YP Letters: Give the EU a wide berth on your travels

I ALMOST choked on my cornflakes as I read in your newspaper about the disgraceful delays forced on British nationals visiting the EU Schengen area by vindictive members of the EU. These delays are no doubt a not so subtle way of punishing the British for having the temerity to leave the EU super-state (The Yorkshire Post, August 4).

This deliberate inconvenience imposed on our citizens is confirmation, as if any was needed, that we need to abandon this sinking ship as soon as possible. If British tourists hoping to enter the EU were to arrive by rubber boats via Libya, off the coast of Greece or Italy, perhaps they would be accorded a very warm welcome rather than the offensive hostility they are suffering from at the moment?

Now would be a good time for the British tourists to focus next year’s holidays on the US, where they are assured of a warm welcome from President Trump and the American people. It would be an excellent plan to see how Italy, Spain, France and Greece can manage without the huge amounts of money spent by British tourists in their respective countries.

I can’t help wondering if 
the French would have 
imposed the same entry conditions that they are imposing today on those brave British troops landing on the beaches in 1944, many of whom lost their lives trying to save the French nation from German occupation.

Now would be a good time to leave the EU, tomorrow, if not sooner, with or without a Brexit agreement and make Britain great once more.

A simple solution to a simple problem.

From: Paul Morley, Ribblesdale Estate, Long Preston, Skipton.

TO reduce waiting times, it is surely not beyond today’s technology to forward all booking-in details to the airport where the plane is to land while the plane is in transit.

That way, all lost or stolen passports and persons of interest on the Schengen border records can be checked before the plane lands. The immigration staff then only have to look for anyone they have an interest in, and everybody else can go straight through. Or is it, as some people are saying, just the EU trying to cause more upset to us Brexit supporters?

From: Hilary Andrews, Nursery Lane, Leeds.

SO the EU countries have decided to inconvenience UK citizens by making them wait in line for so-called security checks at the holiday airports.

What a childish lot they are. Don’t they realise that Brits will either holiday at home or go to Thailand, China or Japan where eating out is cheaper (The Yorkshire Post, August 5) and the countries are far more interesting than over-crowded European beaches, rather than be blackmailed in this way?

Their tourist industry will lose the revenue that many of these countries rely on to keep their economy afloat. Thank goodness we are getting out from under their control.

More trauma after trenches

From: Robin Silver, The Home store, Salts Mill, Saltaire.

THERE has been much reporting of the centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele. It is completely appropriate that we should be recalling the tragic events and remembering the loss of so many young lives.

However, there seems to have been little coverage, especially on the television programmes, of those who survived that dreadful time in the trenches on the front line. Some of those survivors were horrendously invalided, losing limbs, sight and hearing and suffering from the aftermath of gas attacks. Some were not physically injured but all carried the mental scars for the rest of their lives.

My own grandfather was one such soldier. Although I did not really know him, as he died when I was very young, my grandmother always said that he returned from that war a completely changed man and demonstrated this with comprehensively changed behaviour.

He was reported to have been carried shoulder high through the streets of Leeds in commemoration of his medal- winning bravery but received no help in being adjusted back into civilian life. Like so many others, he had to make his own way with a serious injury to his leg.

We should remember this horrific battle in a war that was intended to be the war to end all wars, but let us also remember the survivors and acknowledge what they gave, even if they did not give their lives.

From: Thomas W Jefferson, Batty Lane, Howden, Goole.

GERALD Hodgson (The Yorkshire Post, August 3) fails to acknowledge the role of Nato in keeping the peace in Europe for the last 70 years.

The main reason the EU countries have been peaceable is because they are all democracies, which do not declare war on each other. They were democracies before joining the EU, by which time most of them had already joined Nato, which demands that its members be democracies and respect each other’s borders. The conditions for peace on the continent were therefore in place, regardless of the EU’s influence.

Mr Hodgson is grateful that his grandsons have not had to go to war, but the fear, if we were to remain in the EU, is that if they succeed in forming a military force by majority vote, our troops could end up under a command that is not accountable to a robust democracy.

It is imperative that we completely remove ourselves from the control of the EU and its stultifying institutions, so that we can effectively uphold the values of democracy and freedom, which are so easily lost if we allow ourselves to take the soft options.

To sum it up...

From: Mr A Davies, Augusta Park, Grimsby.

BRIAN Sheridan’s letter (The Yorkshire Post, July 31) reminds me of the university department of mathematics where the only way in which a student could obtain a first was by being brighter than the professor but keeping quiet about it!