OH, dear! Have I hit a nerve? Project Fear reaches Tavistock:

‘Outside the EU, British Law will collapse: the wheels will fall off cars, television sets will burst into flames, workers will be reduced to medieval servitude, those children not up chimneys or down mines will be poisoned by their toys or electrocuted by their cellphones, grass will wither, sheep will die; and we shall be invaded by geriatric swivel-eyed loons from the planet Zog.’

That is, perhaps a synopsis ad absurdum of last week’s europhile collation, but that was the intended message; and the references to car wheels and TV sets are taken straight from one of your correspondents’ letters ( May 19).

The truth is that EU directives are part of British Law and will continue to hold until a British parliament is free to repeal or amend them. That can happen only if we vote to leave the EU on June 23.

The difference will be that our MPs will no longer have the EU as an excuse to absolve themselves from responsibility for the most egregious absurdities. They will once again be answerable only to us, the electorate. If they fail to get rid of the rubbish, we shall be able to get rid of them. (‘Si vous m’obstucterez, je vous get-ridderez’ - Churchill to de Gaulle - possibly apocryphal, but certainly in character).

It is simply untrue to assert we shall have to submit to all EU rules in order to trade with it. We shall have to meet EU standards for exports to EU but we shall once more be allowed to make and buy (eg) 2 kW vacuum cleaners for domestic consumption and for export to the rest of the world. ‘Harmonisation’ has more to do with anti-competitive lobbying on the Commission by large corporations than it has with consumer protection. Those same large corporations (and EU-funded NGOs) are doubtless those whom Mr Gasper characterised as ‘of any standing’, implicitly dismissing as worthless the complaints from a plethora of entrepreneurs and small businesses about the stultifying effects of EU anti-competitive strangulation.

Born in Devon of Devon and Cornish parentage, I do not regard the sacrifice of our fishermen and farmers to European interests as matters of little worth or their complaints as having little standing.

I have consistently maintained the issues are constitutional. No-one has much idea what the economic future holds, because there are, by definition, no ‘facts’ about the future. The question is ‘who governs us?’. My answer, for better or worse, is ‘not you, EU!’

Roger Mathew

Tavistock

IF we can believe The Sun front page of May 10 that says ‘Cam’s in her Hans’ with its wicked little cartoon of Angela Merkel conducting the music that our PM is dancing to then what shall we do?

The article says ‘She secretly forced the PM to drop the key demand less than 24 hours before he was to unveil it’. If EU lacks the integrity to respect Britain’s leadership for another to over-rule why is our leader there? Is there hope of democracy in the EU?

I am not able to comment on the finances of ‘in or out’ but as a pastor of over 50 years working with people, I am convinced truth, honour, integrity and recognition that God is above us all is our only hope unless he graciously intervenes to rescue our society.

May he guide us as we come to the referendum.

Colin Bond

Kings, Tavistock