Sir – Mrs Thatcher’s death reminds us of many things, including the damage she did to our countryside and villages, as well as her achievements. Consider just one action — the sale of council houses.
Council houses were built — sometimes in awkward places, where land was available, on the edges of villages.
Too often tenants bought their council house and then sold it on to “second-homers”.
In one village I know — as in many others — the result has been that with no traditional council house residents living in the village through the year, the school has closed, the small shops have closed (as the ‘weekenders’ bring their food with them) and the buses are no longer ‘needed’ in the villages to take people to school or to work.
Only the pubs sometimes remain to maintain village life . . .
These changes have clearly happened across Britain — and they are not changes we should welcome.
Deborah Manley, Oxford
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