Helene Pastor Photo: MATRIXPICTURES.CO.UK

Hélène Pastor, who has died of gunshot wounds aged 77, was, as an heiress of the principality’s greatest real estate fortune, Monaco’s richest woman.

Known locally as “la vice-princesse”, Hélène Pastor was the senior surviving member of what is, in effect, Monaco’s second dynasty after the ruling Grimaldis. The Pastors, however, came from the humblest of origins. Hélène’s grandfather, Jean-Baptiste, was a stonemason from Liguria who arrived in the small seaside town of Monte Carlo as a young man in the 1880s. Having made good in a modest way as a public-works contractor, he was commissioned in 1936 by Prince Louis II to build the principality’s first football stadium — the beginning of a fruitful association between the two families.

After the Second World War, Jean-Baptiste’s son, Gildo, amassed waterfront land cheaply and in the 1950s he began building the stylish apartment blocks with harbour views which formed the modern cityscape of Monte Carlo — and became bolt-holes for the world’s rich in search of ultra-low taxes combined with the Riviera lifestyle. Conservative in their business methods and averse to debt, the Pastors were eventually reckoned to own outright more than 3,000 apartments, or 15 per cent of Monaco’s entire housing stock, loosely valued at €20 billion.

On Gildo’s death in 1990, the empire was divided between his three children, Victor, Michel and Hélène — contrary to Ligurian tradition, in which daughters were not allowed to inherit. While the low-profile Victor, the more flamboyant Michel (a noted art collector dubbed “le boss de Monaco”) and their offspring continued to develop new properties and acquire interests in many other aspects of the local economy, Hélène quietly managed her portfolio of half a dozen prestigious addresses along the avenues Princesse-Grace and Grande-Bretagne.

Tailored by Chanel, she was known for her elegant but reticent style and taciturn manner: she avoided grand social events but could occasionally be spotted walking her dog without a bodyguard and spent much of her time in an office decorated with photographs of her father, assessing the suitability of prospective tenants and reinvesting her substantial cash flows.

On May 6 a man armed with a sawn-off shotgun shot both her and her long-serving chauffeur, Mohamed Darwich, who has also since died of his wounds. Speculation in Monaco as to the motive for the attack have inevitably focused on the possible involvement of mafia or Russian gangsters; there have also been stories of a recent blackmail attempt against the family. Organised crime and money-laundering are a high cause for concern in the principality, but never previously associated with the Pastors.

A wealthy Italian family, the Marzoccos, have been competitors in local real estate dealings since the 1980s, but any tensions were thought to have been resolved by the marriage in 2012 of a Marzocco daughter to Michel Pastor’s son Jean-Baptiste. Hélène herself is reported to have told police before her death on May 21 that she knew of no one with a grudge against her. Monaco’s ruler Prince Albert has expressed his “deep support” for the family.

Hélène Pastor was born in 1937. Her brothers predeceased her, Victor in 2002 and Michel in February this year. She was twice married and divorced, and is survived by a daughter of the first marriage and a son of the second (to Professor Claude Pallanca, a prominent Monegasque dentist who was also the honorary consul of Russia and who declined to comment on her death, saying: “Je ne veux pas avoir de problèmes.”) Their son Gildo — a denizen of local gossip columns with a passion for fast cars, to whom his mother had not yet passed a full inheritance — was struck down by a heart attack earlier this year. Hélène was leaving the hospital in Nice where she had been visiting him when she was attacked, and he too has refused to speak to the press.

Hélène Pastor, born 1937, died May 21 2014

As well as the coal miners killed in disasters, Simon Jenkins (A dash for renewables won’t rid us of the horrors of coal, 16 May) could have added their occupational illnesses, as well as the diseases suffered by everyone as a result of breathing air polluted by burning coal. The great London smog of December 1952 killed more than 15,000 people. Electricity has a high political profile but only represents about 12% of end user power consumption, and unlike other fuels, electricity cannot be stored, so generation and consumption must be simultaneous. As peak electricity use only occurs for about 20% of the day, there are idle generators for more than 80% of the time.

