JOHN Jones of Sand Hutton seems to be all over the place with his criticism of me (Letters, January 20).

He blames the previous Lib-Dem council and the current Labour council and seems to implicate the Lib-Dem/Conservative coalition by stating that: “Over the long term, things will get worse.”

Surely, he must realise that the Government has a statutory obligation to ensure that its citizens are catered for in all aspects from health provision, education provision, shopping provision, road and transport provision and housing provision.

So if things are going to get worse over the long term, who does he hold as being responsible for this debacle?

A large proportion of the blame stems back to Thatcher and her “right to buy” policy (talk about buying votes), whereby councils were forced to sell off council houses at great discounts and were at the same refused access to the financial assets of these sales to build new council houses.

Yes, since her day we had more than a decade of a Labour government and I will never forgive Blair and Brown for doing little (if anything) to assist local councils by replenishing the social housing stock in order to rectify the damage done by Thatcher.

Howard Perry, St James Place, Dringhouses, York.