This is Somerset --
It was Nato, not EU that stopped wars
I must reply to Molly Scott Cato's letter that appeared in Tuesday's letters pages. The UK was asked in the 1970s to vote in a referendum about staying in the then EEC. I personally voted to get out. No one asked the people of the UK to join the monster that is the EU and has taken the place of the EEC.
I take issue with her propaganda that the EU has anything to do with the end of centuries of war between nation states of Europe.
This priceless achievement was not in any way the result of the EEC morphing into the EU and all to do with the armed forces of Nato, of which the main component were the forces of the US along with Canada!
If Nato wasn't there the old USSR would have rolled all over Western Europe at will. What we now have is the ESSR forced on us by our leaders who supposedly know best.
Don't just take my word for it. Listen to Paul Polman, chief executive of Unilever, explaining that Europe has lost its competitive edge and blaming the EU approach to economics, saying that complacency will kill competitive countries.
Yes, he still calls countries countries, like me, not nation-states as you and the EU are trying to persuade us is what our countries are now. The EU wasn't able to do anything about the wars in the Balkans and the slaughter of innocents there with ethnic cleansing, and in the end it was Nato forces dominated by the US and ourselves that stopped the killing.
Stuart Eels
Chippenham, Wiltshire
Could this be start of a new competition?
Are you running a "Ludicrous letter of the week" competition by any chance? After Mr Readman's quite pointless suggestion of seat belts on trains last week we now have two more in your Tuesday edition, "EU is about peace as well as trade", by Professor Molly Scott Cato, and "MEPs should turn up to change Europe", from Councillor Chivers.
The EU has never been about "peace" and experience from history shows that it is only a matter of time before it implodes into a civil war. The true peacekeepers (Nato) are being withdrawn from Europe while the southern "states" are running up huge economic deficits and massive problems are being caused by it. Democracy is being overturned as fast as the "leaders" can get away with it (virtually any referendum result you look at, for example) and the people are beginning to revolt at the EUs unlimited immigration policies.
As for "trade" we have a situation where British-made cars can not be sold in large areas of the EU because their directives do not permit it.
Then we have Mr Chivers still complaining that Ukip MEPs should be trying to "change the EU" when anyone who thinks about it knows Ukip is there to change only one thing – to reverse the steady drain on our democracy and restore it by getting us out.
Greg Heathcliffe
Swindon, Wiltshire
Gassing badgers is a sadistic pastime
In response to the letter by Johnny Alston about badgers, it is humans who are destroying the countryside, not the wildlife that kills for food. Has he seen what food humans waste too.
Gassing badgers was banned in the 1970s due to public opinion and the fact that it caused badgers to die a slow, agonising death. Anyone who wants to bring that back is either ignorant or sadistic.
Andrew Williams
West Country Badger Patrol Group
We need to take back control of our borders
Vince Cable, the Archdeacon of loony, lefty, liberalism, and his acolyte, Nick Clegg, are obviously living on a different planet from the rest of us if they believe that those of us who live in the real world are offended by the mobile posters urging illegal immigrants to leave the country.
I suspect that, if anything, most of us would like to see them worded far more strongly. But that doesn't make us racists or xenophobes.
Britain has always welcomed immigrants and still does – but we should have the right to reject those whose only reason for coming here is to take advantage of an overly-generous welfare system or to escape punishment for crimes committed in their own countries.
David Cameron keeps banging on about "renegotiating" our relationship with the EU and promises an "in/out" referendum on the EU in 2017 – but that is four years away. We need to dump the EU now and take back control of our own borders while we still have a chance of doing so.
As things stand it is highly unlikely that we will be able to do anything to stop this country from being invaded by hundreds of thousands of Romanians and Bulgarians when the clock strikes midnight on December 31. It will be the biggest invasion since the Norman Conquest!.
Robert Readman
Bournemouth, Dorset
Farmers would put Chinese in the know
I was very surprised when I read "Chinese head West to learn about flooding" (Western Daily Press, July 11). They needed to talk and get advice from the farmers, not from county council officers.
On another subject, "Soldier's children are not getting a fighting chance." (Western Daily Press, July 25). What a waste of time these cross-party MP committees are. They seem to make no difference whatsoever, just more "spin" to try and impress us. The Government ignores their suggestions and carries on as normal.
Then I read "Plain speaker fluffs his lines" (Western Daily Press, July 30). Eric Pickles is certainly not "a friend of the common man" . If he was, he would have made the effort to come down to Weston-super-Mare and meet up with Derek Mead and some of the majority of local people who desperately want the new Tropicana built. Instead of sitting in his office and making excuses.
Does he really care or even know where Weston-super-Mare is? I do wonder what he does all day, as he seems to have plenty of back-up staff. I suggest one way he can start to prove that he is a "friend of the people" is by insisting English senior citizens can use their bus passes in Scotland, at present they can't, but I believe Scottish senior citizens can use theirs in England, how unfair is this? As we are all in the UK, it should be the same for all senior citizens whether one is in England or Scotland, but I suppose he will make the excuse that it has nothing to do with his department.
Helen Capel
Winscombe, North Somerset
Yellow line parking is recipe for chaos
So Eric Pickles has a wondrous idea to revitalise our dying high streets by the simple expedient of promoting traffic chaos.
For too long, the supermarkets and their highly paid lobbyists have had far too much influence on planning decisions. They have used this to their advantage, building vast out-of-town cathedrals of consumerism with free parking.
Local objections are almost invariably overruled, and any sign that a planning authority might obstruct an application receives threats of legal action through the planning appeals process.
Nigel Cheffers-Heard
Topsham, Devon Reported by This is 1 day ago.