The biggest UK energy problem is not supply but waste. By 2026 100% of German houses will be zero energy consumers. In the UK it will be under 5%. Thirty years ago more than 60% of electricity was coal-fired; today the figure is 38%. Electricity generation wastes nearly 60% of input energy. Other EU countries have combined heat and power stations that are 70% efficient. The most wasteful sector is transport at nearly 80%, and 99% dependent on oil. Indeed, more than 80% of all UK oil is now used for transport, as other oil uses have been replaced mostly by gas. There is as yet no economic alternative to oil for transport, but there needs to be: toxic transport fumes kill about 29,000 people a year, and all UK cities breach both the WHO and EU air standards.
Professor LJS Lesley
Liverpool

• Simon Jenkins states that “wind generated electricity … but not much”. The Department of Energy and Climate Change published statistics in March showing that renewable energy provided a record 15% of the UK’s electricity in 2013, leading to a 3% drop in the UK’s use of coal and a 1% drop in use of gas. For the last quarter of 2013 the figures are even better, with renewables generating an all-time high of 18% of the UK’s electricity.

That meant that the amount of coal being used to generate electricity was 7% lower in the third quarter of 2013 than a year earlier, with the share taken by gas also falling to the lowest for at least 15 years. Jenkins is incorrect to state that “wind power has driven up fuel poverty”. The increase in the price of gas over the last few years is the main cause of rising fuel bills. Last year, wind energy powered more than 6m homes, and helped lead to a decrease in use of fossil fuels.

These are real achievements of which the UK should be proud. When it comes to taking practical action against climate change, wind energy is a key player.
Jennifer Webber
RenewableUK

• Three cheers to Simon Jenkins for his reference to Wade Allison’s book Radiation and Reason. If coal, oil, gas, etc operated to the equivalent safety level of nuclear power, they would be prohibitively expensive. To make further environmental progress, the government should back an immediate investment in a thorium nuclear plant – smaller, safer and can’t be weaponised (which is why governments ignored it 60 years ago).
Dominic Rayner
Leeds

On 23 May 2013, President Barack Obama made the last major speech in which he again pledged to close Guantánamo Bay. His many pledges on the matter remain purely rhetorical. On Friday, human rights activists and organisations will take part in a global day of protest in more than 40 cities in nine countries to remind Obama of his broken pledge. In London, we will hold a public demonstration in Trafalgar Square from 12pm to 2pm.

Last year, Obama asked the American people: “Is this who we are?” With on-going torture, indefinite detention and the latest ruling by a US federal judge on force-feeding of prisoners, his actions have responded in the affirmative. Although he has released 11 prisoners, the slow progress after so many years shows there is no real intention of ending what can be considered a mass hostage crisis. For the 154 remaining prisoners, held almost wholly without charge or trial, rhetoric is not good enough.
Aisha Maniar
London Guantánamo Campaign

The debate on housing takes on more and more of the logic of Alice in Wonderland (Britain’s building crisis – and how to solve it, 20 May). First and foremost, the debate is wrongly framed in terms of assets and finance and not housing. Thatcher’s right to buy was an asset wheeze not a housing policy. Its contingent effect was to actually undermine supply by reducing the effective market for private-sector homes. The parallel attack on local authority building under the pathetic smokescreen of increasing housing association output has had the same effect, with output collapsing from 113,000 the year before she was elected to 1,500 the year the Tories left office, before then sliding further under Labour.

However, in the 40 years since 1970, through all the financial ups and downs and the tireless meddling of politicians in the planning system, the private sector built at a fairly consistent level of about 160,000 until 2010, since when it has collapsed to 100,000 (all UK figures) During a roughly comparable period, real house prices have increased by about two-and-a-half times.

