YP Letters: Will they blame voters if EU decision is a disaster?

NICK Martinek (The Yorkshire Post, March 1) says that the rest of the EU sells more to the UK than we do to them. True; however, if we deal in percentage terms, their exports to us are a much smaller proportion of their total exports than ours are to them. If we leave the EU, I believe the disruption to trade, whilst new trading treaties are being negotiated, will hurt us more than it will hurt them.

With regard to the referendum, I fail to understand why politicians reserve to themselves decisions on easily understood issues such as hunting with dogs while asking us to decide on the far more complex issue of whether our nation will be better off in future as part of the EU or divorced from it. I thought we paid MPs to research such issues and make the difficult decisions on our behalf. I sometimes wonder if they are allowing us to decide, so that, if in the future the decision proves disastrous, they can claim it is not their fault as we, the people, had voted for it.

From: Mr JL Julian, Quarry Road, Ripon.

I NOW know the real reason for climate change. It’s all the unknowledgeable hot air being generated by the opposing factions in the great debate about the EU referendum. Neither side can give concrete assurances or indeed, predictions about the eventual outcome and therefore each is plugging their preferred outcome – in other words second-guessing the outcome.

Personally, I would like to see a table depicting the for and against in column form but I doubt that there is such an unbiased person who could prepare it. What is certain is that the UK contributes about £39m a day to the EU, although we do receive a pittance in the form of rebated and capital expenditure. As an aside, wherever there is a humanitarian disaster the UK always contributes handsomely but I cannot think of any organisation which contributed to our recent flooding disaster.

From: Gordon Lawrence, Stumperlowe View, Sheffield.

DAVID Cameron’s renegotiation in Brussels was a daunting task. Whatever he accomplished, there is the impression of smoke and mirrors, especially in the Prime Minister’s shaky and very limited immigrant benefit scheme.

The EU is a complex organisation, however, and is forever pouring forth rules and regulations – I’m not just talking about the solid geometry of cucumbers here – that will undoubtedly conflict later with those weak concessions. It is then that the bureaucrats will be beavering away to circumvent the UK’s special position: it’s known as “mission creep”. And, if at nothing else, the EU bureaucrats are masters at it.

Primarily, without Treaty change, and therefore our ability to control our own borders, countless immigrants, now and soon to be domiciled in other European countries, will have the right, and it seems they overwhelmingly voice that right, to take the free option to cross the Channel and enjoy the superior, but vulnerable, comforts of our society. And our future, within this waning, undemocratic bureaucracy, will be economically and socially in for a profound, and not very pleasant, reawakening.

The Remain faction have no answer to this. It is no fiction.

From: Andrew Suter , Station Road, Ampleforth, York.

HOW kind of twice-sacked Labour cabinet grandee Lord Mandelson to trail himself around media studios saying how great the EU is. This is the man who served for four years as a EU commissioner.

From: Mrs M Donoghue, Grove Close, Ripon.

LIKE all empires, the EU will fall like the Berlin Wall and fail. So I predict that by 2025 there will be no EU with or without an In or Out referendum!

From: Mrs Pamela Frankland, Hull Road, Dunnington, York.

COLUMNIST Tom Richmond’s condemnation of the Tories jeering Nick Clegg over the EU referendum is somewhat unfair (The Yorkshire Post, February 27).

Everyone was thinking Ed Miliband was going to walk the election, so Nick Clegg abandoned the Tories to get into bed with any party to retain some power.

The country saw sense as the Labour Party had left the economy in such a state. Remember the coffers were empty with a note saying so?

Nick Clegg lost massively and so in my mind does not deserve respect from anyone, not even his own party.

From: Peter Hyde, Kendale View, Driffield.

JUST where are we going under the guidance of David Cameron? He is totally focused on the London and the South as far as this country is concerned.

His attitude over the so-called referendum is appalling, showing his true colours by refusing to allow the ‘Out’ group access to facts and figures that would support their case. Does he not realise that he is only in No 10 because the alternative is unthinkable?

From: Nick Martinek, Briarlyn Road, Huddersfield.

THE whole point of leaving the EU is for UK voters to regain democratic control of our UK government, yet David Cameron is modelling the Conservatives on the EU itself – top-down and undemocratic. Both Mr Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn are on the same side – more EU autocracy and never mind the voters.

From: Terry Palmer, South Lea Avenue, Hoyland, Barnsley.

WHAT is the EU doing to sort the problem of migrants “weaponising” Europe? As ever, not a lot. The new catchphrase of the pacifists is “the more the merrier”.