Letter: Get out of the EU, and take control of the borders

Veronica Hardstaff wishes to have, according to her letter of October 11, a civilise debate on Brexit. My civilised view wouldn’t really tally with her views. That’s nothing personal; it’s just the way life is. People disagree. I don’t particularly like Boris or the Tories. I’ve voted Labour all my life, and I’m in my 70’s, but I wouldn’t vote for the Labour party as it is now, and that’s partly because I want out of the EU.

Veronica mentions things like water quality, food safety and workers rights, as if they were only improved because of the EU. Instead of bigging up the EU, we should be asking the question of why this country wasn’t doing enough in this area. Instead, we should have been asking both the big political parties, why they weren’t doing it. But we didn’t.

As for the worker’s rights, how many times have you watched the news and seen riots and blockades in Calais? In just about every country in the EU, workers have at sometime had to fight for what they wanted. The French workers don’t mess about, they square up to the Government and that’s how they improved workers rights. The French workers are not happy with the current French leader at the moment, so the EU has clearly not made France a Utopia for French workers.

As for free health care when in Europe, don’t believe it. There had been several times when we’ve had members of our parties taken ill. Every single time we have pulled out health cards the doctors have shaken their heads and demanded money. It was around a hundred pounds, not Euros, to get a prescription for a child with an ear infection. The free health system only seems to apply at certain hospitals.

Veronica brought up, as did many teenagers before the referendum, that there might be roaming charges for mobile phones belonging to holiday makers from the UK. It’s amazing, people will pay two, or three hundred pounds for a mobile phone, but don’t want to pay a few euros to ring their mam back home. You’re on holiday, unless it’s an emergency why do people need to keep ringing home?

We have problems in this country, with housing shortages, school places, lack of good jobs, overflowing hospitals, and street thuggery. In 2004 the EU delayed the Eastern Europeans, like Bulgaria and Romania, from joining. This was because of fears about political corruption, public corruption and organised crime including people trafficking. In 2007 they were allowed to join the EU, with free movement. Thousands headed this way. Now on top of all that, we have Turkey threatening to wipe out the Kurds. The Kurds, who played a large part in beating Islamic State, are already fighting for their lives, and this could escalate to a rise again of Islamic State because they will be too busy fighting the Turks, to keep imprisoned thousands of ISIS prisoners. The Turkish leader is threatening to unleash 2.5 million Syrian refugees into the EU, if the EU tries to intervene in the Turkish attacks on the Kurds. Unbelievably, the EU are currently negotiating with Turkey to join the EU. The EU is negotiating with a country that might flood EU countries with millions of people. That says a lot about the EU! If it happens, how many more refugees will this country take before people start complaining yet again about the pressure on our infrastructure?

Believe me, it’s the young people who seem to be pushing to remain who will find themselves the ones who can’t get good jobs, good schooling, or houses etc. Get out of the EU, and take control of the borders. Then, if the Tories go back to their old ways, the answer is simple… vote them out.