Sir, - The latest edict from Brussels is that vitamin tablets are to be classed as medicines, thus becoming too expensive for use by the elderly and the convalescent as a food supplement. The sick and the elderly will now join the anti-abortionists, the farmers-against-sharing-with-Poland, the save-our-neutrality group, the keep-out-foreigners crowd, the what's-yours-is-mine-and-what's mine's-my-own association and the let's-teach-Bertie-a-lesson lads in opposing European rule.
The sick and elderly are not only a sizeable proportion of the population but among its most regular voters. Who will be left to vote Yes in the next referendum on the Nice Treaty if Europe does not cease firing at its own flat feet with such deadly precision? And why should we expect it to end the gunfire? It is not the first edict in the "straight banana" category and I fear it may not be the last. Yet each hail of bullets will add more groups to the ill-assorted No-voters.
If this vitamins-are-medicine nonsense continues, I fear I may be counted among them. - Yours, etc.,
Carolyn Swift, Upper Leeson Street, Dublin 4.