European Union

UKIP's John Howlett called for us to leave the EU in his letter (BFP 20th March) without giving any explanation of how we would address the issues of immigration; combating climate change; getting a fair deal for British business; the rights of the British working in Europe, or living in comfortable retirement in Spain and Italy.

Instead he puts the argument that residents of Bury St Edmunds don't want money to help stay afloat in the recession, and that local people don't want financial help setting up new businesses, and finally that the British Government does not govern Britain. Such is the strange world inhabited by UKIP.

I have some reservations over how this country is being run, but it is being run from 10 Downing Street, not Europe.

Ian Smith asks in his letter of the 20th March why we could not trade with the EU while being outside the EU. Of course, we could! We would have to provide goods and services in accordance to the standards of the EU without having any say in how those standards were set. Our businesses and civil servants would have no means to ensure that British standards of quality were maintained, or that manufacturers were not squeezed out of business by rules designed to suit the manufacturing capacities of Germany and Italy, or the agricultural power of French farmers, or the fishermen of Spain.

Let's not forget that it was the EU, not the British Government, that exerted the economic muscle to reverse the ban on British Steel imposed on Britain by America.