Sir, I don’t know why some people think I have something against the European Union. It is/was a good idea when it began. It was a free trade area well almost. The French didn’t seem to think it applied to them.
Duty was stacked, illegally, on Scotch whisky to make brandy cheaper. Remember DCL? They took Johnnie Walker off the market because of that. The EU is unprincipled, a shower of greedy nationalists who look for opportunities to get one-up on other members.
When the UK applied to join the EEC, as it was then in the 1970s, the Germans, French and Italians rubbed their hands an extra market of 65 million whose motor industry had been choked to death by Mrs Thatcher’s government was leaving a gap to be filled.
Now, look around you. Under EU rules we cannot say to our public sector “Buy British!” It’s against the rules. So that’s why 99% of your ambulances, police cars, vans, fire engines, snowploughs, all light commercials millions of them are made in, yes, Germany, France and Italy. The EU partners think we are suckers and we are.
Angela Merkel even had the cheek to visit here and address our parliament in German. While the EU parliament has 24 “official languages” English is the one that is used the most.
Now, they are saying that they don’t care if the UK leaves the EU. Oh, I think they do. There would be no free Europe without us. A man once said that Europe owed Britain a pension. Well, they have a strange way of saying thanks.
Yes, the EU may be a good idea. But it must not be dominated by one country. It’s about time we told Angela where to get off.
K J MacDougall. 3 Logie Avenue, Dundee.
There is scope for an EU deal
Sir, According to parts of our media David Cameron wants to eliminate the free movement of people. Angela Merkel says this is impossible and thus we must go our separate ways. In fact, as the German press confirms, Frau Merkel has also been tackling “benefit tourism” and is unlikely to oppose Mr Cameron’s attempts to do the same.
Free movement between member states is a pillar of the European project but that leaves scope for a deal limiting the kind of movement to, say, workers rather than people.
Still, David Cameron is right to protest the EU’s cronyism and corruption because the fact that its accounts have never once been signed off by its actuaries is deplorable.
Dr John Cameron. 10 Howard Place, St Andrews.
Profile ‘theory’ is untested
Sir, It seems my recent letters have provoked responses from Derek Farmer of Anstruther and Robin Love from Montrose. Mr Farmer concentrated some of his rebuttal on the comment about the UK’s low vote in countless Eurovision song contests which, I would concede, is politically based but tells a lot about how the UK is viewed by ordinary Europeans.
He went on to point out that things had changed from my time in Egypt as he failed to detect any ill will towards him when working in Cairo in 2005 to 2007, omitting to include that Egypt was no longer under occupation. There is a vast difference in attitudes to people who are working in a country by invitation to do a job than that shown to those moving the natives along, sometimes at the point of a gun.
In his final paragraph his assertion that Scotland presents a far bigger profile to the rest of the world by being part of the UK than it would as an independent nation is pure speculation as this theory has not yet been tested.
Mr Love tries to defend the criticism of the city of London by pointing out that the German economy is based on strong exports whereas the UK economy is service-based leaving the poor old UK Government with the problem of having to borrow billions every month just to support it. Whose fault is that I ask?
He then goes on to rightly point out that British residents nearly all buy foreign made cars linking this to the maintenance of the UK debt level. What he fails to do, however, is name the party or parties responsible for making the UK a service-based economy.
My continued reference to the city of London is not as Mr Love suggests an attack on the residents of the capital but on the financial institution which bears its name.
Allan A MacDougall. Bridge of Allan.
All based on failed models
Sir, The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that the world is on course to experience “severe, widespread and irreversible” damage unless rapid action is taken to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
Emissions must drop to zero by 2100 and the use of fossil fuels for electricity production must be phased out. This hypothesis is based solely on computer models that have repeatedly failed. Warnings were issued in 1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007 yet the actual global temperature changes were well below that forecast by these computer models.
This IPCC report warns of Armageddon if temperatures exceed 2C above pre-industrial levels. This is ritual scaremongering by an organisation which is desperately trying to find excuses for the lack of global warming for more than 18 years. India and China will never agree to CO2 reductions and other countries cannot afford to ignore the cheap fossil fuels they have.
Saudi, the world’s largest oil exporter, has demanded that this IPCC report should emphasise the negative economic impact of abandoning fossil fuels.
It is highly unlikely that there will be any agreement in Paris next year. Time to axe the IPCC.
Clark Cross. 138 Springfield Road, Linlithgow.