It was Nato, not EU that stopped wars
I must reply to Molly Scott Cato's letter that appeared in Tuesday's letters pages. The UK was asked in the 1970s to vote in a referendum about staying in the then EEC. I personally voted to get out. No one asked the people of the UK to join the monster that is the EU and has taken the place of the EEC.
I take issue with her propaganda that the EU has anything to do with the end of centuries of war between nation states of Europe.
This priceless achievement was not in any way the result of the EEC morphing into the EU and all to do with the armed forces of Nato, of which the main component were the forces of the US along with Canada!
If Nato wasn't there the old USSR would have rolled all over Western Europe at will. What we now have is the ESSR forced on us by our leaders who supposedly know best.
Don't just take my word for it. Listen to Paul Polman, chief executive of Unilever, explaining that Europe has lost its competitive edge and blaming the EU approach to economics, saying that complacency will kill competitive countries.
Yes, he still calls countries countries, like me, not nation-states as you and the EU are trying to persuade us is what our countries are now. The EU wasn't able to do anything about the wars in the Balkans and the slaughter of innocents there with ethnic cleansing, and in the end it was Nato forces dominated by the US and ourselves that stopped the killing.
Stuart Eels
Chippenham, Wiltshire
Could this be start of a new competition?
Are you running a "Ludicrous letter of the week" competition by any chance? After Mr Readman's quite pointless suggestion of seat belts on trains last week we now have two more in your Tuesday edition, "EU is about peace as well as trade", by Professor Molly Scott Cato, and "MEPs should turn up to change Europe", from Councillor Chivers.
The EU has never been about "peace" and experience from history shows that it is only a matter of time before it implodes into a civil war. The true peacekeepers (Nato) are being withdrawn from Europe while the southern "states" are running up huge economic deficits and massive problems are being caused by it. Democracy is being overturned as fast as the "leaders" can get away with it (virtually any referendum result you look at, for example) and the people are beginning to revolt at the EUs unlimited immigration policies.
As for "trade" we have a situation where British-made cars can not be sold in large areas of the EU because their directives do not permit it.
Then we have Mr Chivers still complaining that Ukip MEPs should be trying to "change the EU" when anyone who thinks about it knows Ukip is there to change only one thing – to reverse the steady drain on our democracy and restore it by getting us out.
Greg Heathcliffe
Swindon, Wiltshire
Gassing badgers is a sadistic pastime
In response to the letter by Johnny Alston about badgers, it is humans who are destroying the countryside, not the wildlife that kills for food. Has he seen what food humans waste too.
Gassing badgers was banned in the 1970s due to public opinion and the fact that it caused badgers to die a slow, agonising death. Anyone who wants to bring that back is either ignorant or sadistic.
Andrew Williams
West Country Badger Patrol Group
We need to take back control of our borders
Vince Cable, the Archdeacon of loony, lefty, liberalism, and his acolyte, Nick Clegg, are obviously living on a different planet from the rest of us if they believe that those of us who live in the real world are offended by the mobile posters urging illegal immigrants to leave the country.
I suspect that, if anything, most of us would like to see them worded far more strongly. But that doesn't make us racists or xenophobes.
Britain has always welcomed immigrants and still does – but we should have the right to reject those whose only reason for coming here is to take advantage of an overly-generous welfare system or to escape punishment for crimes committed in their own countries.
David Cameron keeps banging on about "renegotiating" our relationship with the EU and promises an "in/out" referendum on the EU in 2017 – but that is four years away. We need to dump the EU now and take back control of our own borders while we still have a chance of doing so.
As things stand it is highly unlikely that we will be able to do anything to stop this country from being invaded by hundreds of thousands of Romanians and Bulgarians when the clock strikes midnight on December 31. It will be the biggest invasion since the Norman Conquest!.
Robert Readman
Bournemouth, Dorset
Farmers would put Chinese in the know
I was very surprised when I read "Chinese head West to learn about flooding" (Western Daily Press, July 11). They needed to talk and get advice from the farmers, not from county council officers.
On another subject, "Soldier's children are not getting a fighting chance." (Western Daily Press, July 25). What a waste of time these cross-party MP committees are. They seem to make no difference whatsoever, just more "spin" to try and impress us. The Government ignores their suggestions and carries on as normal.
Then I read "Plain speaker fluffs his lines" (Western Daily Press, July 30). Eric Pickles is certainly not "a friend of the common man" . If he was, he would have made the effort to come down to Weston-super-Mare and meet up with Derek Mead and some of the majority of local people who desperately want the new Tropicana built. Instead of sitting in his office and making excuses.
Does he really care or even know where Weston-super-Mare is? I do wonder what he does all day, as he seems to have plenty of back-up staff. I suggest one way he can start to prove that he is a "friend of the people" is by insisting English senior citizens can use their bus passes in Scotland, at present they can't, but I believe Scottish senior citizens can use theirs in England, how unfair is this? As we are all in the UK, it should be the same for all senior citizens whether one is in England or Scotland, but I suppose he will make the excuse that it has nothing to do with his department.
Helen Capel
Winscombe, North Somerset
Yellow line parking is recipe for chaos
So Eric Pickles has a wondrous idea to revitalise our dying high streets by the simple expedient of promoting traffic chaos.
For too long, the supermarkets and their highly paid lobbyists have had far too much influence on planning decisions. They have used this to their advantage, building vast out-of-town cathedrals of consumerism with free parking.
Local objections are almost invariably overruled, and any sign that a planning authority might obstruct an application receives threats of legal action through the planning appeals process.
Nigel Cheffers-Heard
Topsham, Devon Reported by This is 1 day ago.