Letter: Status quo EU vote means no reform

WELL, we huffed and we puffed did we not and it made not the slightest bit of difference.

The town councillors who presided over the shaming of Rotherham survived the election more or less intact. The very same people who, at best turned a blind eye to CSE and who were then found to be falling short of the required standard more or less across the board. Yet these same people were voted back into office by the Rotherham electorate. Who’d have thought it!  But that's democracy for you. The tyranny of the majority in action.

In other news: our MPs claimed to be unaware of something that had been the subject of a high profile article in a national newspaper in 2012. All I can say is that if they didn’t know they were falling down on the job. They should have known. And while we’re on the subject, would someone please explain to me how it is possible to do £40,000 worth of damage to an MP’s reputation? How can it be that the individual reputations of members of the group that gave us the expenses scandal can be worth so much? Even if you disregard the fact that they were all subsequently returned to Parliament and so seemed not to have suffered materially at all. £40,000?

Now, as the dust settles on the election results we must turn our attention immediately to the next one. The EU Referendum. In previous letters I have tried to make it clear that I am not opposed to Europe or Europeans. I don’t have much problem with immigration. It is true that the rules on free movement were set in very different circumstances to what we have now and perhaps should have been amended as the EEC 'morphed' into the EU. I believe migration is good for us but I think it would be even better if it were managed. What really gets my goat is that the EEC was sold to us as a partnership and what it has become is a takeover.

Its rulings are blunt and crude but dressed as legal reasoning that the rest of us supposedly couldn’t hope to understand. The ECJ ensured that our Rivers Authority couldn’t take the action it wanted to mitigate the flooding in places such as Carlisle, Malton and York. European rules mean that we need their permission — which we won’t get — to take action to save what is left of our steel industry (Originally decimated by EEC rules, you may recall, in the 1970s)  Inhabitants of our major cities are choking on the particle pollution emitted from diesel engines as a result of EU rulings.

The EU has become a monstrous bully. It is expensive, inefficient, wasteful and corrupt. None of which would be quite so bad if it were not as meddlesome as it is.  Worse still is that It understands nothing except its own voracious appetites. Why else would it take as long as it does to negotiate trade deals? The only jobs it will protect in the long run are those of the political elite. We should want no part of it.  And don’t be under any illusion about reform; a vote to maintain the status quo now will put an end to any possibility of that. The EU will not change unless something happens to shake it up.

VOTE LEAVE.

Richard Beeley, Maltby

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