FOR your newspaper to try to portray the Government's newly-announced housing plans (LET, February 5) as a boost for the North of England is a travesty of the truth.

In reality, the North's industrial areas have now been effectively written off and a huge transfer of population from the North to South-East is planned, with the resulting loss of services and amenities for those unfortunates who remain.

Conservative party spokesman David Davies, rightly accused John Prescott of 'bulldozing the North and concreting over the South.' Our politicians have betrayed us in the North for years while they deliberately destroyed manufacturing industry to build up the service industries, largely based in the South.

The policy of demolishing 500,000 stone-built houses in the North while allowing half a million new homes on greenfield sites in the South-East is the economics of the madhouse.

If there are surplus jobs in the South, make them relocate to the North, rather than letting the market rip.

Who will speak out for the working-class communities of the industrial north now that New Labour has finally abandoned them?

CHRIS CLEGG, Bradshaw Street, Nelson.