The idea that the private sector can build twice as many houses as it has achieved on average since 1970 and that this will buck the trend of the increase in asset price is not credible. The further assumption that property-owning turkeys would vote for such a Christmas present is fantasy. Until housing is seen as a basic right, the rental market is completely transformed and democratised and land values are taxed, the tinkering suggested by your contributor and others will be doomed to be swamped by unintended consequences, just like Help to Buy.
Neil Blackshaw
Little Easton, Essex

• The article by Hilary Osborne appears, as with most commentators, to concentrate on the supply side of the housing problem. Savills is quoted as saying that if building does not increase quickly, there could be a shortfall of 160,000 homes in the south of England in the next five years, and the Home Builders Federation claims house-building needs to effectively treble to 350,000 dwellings a year to control house price inflation. Should not an analysis of the problem include reference to the demand side? In particular, that if net inward migration continues at current levels, then in five years there will be a further million or so people needing homes. Surely allowing this influx of people to continue unchecked is counterproductive when we have a shortage of housing and – relative to other European countries – a shortage of space in which to build them?

If we are building only 115,000 dwellings per year on average, as Osborne’s article states, yet have an annual net inward migration of 200,000, then it is only a slight exaggeration to say that we are only building at a rate which will house newcomers to the UK. These numbers should surely be part of the debate.
Anthony Ingham
London

• Mark Carney and the coalition leaders try to pin the responsibility on each other for doing something about the housing market, which Carney correctly states has “deep, deep structural problems” (Report, 19 May). In response, Cameron quickly passes the buck again by saying: “We have given the Bank of England the duty to make sure that bubbles are dealt with in the economy.” But housing bubbles are best dealt with by an anti-inflationary tax on property such as the old JS Mill land tax, which measures how much land goes up in value in a year and taxes that. This is the province of the politicians but they are loth to jeopardise elections by even the appearance of threatening the homeowner vote in any way. The Labour Land Campaign seriously considered branching out from lobbying fellow socialists by approaching the banks saying: “Get behind LVT: you are the first to lose when housing bubbles pop and wipe out inflated mortgages in your collateral.”
DBC Reed
Northampton

• Simon Jenkins’s denial (Comment, 21 May) that a housing crisis exists may strike a chord with some other comfortable, multi home-owning baby boomers but to describe what Mark Carney calls the “biggest risk to financial stability” as a construct of the Home Builders Federation’s campaigning verges on the absurd. In recent years, even many of those in their fifties and sixties who have often opposed new home-building have seen, through the experiences of their children or other relatives, quite how difficult things are now for people who want to buy or rent their own home, put down roots and perhaps start a family. That is the most potent influencer of opinion, rather than mere official statistics and the like, and why polls are increasingly showing that housing availability and associated costs are an issue of growing importance.

There are, of course, countless studies and reams of data to evidence the need to build more homes, even if Mr Jenkins may think they are all “meaningless”. Social housing waiting lists have lengthened by 65% since 1998; 50,000 families live in temporary accommodation; the national average house price to income ratio has all but doubled in the last 15 years; and in the same period we have seen 1 million more 20-34-year-olds living at home with their parents. In the case of the last fact it may be that this is the product of a cultural phenomenon that means a growing number of young adults simply enjoy the company of their mums and dads or perhaps the long-term lack of supply is restricting the choices that people of Mr Jenkins’ generation were better able to make.

Mr Jenkins’s defence of the countryside is laudable and any sensible person will agree on the need to preserve our environment, but the situation he characterises is at odds with reality. Over the last decade, the green belt has actually expanded and proportionally far more new homes are now built on previously developed land in towns and cities. The diagnosis and suggested remedy put forward by Mr Carney over the weekend was strikingly simple: the dysfunction in the housing market has been caused by decades of undersupply and the only effective long-term cure is to build more homes. The debate about how, where and by whom is now the right one to be having. The question of whether or not the problem even exists is really one that belongs to 2004 rather than 2014.
Stewart Baseley
Executive chairman, Home Builders Federation

