July 3: Pro-Europeans should think twice before EU referendum

THOSE people who would be inclined to vote to stay in the EU in the forthcoming referendum should take note of how the EU has treated Greece. Make no mistake, if the UK had joined the Eurozone (EZ), and with our debt levels approaching those of Greece, we would have been treated in the same way.

This would have been disastrous. The Labour party and the various anti-austerity factions in the UK should try to imagine what the 25 per cent general and 50 per cent youth unemployment feels like to Greeks. Perhaps the left in the UK should re-consider their pro-EU stance.

Whilst it is true that the Greeks borrowed excessively, they did so because the ECB set the euro bank rate too low for their economy at the time. And the reason for the low rate was to accommodate the earlier turn down in the German economy (by far the largest in the EZ) in the 2000s.

As numerous economists and many eurosceptics warned 15 and 20 years ago, a “one size fits all” monetary policy does not work. Unless, of course, there is centralised tax raising and wealth re-distributing powers to cope with the strains and misery evident in southern EU countries now. And this means a “United States of Europe” is likely, unless the euro collapses.

So UK voters who think they can continue with the EU status quo are in for a shock: given the survival of the euro, a vote to stay in the EU will inevitably result in the UK embarking on a path of being completely dissolved into a new EU superstate. It would be a massive political upheaval with huge attendant risks for business and jobs, and a far greater change than restoring our independence.

From: David T Craggs, Goldthorpe.

IT was always predictable, wasn’t it? Now that the election is a distant memory, with the Conservatives in supreme power and Labour searching for a future role, the millions of people who voted Ukip – and are represented in Parliament by just one MP – have been quietly forgotten about.

Proportional representation hasn’t even been put on the back-burner, for there is no back-burner at all, and as far as the Conservative and Labour parties are concerned, there never will be.

It’s interesting to note that the views of the very people who voted for Ukip in order to express their concern about illegal immigration in the only way they could, apart from taking to the streets in protest, are represented by just one MP, which is another way of saying that they have no representation at all.