LETTER : Care rules for the old favour spendthrifts

Sir: No congratulations for your leading article of 11 March. Its comments are directed at a relatively well-off class of home-owners. Many home-owners are relatively poor, having struggled for years not for an investment but to keep a roof over their heads and their children, and to create not a "nest egg" but a beloved nest. The culminating tragedy for them is being forced out of their homes by the absence of adequate, affordable home-care which would allow them to remain in them.

Throughout the piece the word "house" is used almost exclusively in the brutal sense of an asset. A house can indeed be bought and sold, but a home can only be created with love and care, and it is the loss of this which is the real injustice and the cause of so much pain and unhappiness.

Mrs SHEILA MANN

Leeds