• I must applaud your article regarding Woodberry Down (The remaking of Woodberry Down, G2, 19 May). I have lived here for over 22 years and served on the estate development committee from the moment the regeneration was proposed almost seven years ago. I have read the rest of the papers’ articles about WD. You took the time to talk to us. Thank you so much. At the beginning we had almost 2,000 homes here, all of which were social-rented. We now have 1,142 homes social-rented, 3,342 private and 1,126 shared-ownership. We were promised everyone would be rehoused; we lost homes, not gained. Your article was the only one that told the truth.
Debbie Sinanan
London

• Why not bring back schedule A property tax?
Hypatia Yavashli
Deal, Kent

• Ten years ago I commissioned the late Professor Peter Ambrose to write the Zacchaeus 2000 Memorandum to the Prime Minister on Unaffordable Housing. Tony Blair hadn’t asked for it; we thought he needed it. Lord Alf Morris sent it to him and he replied he had read it with interest. It was sent to all parties. Ambrose repeatedly stated that the rising commitment to house purchase loans from 23% to 72% of GDP since 1980 was unsustainable. He also reported that the main factor producing relatively low rents for council housing over many decades was not the subsidy from central government but the arrangements by which rents were averaged or “historically pooled” across the stock of an authority. Affordable council house rents continue to be whittled down by transfers to building societies, by boosting the right to buy and by relating social rents to market values so increasing the need for, and the cost of, housing benefit. The more it is needed the more the present government cuts it.

That is ethically indefensible from the point of view of both the council house tenants and the taxpayers. The additional costs arising from parliamentary mismanagement of UK housing arrangements, from 1980 to the present day, fall on society as a whole. Good management should address the mismatch between average and low incomes and spiralling rents an prices of a decent home.
Rev Paul Nicolson
Taxpayers Against Poverty

• Surely there is a sixth action missing from Hilary Osborne’s list of measures to fix the housing crisis – getting the skilled workforce needed to build the homes. Put simply, if the construction industry fails to recruit and develop a skilled workforce, the predicted crisis will become a reality. Most urgently, the construction industry will need 120,000 new apprentices in the next five years. Industry is taking the lead to make this happen with initiatives such as higher level apprenticeships – equivalent to a degree. But we also need to do more to attract young people into construction. The challenges we face are significant, with recent research showing that 35% of careers advisers believe that a career in construction is unattractive. At CITB we have challenged employers to get into schools and sell the benefits of a career in construction.

However, industry cannot do this alone and the message is clear – to avoid a housing crisis, government, industry and education must to work together to build and retain a skilled workforce.
Stephen Radley
Construction Industry Training Board

• Missing from Hilary Osborne’s analysis: right to buy – is any expansion of social housing simply going to lead to another buy-to-let bonanza in 10 years’ time?; the Growth and Infrastructure Act, which actively invites developers to renegotiate (ie abandon) affordable numbers; any mention of environmental capacity – water, clean air, etc – in London and the south east; or of the impact on the rest of the country of continually insisting that bright young people can only succeed if they move away.

She also fails to understand, in her first recommendation, that, constrained and starved of resources as they are, local authority planners are just about all that stands (with some dedicated thorn-in-the-side civic societies) between communities and even worse design and space provision than we currently have.
Judith Martin
Winchester

• Whether or not you share Simon Jenkins’ view that better management of the existing housing stock is what is required, not more new build, there is no doubt that large house builders throttle the rate of new building. After all, it’s in their self interest. Costs to build stay static in times of low inflation but house selling prices rise as demand increases. The lag between inflation and selling prices enables the house builders to profit. When inflation picks up the supply is throttled. Isn’t this the same situation with oil? If the Middle East oil producers responded to cries by the west that petrol is too expensive by increasing supply, their profits would fall and their reserves would reduce. It’s in their interest to control the production of oil all the time petrol prices remain high.

As with so many things, the middle way is probably the way we should go. New house building should be carried out by both the public and private sectors. Both sectors need to provide both rented and owner occupied tenures. But simultaneously, unoccupied town and city homes need to be brought back into use. In the 1970s, Haringey council in north London did just that. Instead of spending on bed and breakfast for homeless families, money was spent on making habitable houses purchased for redevelopment.

