I WONDER if you would be so good as to allow me one last letter on the subject of the EU and regionalisation?

As J W Reid (Letters, March 6) accuses me of speaking without thinking first I can only then assume her/his comments on regionalisation are deliberate.

The EU was set up as a direct response to fascism. To equate the EU project with Hitler is an insult to the millions throughout the world who suffered and died at the hands of fascism.

To answer Dr Allen?s question (Letters, March 6) about what the Lib Dems have done for us - if our system of Government was a little more like those to be found in most EU countries, already including regionalisation, we might also have their higher standards of health care, and would save NHS patients travelling to Europe for operations the NHS can?t get round to doing quickly enough, after years of being starved of investment by the Tories.

It is the Lib Dems who have spent the last few years calling for a penny on income tax to improve the NHS, a policy to which Labour?s penny on NI contributions is very similar. If you do your research properly (and across all the NHS? services rather than selecting figures that suit your own agenda) it shows how it is slowly starting to have a positive effect on services. Lib Dems achieving nothing?

As I say, this is my last letter on the subject, as I am bored of trying to have a reasonable discussion with those vocal anti EU readers. They seem unable to answer any of the points I?ve put to them ? which is that there are an equal

number of issues to be raised as to why the UK?s system of Government is equally bad, or as I put it recently, just a different form of democracy that?s neither worse nor better then the EU - and out of interest how does that stance make me pro EU when I?m as critical of both set ups?!

Dave Goodwin

Hillfield

South Zeal

AS a keen Bible student I was intrigued by the letter (February 27) from a member of the UKIP. Your correspondent advised ?Blair and co? to look at the parable of the ?Tower of Babel?.

The parable can be found in Genesis, chapter 11, verses 1-9. Having read this passage, I turned to the Teacher?s Commentary SCM which makes the following comment: ?This is a superb parable of man?s attempt to build, without reference to God and his law, a civilisation which shall reach heaven (secularism).

?The attempt is doomed to failure, and will result not in the peace and unity of mankind but in separation and misunderstanding.

?Babel is Hebrew for Babylon, the symbol throughout the Bible of secular and godless power.

?In the New Testament Babylon is identified with the pride of Imperial Rome. In Acts, chapter 2, verses 5-11, we find the story of the reversal through the spirit of Christ of the Babylonian confusion of languages when ?men from every nation under heaven? are bound together in the new covenant which cannot be broken.?

V Cushing

Tors Road

Okehampton