the friend online
05 December 2008

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How much should we be heard?
John Lampen writes (21 November) that local MPs ‘urged us to reply to letters in the local paper and challenge opinions that we felt were wrong’
  • I find that deciding when to do this is not always easy
  • The letter from Ernest Hall on the same page points out that our local papers often have letters complaining about the European Union (EU)
  • My local paper in Carlisle has such letters once or twice a week and often from the same person


  • On the whole, I think that the EU is a good thing and it annoys me that it gets incorrectly blamed for many things
  • For example, I worked in industry and know that the Health and Safety at Work etc Act was introduced sixteen years ahead of the equivalent EU directive and that many health and safety restrictions emanate from Rose Court in London and not from Brussels, so I have challenged such assertions that it’s all the fault of the EU
  • Likewise that the metric system is being imposed upon us by the EU
  • I asked in response whether Australia, Canada and most of the rest of the world, except the USA, had gone metric because of the EU? But when the same person said that the EU was the cause of our local head post office being closed in favour of a cramped space upstairs in WH Smith’s, I thought it too absurd to warrant a response

  • Ian K Watson and Tony Crofts

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