The next step is to accept that “affordable” housing is a stop gap until we can pay enough for people to “afford” housing, and not and end in itself.
Richard Bull
Woodbridge, Suffolk

• Vince Cable says that something like 300,000 new houses need to be built each year in order to stabilise house prices (Lloyds set Mortgage cap as London property fears rise, 21 May). This view that house prices are simply regulated by supply and demand is often repeated to justify demands for rolling back green belts and building over public spaces. However, recent government statistics state that new house building has increased some 30% from last year, while at the same time house prices have risen sharply (in London). Does this not imply that there must be something other than supply vs demand going on here?

The fact remains there are thousands of empty homes in London and elsewhere which are simply not up for sale or rent because they are held as investments either by individuals or (more likely) large companies. If it is true that something like 60% to 70% of new house purchases in London have been for investment purposes (many from offshore companies), then this is a “demand” of sorts for property, but not from people who want to live in it.
Joe Hartney
London

• Simon Jenkins suggests that the demand for more housing is driven by the middles classes looking for ” an investment, a hedge against inflation and old age, a golden gate to otherwise impossible wealth”. He has things completely back to front. Housing can only be the financial investment it is because it’s so rare. Individual wealth is not the problem – lack of supply to meet housing demand is.

He generously suggests ever more property be crammed on to inner-city brownfield sites, but in my short commute to work by train through south London, not a single awkwardly shaped plot of land, mostly adjoining train lines, remains undeveloped with multi-story rabbit hutches. But these piecemeal developments have absolutely no impact on the wider housing need, only on the healthy bank balances of those developing them. Jenkins suggests that all the poor want is “somewhere cheap to live, near work”. How patronising to assume the poor don’t want homes to grow and develop their families and lives in. He reduces their housing needs to little more than the Victorian rooming house – in modern terms, Air BnB – where bodies are briefly recharged with sleep before the next working day.

Jenkins may want to live in a commune, or share a room in a house, or have the government dictate how he uses the space within his home to best effect. I just want to not have to spend three quarters of my monthly take-home pay on rent in my apparently unreasonable demand for a one-bedroom flat to myself. We need to build, now, in cities and in fields.
Justine Brian
London

• I grew up in the Woodberry Down area in the mid to late 80s. My family has lived there for nearly 40 years, though most of us have left now. But I visit on a nearly weekly basis to reminisce and take in the changes. Your article was really well-researched and interesting. I am pleasantly surprised that a newspaper would devote so much leg work on a local issue. It is really easy to rely on a Berkeley Homes survey telling us “they’re worth it”, like the Times did, or going to the resident associations who have to kiss the hand that feeds them – I am the head of my local resident association and know how representative they are. At the best they represent the most articulate and well-spoken tenants or in some cases tenant. The only way to do this is to get out on the scary estate and talk to as many people as possible – and that is what you guys did.

As a child, I was a great fan of the Commando comic books. One of the reoccurring characters was the cheeky chappie cockney who served as a gung-ho private or seaman. It was only many years later that I realised that those old men preventing me from trampling on their flowerbeds were very probably those very characters. They carried themselves heavily those days, the brightness had gone and a look of betrayal was in their eyes. I realise now that they felt betrayed by a government who had reneged on the post-war settlement of the welfare state. In the last years of their life, they saw their dream of a fair deal for the “working-class Londoner” being taken from them as their “homes for heroes” were allowed to decline, allowed to decline to the state that Tony Pidgley can crow over them, telling us that “it looks like a concentration camp”.

He should say that to the faces of those residents in Spring Park Drive with their proud beautiful gardens. I notice that even now, despite the threatening compulsory purchase orders plastered on their walls, some of the residents still keep their gardens beautiful. He should say it to my father who enjoyed walking through that lovely street after prayers on the sabbath. “It’s like being in the countryside,” he would say. He should say it to the hundreds of Jewish residents who lived proudly in those heroic flats. He should say it to the German Jewish refugees who loved living in those flats because they could catch a short bus ride to Sadler’s Wells to see a performance. I visited a friend, a lawyer in a City firm, who remembered growing up in Nichol House. “It was a posh place to live in until the 80s,” he said.

