LETTER: EU referendum

Please let me set out some issues to those of you who are not sure how to vote, and perhaps to those who feel committed to staying in the European community.

Firstly, remember this is not a trading arrangement, this is a fully integrated European community to govern all member states.

A yes vote will, in the course of time, mean accepting the Euro.

No existing treaties will alter without the consent of all participating nations.

With reference to our fishing, 80 per cent of EU waters surround Britain, to which we had exclusive fishing rights prior to joining the EU.

We are now only permitted, under the EU control, to land just 13 per cent of fish from waters surrounding our island.

We now have to import fish from other countries, whereas before we were self-sufficient,

We will need to continue paying our contribution.

For example, in 2012 we paid in £15 billion with a rebate of just £3.17 billion, less what the EU gave us back and allowed us to spend (£4.95 billion), leaving a net payment £6.9 billon paid into the EU.

To put this into context, a new hospital would cost around £150 million and a new academy school would cost £25 million.

Referencing our trade, we are not permitted under EU control to have our own trade official on the World Trade Organisation.

All agreements have to be made by the European representative.

The premise that if we leave the EU we will not be able trade with them is totally untrue.

China is not in the EU and has an input on trade to the EU of over £200 billion.

I could go on and on, however the right approach to your vote would be to make sure you are fully conversant with the benefits which we may, or may not, receive, and please consider how, or if, over the past 40 or so years, we have developed as a nation from being in the EU.

Do you really want a country governed by Europe?

Making our laws, running our fishing and farming industries, controlling our trading with the world market, overruling our legal system, and becoming a country not capable of running our own affairs, losing our ability to govern ourselves.

Or would you prefer:

• To once again be able to govern ourselves and make our own laws.

• To regain our freedom to trade as we wish with the whole world.

• To regain our waters around our coast and to manage them as we feel fit.

• To keep the pound and not have to pay the £50 million every day to the EU.

• To control our own borders.

This may be the last opportunity we will have to decide our freedom and our own destiny, or are you content to submit to a creeping federal Europe with all that it will encompass?

So again I say be careful what you wish for, it may come to pass.

Lionel Parsons

Pratton Avenue

Lancing

• Want to share your views? Send your letters by email to [email protected], [email protected] or [email protected], or post them to Letters, Editorial, Cannon House, Chatsworth Road, Worthing, BN11 1NA. Remember to include your full name and address.

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