Sir, – I wonder should the European fiscal stability treaty be a matter for a referendum at all?
The Government is again asking the people to make a decision on a complex treaty that is beyond the grasp of most people and I fear will remain so despite the greatest efforts of the media to enlighten us on the content and purpose of the agreement.
I cannot help but feel it would have been of far greater benefit to the voting public to have been given a say on the decision by the government in September 2008 to recapitalise the failing banks. We have now been left to make decisions concerning the type of lock we should install on a stable door which a horse has long since bolted through. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Declan Ganley is quoted as saying that Europe is on the edge of a precipice. Why, then, is he urging us to jump? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – The achievement within Western Europe since 1945 has been historic. It has become a single market without tariffs. We move freely across countries to reside and work where we wish. The idea of a war is ridiculous. Furthermore, the stand-off with Russia succeeded and the Iron Curtain has been swept away. That evil creation of a mined electrified fence stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea is a remote memory. Then it went wrong.
A single currency and interest rate cannot work across diverse nations and will not work for a long time to come. We have been poorly served by politicians and probably particularly by senior civil servants, some of whom have confused their responsibilities and become subservient to unelected bodies of remote mandarins. The result has been to threaten everything achieved since 1945.
Democracy is beginning to assert itself and the days of the politicians who pass on to their electorate the platitudes handed down from Brussels are numbered. The single currency has done immeasurable harm across Europe. It has injected into the region instability and economic demise not experienced since the 1930s. To now suggest that a Yes vote in the coming referendum will be a panacea for “stability” is absurd. The present structure has already proved itself manifestly flawed.
If the political classes persist extreme fringe parties will become mainstream and great harm may be done. For politicians and their advisers to suggest otherwise is gratuitous and possibly gravely irresponsible.
We should not vote in any referendum at present, but step back and allow ample time for rational debate here and abroad. – Yours, etc,