The one thing I remember about the residents was that they were modest. They were modest, generous, simple people. I wonder what they would say when they see those billboards plastered all over the place advertising exclusive swimming pools and gyms for slim, wealthy white people wrapped in bouncy white towels. I wonder what they would say to people who “cross the road to avoid us”.

I now realise after reading your article that the estate and health centre I took for granted and thought eternal and normal as a child was a precious short 30-year experiment in kindness, goodness and fair play and now all of this is handed back on the plate to the generosity and kindness of the private sector and the generously paid concentration camp expert, Mr Pidgley.

So this article has thrown some light on things. I understand why in Upper Clapton, a large housing estate and sheltered accommodation for the elderly was knocked down and is now being marketed by Savills. I now understand that all of Hackney’s aging council estates are being eyed by the generously paid and I understand what a black girl in Narrow Way meant when she said to me: “We’d better get our act together; they don’t want us here anymore! They don’t want us here anymore!”
Mayer Abraham
London

• In the interests of transparency, I wonder if Simon Jenkins could tell us how many spare rooms he has and how many of them he rents to lodgers? Although it is very true that we could make more efficient use of our existing housing stock, the fact is we have not built new homes in sufficient numbers for decades. Let’s take empty homes, for instance. In London there are just under 60,000 empty homes, yet we have 354,000 families on council waiting lists. We should absolutely work to bring empty homes back into use, but Jenkins is kidding himself if he thinks it will come anywhere near to solving the problem.

The Greater London Authority’s strategic housing market assessment estimates that we need to build 62,000 homes per year in London every year for 10 years if we are to meet growing demand and clear the existing backlog of homes. Unfortunately, Boris Johnson has settled on an inadequate figure of 42,000 homes per year as his housing target.

Jenkins’s ideas may have some merit, but it is fanciful to suggest that anything other than a mass house-building programme will solve the housing crisis.
Tom Copley AM
London assembly, Labour housing spokesperson

• Rising house prices hurt all those that do not own housing. They make it harder for the next generation to buy. They raise the cost of providing rented accommodation and hence put up costs to tenants. They represent a massive transfer of wealth to the baby boomer generation and widen the gap between rich and poor which then cascades down the generations.

The causes of the problem are clear enough. Planning restrictions limit the supply of new housing, particularly where constrained by the green belt. Where house prices rise faster than construction costs, developers make more money by hoarding potential building sites than by building on them. Demand is stoked by the favourable tax treatment that most home-owners are blissfully unaware of. The abolition of schedule “A” property tax in the 60s means rented housing is taxed more heavily than owner-occupation. Exempting owners from capital gains tax makes home-ownership ludicrously profitable; so much so that our houses have increased in value by more than the total cost of purchasing them including all the interest paid on mortgages. No wonder everyone scrambles to climb the housing ladder.

Tackling the root causes will not be popular with the electorate; but the longer things are left as they are the more painful the solutions will be.
Dave Treanor
London

The use of primates understandably provokes strong emotion. As your report recognises, they currently account for less than 0.1% of all animal procedures licensed by the Home Office, yet their highly regulated use has been of great importance in major medical advances such as life-support systems for premature babies and deep-brain stimulation to relieve the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

The use of primates in research today is focused predominantly on major infectious diseases, such as treatments for tuberculosis, important neurological studies and new treatments for paralysis. In addition, UK and international law is clear that the vast majority of medicines intended for human use cannot be licensed without testing on animals, and primates are used for some of this testing, but only where they are shown to be the most appropriate species. While the coalition recognises the importance of such use of animals, we are implementing a plan to develop and adopt more non-animal alternatives in the UK and globally.

In the meantime, transport operators such as Air France, which is prepared to carry animals for research while ensuring high welfare standards during their journey, should not be criticised for adopting a socially responsible role in facilitating life-saving medical research.
David Willetts MP
Minister for universities and science

User fees are a disincentive to accessing health care, and they target the poorest disproportionately. They lead to worsening care for chronic conditions, and to more people seeking treatment at A&E.

