VOLUME housebuilders have been trying to hoodwink housebuyers for far too long ("Persimmon to review its customer care procedures", Herald Business, April 6).

They keep using such worn-out and ultimately meaningless adjectives as "outstanding", "traditional", "exclusive". Their developments are invariably an orchard, a meadow or fields.

They stick frilly cosmetic elements on to what are essentially just timber-frame boxes. These elements have nothing to do with the structure's soundness or sustainability and are another attempt to deceive homebuyers.

They have only succeeded in this subterfuge for so long because until now volume housebuilders in general have been providing essentially a similar product.

Now they have finally been openly rumbled could we perhaps all use the opportunity to have a broad, proper and rigorous debate about housing design and long-term sustainability. Let us try to avoid having a whitewash by the housebuilders themselves as they would undoubtedly wish.

This debate must surely involve architects who at present are hardly ever, if at all, seen anywhere near the offices of volume housebuilders.

Alastair Guild,

6 Lansdowne Crescent, Edinburgh.

No need for more predators

WE hear a lot of nonsense, especially from politicos, but this quotation from nature writer Jim Crumley, ("Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?", Herald Magazine, April 6) calling for wolves to be reintroduced to Scotland, perhaps takes the biscuit: "If you listen to the land ... the land will tell you it still feels the absence of wolves, that it mourns wolves, that their memory is immortal."

Would he really welcome still more killers in the countryside, more predation of deer, sheep and other livestock and perhaps of small children?

Paul Lister, the heir to the riches of DFS, the furniture firm, has long sought the return of wolves, fenced off in his Alladale estate, trusting none will escape; is now joined by Mr Crumley, "passionate" for the rewilding of Scotland.

He quotes TS Elliot: "April is the cruellest month," but he evidently discounts Nature as the cruellest of all killers in the countryside.

(Dr) Charles Wardrop,

111 Viewlands Road West, Perth.

Token gesture

IT should be no sour grapes from Glasgow that Aberdeen is to be the next Scottish place to be honoured with its own Monopoly board for 2019, particularly as Govan-born Sir Alex Ferguson may feature as a Fergie hairdryer board penalty and has also been suggested as a replacement for one of the six tokens ("Monopoly is latest to receive the Fergie treatment, The Herald, April 8 ).

With the reputation (admittedly undeserved), of the Granite City’s quines and loons for being carefu’ wi’ the bawbees, I suggest, tongue in cheek of course, that another token be replaced with a waterproof teabag.

R Russell Smith,

96 Milton Road, Kilbirnie.

Winning feeling

MY daughter and I have just had the pleasure of attending a concert (April 7) at the City Halls in Glasgow by the NYOS Senior Orchestra, whose musicians are all aged between 13 and 18 and were so professional it was a privilege to listen to them amidst their proud mums and dads. I was fortunate to win one of 20 pairs of the 40th Anniversary Reader Offer so thank you, Herald, for a wonderful evening.

Alan Stephen,

15 Beechlands Avenue, Glasgow.