The right to remain

Estate agents and big construction companies have been the main beneficiaries of the housing market boom that has seen the price of homes rocket much faster than both inflation and average earnings.

But the authority can see that low-waged local people are being priced out of the market by wealthy outsiders looking to buy holiday homes.

Those complaining accuse the authority of interfering with the market, as though this were the worst crime imaginable.

Although market forces can be a useful guide to industrial production, they do not offer social justice. That is the responsibility of local and national government.

There is, clearly, no justice in a system that makes it impossible for rural workers to buy or rent a home in their own town or village.

Neither is this restricted the Yorkshire Dales and other national parks.

It applies, among other places, to east London, where those born locally are priced out by Canary Wharf and other docklands developments, to former pit villages, where cottages were picked up post-strike for a song, and to rural Wales, where English holiday home-seekers are changing the nature of Welsh-speaking communities.

Those who have cleaned up in the housing market often ascribe the basest motives to those who complain about the absence of local homes for local people.

But the choice of remaining in one's own community, without being turfed out by the power of wealth, should be a fundamental human right.

Make a date for March 19

LANCE Corporal George Solomou's bravery in speaking out against any involvement in the "bankrupt, unjust and immoral" war in Iraq and attacking the US leadership's motives for starting it is an eloquent commentary on George W Bush's coronation ceremony.

The US is spending more on Mr Bush's inauguration than it first offered as aid to the tsunami-hit countries around the Indian Ocean.

The president told US troops this week how impressed he was by them and how proud he was to be their commander in chief.

He would characterise L/Cpl Solomou's advice to soldiers not to be used as cannon fodder for oil companies in this war as unpatriotic.

But, in fact, it shows greater concern for the well-being of service personnel than all the hypocritical words of a "chickenhawk" president who was in favour of the war in Vietnam but used every rich boy's dodge under the sun to avoid being sent there.

The illegal and corrupt invasion and occupation have been a nightmare for the Iraqi people and for the occupying troops.

There is nothing noble or decent in the dirty job that the soldiers have been ordered by our political misleaders to carry out in Iraq.

In such circumstances, torture, abuse and the shooting of civilians by nervous trigger-happy troops are inevitable.

Everybody who wants to see an end to these crimes, along with bombings, kidnappings and sectarian killings, should pledge to take part in the March 19 demonstrations to end the occupation of Iraq.