We acknowledge that there are serious issues that need to be addressed in the delivery and financing of primary care. The solution has to be better public funding of GP services, and sustainable investment in primary health-care services. The poorest and sickest in society must not foot the bill for the lack of political commitment to sustainable funding for GP services. The BMA must side with patients, and oppose charging people for using the NHS.

Dr Clare Gerada

Ex-Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, London

Dr Clive Peedell

Co-Leader of National Health Action Party, BMA UK Council Member, Yorkshire

Dr Louise Irvine

MEP Candidate for National Health Action Party, BMA UK Council Member, Lewisham

Dr David Wrigley

BMA UK Council Member, Lancashire

Dr Jacqueline Davis

BMA UK Council Member, London

Professor John S Yudkin

Emeritus Professor of Medicine, London

Jackie Mcandrew

Academic adviser, Hull

Muiread Milton

Accountant, Colnbrook

A prefabricated ‘micro compact home’ designed by British architect Richard Horden  

SIR – Richard Statham’s call to bring back the prefab (Letters, May 20) has much to commend it. The post-war prefab – compact, cosy and comfortable – became a firm favourite of many who lived in it.

Intended to meet an urgent demand to replace the homes destroyed by bombs, and to house returning service personnel and their new families, the little prefabs soon became a familiar sight.

They were supposed to last for only 10 years, by which time the housing shortage was expected to be over. Yet they became so popular that their owners were loath to leave them, and many remained occupied long after their intended “use-by” date.

We have long had flat-pack furniture in our homes. Is it beyond the Coalition to emulate its forebears and organise some “flat-pack” prefabs to go with it?

Richard Shaw
Dunstable, Bedfordshire

SIR – I thoroughly agree with the Prince of Wales, who allegedly stated that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is behaving like Hitler.

Putin’s recent actions in the Crimea and Ukraine speak for themselves. Coupled with the horrifying news that Jews are again required to register, or be expelled, his actions smack of Nazism in the Thirties.

Sir Gavin Gilbey Bt
Dornoch, Sutherland

SIR – Why all the fuss about Prince Charles? Putin is doing now what Hitler was doing in 1938-39. The only difference is that Putin has not (yet) issued those infamous words: “This is my last territorial demand in Europe” (Hitler, Berlin, September 1938).

Brian Foster
Shrivenham, Oxfordshire

SIR – Lord Tebbit speaks wisely of our failure to understand the Russian position on Ukraine (Letters, May 20).

If Ukraine joined the EU/Nato, Russia would face the prospect of Western arms on its borders. This would be unacceptable to Russia and a threat to world peace.

It would not be unlike the shipping of nuclear arms in 1963 from the Soviet Union to Cuba, an action which took us close to a third world war.

The West has failed to see such consequences and makes vague threats instead of entering realistic negotiations.

Barry Bond
Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

Pushing it

SIR – I am fed up with Andrew Mitchell and the “Plebgate” affair. If only he had had the decency to push his bike through the side gate, as 99.9 per cent of the populace would have done after being requested to by the police, none of this would have ensued and he would still, however arrogant and brisk-tempered, be a useful member of the Cabinet.

Richard Snailham
Windsor, Berkshire

Fowl plague

SIR – Our village has been plagued by three rogue peacocks since February.

Short of shooting them, can anyone suggest a way to get rid of them?

Marysia Pudlo-Debef
White Colne, Essex

Pan gloss

SIR – Geoffrey Hodgson, who dislikes the term “pan fried” on menus (Letters, May 20), is being a little unfair. Any cook knows that the results of frying in a shallow pan and deep-fat-frying can be quite different in taste, texture and nutritional value, particularly with fish.

Adding a three-letter word to the menu seems a small price to pay for the useful information conveyed.

Robert Jackson
Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire

SIR – Even worse is “hand-made in our kitchens”. In other kitchens, do people use their feet?

