Jim Carter, from Southampton

We have been bombarded with propaganda about the “need”

for more housing, to soften up our resolve, so that we will accept the despoiling of our countryside.

Adolf Hitler’s Minister for Propaganda, Dr Joseph Goebbels, said that if you told the people a lie, and repeated it with conviction, they would gradually accept it as the truth.

We are all brainwashed by propaganda through the commercial system, to buy what we don’t want, don’t need and can’t afford. We are also brainwashed about ideas, and pressured into accepting what the “Establishment” wants us to think.

We should always be mindful of brainwashing and think carefully about our future.

We are the most overcrowded country in Europe and have to import 40 per cent of our food.

That is almost half of the food we need!

In a constantly dangerous world, we need to secure our food supply. This means using all our agricultural land to the best effect. The more houses that are built on greenfield sites, the less we can do this. Yet in a national newspaper recently it was reported that there was space for more than one million homes on brownfield land. If, indeed, there is a need for more housing, then this is where it should be built!

But the greedy developers would first have to clear the land and therefore would not make so much profit.

Agricultural land provides a green lung between towns and cities and is psychologically and spiritually necessary for people’s physical and mental health and wellbeing. For developers to plant a few trees and provide a small patch of green for a children’s playground among a development of new houses is not a substitute for this.

And when a proposed new housing development on a greenfield site is opposed by local councillors and large public protest, a so-called independent government inspector always seems to adjudicate in favour of the developers.

We live in a supposedly democratic country. Where has our democracy gone?

Jim Carter from Southampton