MARTIN Roberts complains (You Say) that politicians are planning to shut libraries.

Well, why not? Many of them are objects of sentimentality rather than genuinely popular amenities.

It’s like post offices and pubs – people vote with their feet as times change but the middle classes make a fuss nonetheless.

So Martin, if you don’t want to close libraries, what do you intend to close or cut instead? Or are you a ‘deficit denier’?

JAMES WESTERHOUSE, Oxford