Sally Whittall
Leominster, Herefordshire

SIR – Having waded through puddles to get to the restaurant, I don’t want see “drizzle” on the menu.

David McCowan Hill
Edinburgh

SIR – “Oven-baked” takes the biscuit. Where else would one bake?

Dinah Walters
Southsea, Hampshire

In opera, looks are more relevant than ever

SIR – I sympathise with Rupert Christiansen regarding the furore caused by his review of Der Rosenkavalier. To blame is the casting director who assigned the role of Octavian to Tara Erraught. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, performances were often just concerts in costume but now, in the age of high-definition video, the ability to act and look right for a role is very important.

As a retired opera singer who sang with the Glyndebourne company on tour and in the season, I am quite aware that the singer’s life is not an easy one. Rejection is par for the course. For certain roles, such as Azucena, looks are less relevant, but for younger female roles, especially in travesty, they are important. Male singers have an easier time because there are more character parts in the repertoire for them.

I am sorry that certain female singers have said that this is about sexism.

Barbara Kendall- Davies
St Brelade, Jersey, Chanel Islands

SIR – Before making unflattering observations about the appearance of the young mezzo-soprano singing Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, Rupert Christiansen might have reminded himself what Eva von der Osten, the role’s creator, looked like.

Miss Erraught bears a striking resemblance to the singer chosen by Richard Strauss himself to create the part.

Gerald Dowler
London EC4

SIR – Audiences attending just to hear the singer will do best to buy a CD: it will be much cheaper, and intonation and diction will often be more assured.

Michael Steen
Mattingley, Hampshire

SIR – Opera should be accessible. Perverse casting only attracts accusations of elitism and risks alienating audiences.

Felicity Thomson
Symington, Ayrshire

Till tips for M&S

SIR – If Marks & Spencer wants improved sales, it should make it easier for shoppers to pay. I frequently abandon a purchase either because I can not find an open till, or because there are long queues at the only open till.

Gill Locking
West Ella, East Yorkshire

SIR – I used to be able to make a trip to M&S to buy trousers, shirts and jumpers knowing that they would fit. Not any more. For example, a “40-inch” waist can vary by an inch in different designs. If this is rectified, sales will climb.

Mike Ingham
Bristol

Antique treat

SIR – I recently won a box of chocolates, donated by a Women’s Institute member, in a raffle. On inspection, I found the best-before date was 2011. I am unsure whether to eat the contents.

Charles Dobson
Burton in Kendal, Westmorland

David Cameron either can’t or won’t do that and, as a result, voters like me recognise that we are being viewed as peripheral spectators rather than participants in a democratic process.

There is a case for partial involvement in the EU, but if Mr Cameron is not prepared to tell me what he proposes, then I, and many others, won’t vote for him.

Tony Farrar
Nottingham

SIR – Voting in the European elections is about how much influence and power the EU should have over Britain. The EU already has exclusive “competences” over trade deals, competition rules and Britain’s fisheries. It also has significant influence over our agricultural policy, energy, transport, security and justice, as well as growing sway over foreign and defence policies.

The question is: does Britain want this?

Rory Broomfield
Director, Better Off Out Campaign
London EC4

SIR – Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, buys a full-page advertisement (May 19) to deny that Ukip is a racist party and then, in the same advertisement, peddles the lie that all Romanians are thieves.

Sasha Simic
London N16

SIR – David Martin (Letters, May 21) misunderstands the role of MEPs in the European Parliament. Nigel Farage cannot introduce legislation in that chamber. It is the unelected European Commission which does that.

All that the MEPs can do is vote on what is put before them – often rules and directives to be pushed through in quick succession without time for them to be scrutinised. The question is whether there is the desire in the other 27 countries to change the system. I think not.

Elizabeth Ashwell
Witney, Oxfordshire

SIR – The abiding memory of this election campaign will be the relentless mud– slinging at the front runner.

No one should be surprised if there is a low turnout.

Frank Tomlin
Billericay, Essex

SIR – Mr Farage has, at least, raised the profile of the European elections that otherwise would have been ignored.

Peter Amey
Norwich