YP Letters: Counting up the ways we oppose the EU

FOR those needing facts in the EU debate, one interesting fact came to me to the other day by way of one of those email missives that seem to occupy some people’s time these days.

10 Commandments – 179 words.

US Constitution with all 27 Amendments – 7,818 words.

EU regulations on the sale of cabbage – 26,911 words

After a rough check of my own, that’s over twice the length of the biblical Book of Revelation and which I vaguely recall deals with Armageddon.

From: Grahame Coates, Elm Terrace, Otley.

THE former Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper sees splits in the Conservative party (The Yorkshire Post, March 7) over membership of the EU as dangerous.

Many of us elderly socialists who voted “No” in 1975 see the lack of a publicly acknowledged split in the Labour party as dangerous too.

We feel ashamed that its leadership is actively assuming the role of Roy Jenkins and his pals who happily betrayed the legacy of those who, as Levellers, Chartists, Socialist Suffragettes, devoted their lives to securing “one person one vote” in elections to a British Parliament which was sovereign.

Socialists can only hope that the present Labour leadership will follow the precedent of the Jenkinsites, who stood beneath the “In” flag in 1975, and left to form the SDP. So cleansed, the party will perhaps be able to resume the missions established by those who founded it.

From: Sarah Atkin, Driffield.

IN response to Colin Challen (The Yorkshire Post, March 11), I think it’s probably safe to say that Boris Johnson doesn’t wear hair gel!

From: A Stubbs, Bridlington.

IN response to the migrant crisis, the EU is reportedly considering what amounts to a thinly disguised European army. It would be called the European Border and Coast Guard.

The force would be armed and have its own ships, helicopters and drones and be deployed anywhere in the EU without approval from the host nation.

Such a dramatic expansion of the EU’s powers will obviously be a hard sell which is why the plan put forward by the European Commission calls for only a small force of about 1,500 personnel.

The approval of even this small force would equate to a huge political step. Indeed, an EU where a central authority sends armed forces into different countries at will would not be a Europe of sovereign nation states. It would be the beginning of a federal superstate.

Regardless of whether this plan is adopted, it reveals the EU’s instincts.

From: Gary Mason, Hensall.

AFTER reading lots of comment in the pages and I’m sure there will be lots to come, the lack of clarity seems to be the order of the day. We seem to have people for whom it is simply about immigration, for others it is about red tape, and others it is about sovereignty.

In my mind, it’s up to the Out campaign to explain how we will benefit from an exit, if they mean we can dismantle health and safety legislation, or the working time directive. We already have zero hours contracts, I don’t think that’s a EU rule.

Let the Out campaigners convince us that we will not be worse of in these areas and explain to the farmers where their support will come from, or where the hospital staff will come from. Come on people, let’s look at the big picture.

From: Geoffrey Thorpe, Lister Avenue, East Bowling, Bradford.

DAVID Cameron has ruled out an EU-wide asylum deal, but fails to say that if we stop in the EU he will have no say in the matter. We read regularly in the Press of crimes committed by immigrants who abuse the hospitality of Britain?

Isn’t it time we were able to send them straight home with no backlash from the EU or the do-gooders of Britain?

From: Philip Guest, York.

I RECENTLY heard an interview on the radio in which a pro-EU spokeswoman threatened that if we were to leave we would lose our rights of free movement.

Was she seriously suggesting that we will be prevented from taking holidays in Europe? As for “borderless”, what does that mean? One can still be made to stand in an hour-long queue at the airport on return from a package tour while people from all over the world are allowed in.

As for jobs within the rest of the EU, there are precious few, due to its economic failure.

The only way forward is to leave the EU and withdraw from the crazy Convention on Human Rights, preferably before Daesh – the so-called Islamic State – commit a mass killing on our own soil.

From: Colin McNamee, Hull.

BOTH our Prime Minister and his Chancellor, together with those supporting the “Remain” campaign, are beginning to sound more and more like the “flat earth society” claiming that if the UK leaves we are doomed.

Remember the electorates of Denmark, Holland, France and the Republic of Ireland when faced with various EU referenda (joining the Euro and the original EU Constitution Treaty which morphed into the Lisbon Treaty)? The pressure the electorates came under from their governments and establishments that if they didn’t vote in favour, various kinds of catastrophes would certainly follow? Well, they didn’t and neither did the catastrophes.