crude cliff edges, freezes activity and distorts prices. A landlord or renovator can face £20,000 or more in tax on an entirely ordinary flat, a deterrent by design.

This is not a plea for higher prices. A healthy market functions perfectly well with stable values. What it cannot function with is paralysis. If we want people to move for work, downsize or simply aspire to something better, transactions must be made easier, not punished. Stamp duty reform is long overdue.

Jonathan Rolande

Founder, the National Association of Property Buyers

Worthing, West Sussex

The big hand-me-down

Sir: Following your leading article on intergenerational tensions (‘The great divide’, 18 April), there is one further point which needs to be made. Quite often the only chance the younger generation may have of owning their own home is when they inherit their parents’ property after death. As a probate solicitor I am finding it is more and more common that such properties have to be sold in order to pay inheritance tax. It is surely nothing short of scandalous that rising property prices have dragged more and more estates into inheritance tax, and will continue to do so because inheritance tax allowances have been frozen since 2009 and the government has said they will not rise before 2031.

A divorced parent who leaves a property to their children on death can generally only leave £500,000 free of inheritance tax, and anything above that is charged at 40 per cent. It’s not difficult to see how fewer and fewer estates will escape the grasp of this unfair and punitive tax.

Nick Timming

Ely

Food for thought

Sir: In his column (‘Tomorrow belongs to the vegetarians’, 18 April) Matthew Parris says we shudder to see farm animals headed for the abattoir. But they have had a life. As a retired farmer I have been responsible for bringing into the world and sending out of it countless cattle and sheep. I know that the bovine and ovine contentment demonstrated by beef cattle contentedly grazing a sward or of ewes maternally suckling their twin lambs makes the case for their lives. If they were not destined for our table, they would have no life at all.

Peter Clery

Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire

Hockney’s view

Sir: I note the article you published regarding optical instruments (Arts, 11 April). I used to revere art historians – the history of my own subject – but that was a long time ago. It is 25 years ago that I wrote Secret Knowledge, which originally was going to be titled ‘Lost Knowledge’, but Thames and Hudson thought ‘Secret Knowledge’ was better and I didn’t quarrel with them.

Twenty-five years is a long time for art historians not to have read my book. They have almost got away with dismissing it, but recently I have come across Turner’s camera drawings, made on a tour of northern England in 1797. They are quite superb, much better than ordinary drawings of buildings, but camera drawings they are.

It’s as though the invention of photography was an immaculate conception: a camera with a bellows and the chemicals all came together. This is what most people believe, but I know there was a pencil in the camera 400 years before the chemicals. What this does to photography today, I’m not sure, but I don’t think it can count on too much veracity. Drawings can be made today that look just like photographs. Where does that leave us?

Brunelleschi didn’t invent perspective, he just discovered there was a law of optics.

David Hockney

Via email

Fee and fair

Sir: The article by Digby Warde-Aldam about introducing museum and gallery entrance fees (Arts, 18 April) struck a chord. Last weekend, my wife and I visited Westminster Abbey. The entrance charge was £31 for adults, £28 for OAPs and £14 for children over five. Additionally, to join a guided tour was £10 and a visit to the Queen’s Jubilee Gallery was £5. The crowds were oppressive and it was obvious that the fee did not discourage anyone.

W.H. Thomas

Fakenham, Norfolk

One I made earlier

Sir: I was slightly sad to hear of the demise of Gentleman’s Relish, but after reading Jeremy McKenna’s letter (18 April) and experimenting with his DIY recipe (which I thought better than Patum Peperium – but recommend rather less butter, forget the nutmeg and add a few black olives), feel less than bereft. In fact, I now remember that I stopped asking my children to buy me some of the original stuff for Christmas several years ago because of the extortionate price and deceptively small containers in which it was sold. I will make my own in future now that Cook has shown me how to use the food processor.

Anchovies vary in quality; the best that are readily available are Ortiz or Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference. (See also Sudi Pigott’s book Consider the Anchovy.)

Jon Stronach

Dalston, Cumbria

Talking bird

Sir: In Horatio Clare’s excellent review of Gordon McMullan’s Cormorant: A Cultural History of Greed and Prejudice (Books, 18 April), there is one unforgivable omission: Graculus, the wise, loyal and magnificently green adviser to King Noggin in Noggin the Nog. A talking bird of impeccable character, he surely deserves a footnote in any serious cultural history of the species.

Andy Simpson

Sandbach, Cheshire

Port authority

Sir: In his last column, (Drink, 11 April) Declan Lyons wrote about white port, suggesting mixing it with tonic. There’s a song about mixing white port with lemon juice: ‘W-P-L-J’, released by the Four Deuces in 1957 and covered by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in 1969 (released as a single and on the album Burnt Weeny Sandwich in 1970). Iechyd da!

David Blake

Llanfechell, Ynys Môn

Wild things

Sir: Aidan Hartley’s Wild Life column is always for me a joy, like prolonged chapters from Out of Africa, and his latest (11 April) is superb. Brave Joseph is reminiscent of Karen Blixen, fighting off lions from her bullocks with only a cattle whip. As I know every word of the film version, ‘Samburu is still good’ pops straight up from my memory’s card index.

Dione Johnson

Hartley Wintney, Oxon