London will become a ghost city if house prices continue to rise as they have done

Holly Baxter’s article on speculative property purchases by big investors (20 October) makes depressing but not surprising reading. It follows neatly on from Will Gore's piece two days earlier, regarding the increase in the price of the first flat he bought in 2005 that had risen by 135 per cent at current prices.

Inspired by Gore’s article, I also went on Zoopla to check on the current price of the house I owned (mortgaged) in 1976 and sold for £16,000 when I left London. My salary as a lecturer was slightly over £5,000 a year at the time so the house value was roughly three times my salary. According to Zoopla it was last sold in 1996 for £155,000 and entering the details in a house valuation website its current value is £1.1m. It's a nice semi-detached house in Hampton, not a mansion in Belgravia, so I assume its price increase mirrors what is happening throughout London and the South-east.

What I cannot get my head around is how London expects to function with property prices at these levels when essential but modestly paid infrastructure workers can no longer afford the housing and transport costs. No refuse collection, no one to work in the sewers, no barmen and women, waiters, teachers, social workers... I could go on. London could end up a ghost city with a lot of expensive property nobody can afford.

Patrick Cleary Honiton, Devon

What’s the problem with a second vote on Brexit?

Given that the majority of Brexit voters (and probably many Remainers) in the EU referendum had little idea of the details of exactly what they were voting for – a stance obviously shared by many of the present Tory Government – I really do not see what is wrong in calling a second referendum once the precise details of our exit deal are confirmed. The Brexiteers will claim that “Brexit means Brexit”, but what have they to object to in a second vote? If the Brexit voters maintain their majority, then at least it will be on the basis of an informed decision. However if, on the basis that the precise implications of the Leave vote are fully understood, the majority switches to Remain then that is democracy in action and the wishes of the British public will have been maintained.

David J Williams Colwyn Bay, Wales

For Europeans who happen to live in the UK, a silver lining has just hove into view amid the encircling gloomy clouds of Brexit. The horizon for a definitive decision, the tripwire if you will, is not two years or so away but early 2017, supposedly March. My intuition is that Article 50 will be triggered and