New Labour luminaries Jane Darke and John Tanner argue that the Green Belt should be built on to provide more 'affordable' homes -- as if such a thing existed in Oxford!

The debate should not be about where more homes go in the South East, but whether it should have any more large-scale developments at all.

But this is where people want to live, they say. Really?

Is it not more a case of this is where capitalism COMPELS so many people to live?

Because of the pulling power of the capital and easy access to European markets for business, the South East is absurdly overdeveloped and densely populated.

In contrast, the population of my home city of Hull has fallen in the past century because of the constant exodus of so many natives.

The scarcity of jobs, exacerbated by the declining fish trade, inexorably drives people south.

I would go back north tomorrow if there were more jobs, as would many Scousers, Mancunians, Geordies, Cumbrians and Scots.

The North is awash with brownfield sites, so let's build there if we must and create an appropriate number of jobs.

The Government could help redress this historic imbalance, help reduce the demographic deficit by placing all its national agencies in deprived areas such as the North, Wales and Cornwall, where the largest private employer is Ginsters Pasties. Relocation, Relocation!

Let's create a level playing field instead of building on so many of them in the South East as this wretched Government has permitted.

JOHN GREEN

Rose Hill

Oxford