Letter: Home truths

SO TO BE a house-buyer in south-west London, "you need to have your wits about you even more than you did during the boom at the end of the 1980s" ('Will it pass the restaurant test?', Business, 31 May). Perhaps so. But with a two-bedroom terrace property on offer in Wimbledon for pounds 158,000, clearly what matters most is that you have money and a well- paid job. As you can still purchase an equivalent dwelling for less than pounds 30,000 around Grimsby, is it any wonder that few of our unemployed are prepared to get on their bikes? The disparity in house prices and the decline in rented accommodation has helped to make the labour market somewhat geographically inflexible.

Tim Mickleburgh

Grimsby, LincsA knife-edge